Why ICE Can Kill With Impunity

When Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good last Wednesday morning in Minneapolis, the 37-year-old mother became one of at least 25 people killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shooting since 2015.

In the days after Ross fired at Good multiple times from the front and side of Good’s car, visual investigations from outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post have reconstructed the event, which unfolded in a matter of seconds, combing through a series of videos that emerged from various angles. These present apparent contradictions between the narrative presented by the White House and Department of Homeland Security, which claims Ross acted in self-defense, and what actually happened.

But similar contradictions haven’t previously led to criminal indictments in ICE agent shootings. In fact, there does not appear to have ever been a criminal indictment stemming from an ICE shooting at all.

I spent four years investigating ICE shootings that occurred from 2015 to 2021, over the course of three presidential administrations. I sued ICE for the logs of all of these shootings—a lawsuit that took two years to be settled—and cross-analyzed them with media reports, lawsuits, over 40 interviews with experts, shooting victims, families, and lawyers, and 20 other Freedom of Information Act requests for law enforcement investigation reports across the United States to piece together what happened and what patterns they revealed.

Not counting the Good shooting, ICE agent shootings have involved moving vehicles at least 19 times—which are connected to at least 10 deaths and six injuries. Task forces including ICE agents have shot at least three other US citizens. They have shot in public areas with bystanders 22 times. And in at least seven cases, the person shot by an ICE officer was not the target of the enforcement action.

The Same Defense

The self-defense claim ICE, its agents, or their lawyers have made after shootings has historically been proven impossible to refute. An agent using deadly force does so justifiably when it is “objectively reasonable and necessary,” ICE spokesperson Mike Alvarez told me in an email in 2024.

“A law enforcement officer placing himself or herself in front of a motor vehicle to prevent a suspect’s potential avenue of escape is a dangerous tactic and a potential violation of policy,” Mike German, a former federal law enforcement agent, tells WIRED. “But I don’t think that would be likely to impact a prosecutor’s evaluation of whether the officer has a reasonable fear at the time he pulled the trigger that he was in a life-threatening situation justifying deadly force.”

This reasonableness standard is what a city, state, or federal agency would assess when deciding whether to indict an agent for any criminal activity, and it’s evaluated from the perspective of a law enforcement official, not a layperson, German explains.

“Prosecutors and judges tend to be very deferential to law enforcement agents involved in shootings,” German says. “Typically, an agent’s subjective belief that deadly force was necessary to protect themselves, or the safety of another person, from serious bodily harm is enough to avoid criminal charges, or conviction if charged.”

Sometimes suspects were seen to have guns, according to the ICE logs I obtained, particularly in the course of Homeland Security Investigations. But three times, ICE documented a suspect’s body, described as “hands/feet/body,” as a weapon.

And in at least a dozen cases, I uncovered evidence suggesting that the shooting victims were unarmed.

Federal agent-involved shooting investigations conducted by the Justice Department rarely result in criminal charges, and the results are rarely released publicly, German says. “The bottom line is that these shooting investigations very rarely find the agent in violation of law or policy.”