Why ICE can kill with impunity

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

In the days after Ross shot Judd multiple times from the front and side of Judd’s car, visual investigations from outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post reconstructed the event, which unfolded in a matter of seconds, by combing through a series of video clips that appeared from different angles. These represent clear discrepancies between the account presented by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, which claims that Ross acted in self-defense, and what actually happened.

But similar discrepancies have not previously led to criminal charges in shootings of ICE agents. In fact, it does not appear that there was ever a criminal indictment stemming from the ICE shooting at all.

I spent four years investigating shooting incidents that occurred from 2015 to 2021, over the course of three presidential administrations. I sued ICE for the records of all these shootings—a lawsuit that took two years to settle—and analyzed them with media reports, lawsuits, and more than 40 interviews with experts, shooting victims, families, and attorneys, as well as 20 other Freedom of Information Act requests for reports from law enforcement investigations across the United States to piece together what happened and the patterns they revealed.

A good shooting incident aside, ICE agent shootings have involved moving vehicles at least 19 times — which have been linked to at least 10 deaths and six injuries. Task forces, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, shot at least three other U.S. citizens. They shot in public with bystanders 22 times. In at least seven cases, the person shot by an ICE officer was not the target of enforcement action.

Same defense

The claim of self-defense made by ICE, its agents, or their attorneys after a shooting has historically proven impossible to disprove. An agent who uses deadly force justifiably does so when it is “reasonable and objectively necessary,” ICE spokesman Mike Alvarez told me in an email in 2024.

“A law enforcement officer positioning himself in front of a vehicle to block any potential means of escape for a suspect 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 is likely to impact the prosecutor’s assessment of whether the officer had a reasonable fear at the time he pulled the trigger that he was in a life-threatening situation that justified the use of deadly force.”

This standard of reasonableness is what a city, state or federal agency will evaluate when deciding whether to charge a client with any criminal activity, German explains, and it is evaluated from the perspective of a law enforcement official, not the perspective of a layperson.

“Prosecutors and judges tend to defer to law enforcement officers involved in shootings,” German says. “A client’s subjective belief that deadly force is necessary to protect himself, or the safety of another person, from serious bodily harm, is usually sufficient to avoid criminal charges, or, if charged, a conviction.”

Suspects were sometimes seen carrying weapons, according to ICE records obtained by ICE, especially in the context of DHS investigations. But three times, ICE documented a suspect’s body, described as “hands/feet/body,” as a weapon.

In at least a dozen cases, evidence was discovered indicating that the shooting victims were unarmed.

German says Justice Department investigations into shootings of federal agents rarely lead to criminal charges, and the results are rarely made public. “The bottom line is that these shooting investigations rarely find an agent in violation of the law or policy.”