How dangerous is it really to work for ICE?

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that it needs to send the military into American cities because of the unique danger faced by federal agents enforcing immigration laws. In October, President Donald Trump claimed the National Guard was required in Illinois to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents facing a “coordinated assault by violent groups.” In September, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin argued Guardsmen should be deployed in Oregon as a result of “violent riots at ICE facilities” and “assaults on law enforcement.”

But those, and many similar assertions from the Trump administration, are undercut by ICE’s own data. A Mother Jones review shows that there is little evidence that ICE agents face such severe and widespread danger compared with other law enforcement agencies that they need military personnel to come to their aid or to break from centuries of public accountability by hiding behind masks.

The Trump administration has provided almost no information to back up its statements about rising assaults, which makes its claims hard to assess. But details about ICE officers who’ve died on the job are readily available on the agency’s website.

Those records show that none of ICE’s agents have ever been killed by an immigrant in the agency’s more than two-decade history. Instead, the leading cause of death by far among ICE officers is COVID-19. According to ICE’s data, the second leading cause of death is cancer linked to 9/11. (The pandemic and cancers connected to the September 11 terrorist attacks account for 75 percent of the deaths in ICE’s history.) 

Data show that the most recent ICE officer death attributed to something other than cancer or COVID-19 occurred in 2021. But that incident did not involve an immigrant, either. It occurred when a special agent died after his service weapon was accidentally discharged in a parking lot.

In its history, two ICE officers have been shot to death by other people, according to ICE’s data. One was Jaime Jorge Zapata, who was killed by cartel members while on assignment in Mexico in 2011. The other was David Wilhelm, an ICE special agent who was killed at home in 2005 while off duty by a Baltimore-born man who had escaped from a Georgia courthouse. 

Other deaths are similarly tragic but do not fit the Trump administration’s narratives. One happened when a special agent was hit by a drunk driver while getting into a taxi in Miami. Another resulted from a special agent contracting dengue fever while on assignment in Indonesia. The only case listed by the agency of an ICE official dying while attempting to apprehend an undocumented immigrant happened when an officer had a heart attack during a foot pursuit in 2016.

ICE’s Wall of Honor, which memorializes personnel who have died in the line of duty, also lists those who died when immigration laws were being enforced by other agencies prior to ICE’s creation. Those include more than a dozen cases of officers being shot or stabbed to death since 1915. The most recent case listed in ICE records in which an immigration agent was killed during an enforcement operation appears to have taken place in 1970. (ICE records do not cover deaths in the line of duty among Border Patrol agents.)

Immigration agents do face risks. In July, the Justice Department charged ten people with attempted murder after a Texas police officer was shot as part of what it has described as an “organized attack” on an ICE detention center. Days later, in July, a man carrying an assault rifle opened fire at a Texas Border Patrol facility, injuring a police officer before he was shot and killed. And in late September, a shooter attacked ICE’s Dallas field office—killing two people who were in the agency’s custody at the time.

But, given the lack of fatalities among ICE agents, the Trump administration has focused on the alleged increase in assaults—along with the threat of agents being “doxed”—to actually justify sending in the National Guard and letting agents wear masks.

In June, McLaughlin claimed that assaults on ICE officers were up by more than 400 percent. Two weeks later, DHS said that number had increased to nearly 700 percent. By September, the figure had passed 1,000 percent. Nevertheless, McLaughlin said, California was banning ICE agents from wearing masks in the state. It was “diabolical,” “disgusting,” and even a form of “dehumanization” to make ICE agents show their faces at such a perilous time. 

DHS and ICE did not respond to a request asking for information about how many alleged assaults have occurred this year, as well as how many of those incidents have led to criminal charges being filed. DHS did share some data with Bill Melugin of Fox News by DHS in July. It showed that assaults against ICE and other federal agents enforcing immigrations laws jumped from 10 in 79 during the same periods of 2024 and 2025. That works out to a total of roughly fifteen alleged assaults against those immigrant enforcement officers per month across the entire country between January and June.

For comparison: The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported more than 85,000 assaults against law enforcement officers at agencies across the country last year. The FBI also reported a per capita assault rate of 13.5 per 100 officers in 2024, which is far greater than the rate among ICE officers suggested by the DHS data from July. Instead of making that clear, DHS presents a misleading picture by saying that “ICE officers are facing a more than 1000% increase in assaults.” 

David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, explained in June that the reported increase in assaults comes after ICE has increased “street arrests” by nearly 500 percent compared to a similar period of Trump’s first term. This change in street arrests—opposed to detaining people already in the custody of other law enforcement agencies—would help explain an increase in assaults. As Bier wrote in a follow-up earlier this month, masked DHS agents are being sent into communities to “detain random people” who might be in the country illegally. 

“The result is chaos,” he continued. “DHS’ targets don’t know why they’re being approached or what their rights are. Agents don’t know what to expect, either, putting them on edge. Onlookers often believe they are watching masked men abducting their friends and attempt to intervene.”

There is also reason to doubt what the Trump administration is counting as an assault. In late July, ICE blasted out a photo of Sidney Lori Reid, of Washington, DC, on X. “Assault an officer or agent—get arrested,” the agency claimed. “It’s not rocket science.” 

The Justice Department alleged that Reid assaulted FBI agent Eugenia Bates, while Bates was assisting two ICE officers outside a DC jail. Specifically, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia—which is led by former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro—asserted that Reid injured Bate’s hand through her “active resistance to being detained.” The photo of those injuries submitted in court painted a less dramatic picture. 

Nevertheless, the Justice Department charged Reid with felony assault. Then, in an embarrassing and unusual series of defeats, grand juries declined to indict Reid on three separate occasions. Rather than dropping the case, the US Attorney’s Office brought a misdemeanor assault charge against Reid, which did not require a grand jury indictment. 

As the case made its way to trial, the government’s case was further undermined. The prosecution was forced to admit that Agent Bates had called the scrapes on her hand “boos boos” and labeled the defendant a “lib tard” in text messages. “I’m going to the attorneys [sic] office for a bystander that I tussled,” Bates wrote in another message. “[Officer] Dinko arrested her for ‘assault’ ughhhh.” (The prosecution unsuccessfully asked Judge Sparkle Sooknanan to deem the texts inadmissible at trial.)

Earlier this month, a DC jury found Reid not guilty. 

“This verdict shows that this administration and their peons are not able to invoke fear in all citizens,” Reid said in a statement after her exoneration. Her lawyers added that the case was a warning that the Justice Department “will have the backs of ICE goons, even when three grand juries reject their baseless charging decisions.”   

Other assault cases being pursued by the Justice Department and DHS have fallen apart, too. 

In a late September press release, DOJ announced felony assault charges against four people who had been protesting outside ICE’s facility in Broadview, Illinois, along with a misdemeanor against a fifth person. The following week, the charges against four of the five people were dismissed. In two of those cases, a grand jury declined to issue an indictment. In two others, prosecutors dropped the charges on their own.

The only person named in the September press release who is still being charged is Dana Briggs, a 70-year-old former US Air Force officer. DOJ initially accused Briggs of felony assault, but later downgraded the case to a misdemeanor, which meant that the case did not have to be presented to a grand jury. (Briggs has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in December.) 

Videos show Briggs with a bushy white beard, glasses, and a Panama hat as he stands outside the Illinois ICE facility last month. He then falls backward after a Border Patrol agent in tactical gear puts a hand on his chest. In one video, a bystander can be seen quickly asking Briggs if he needs an ambulance. The 70-year-old then hands his phone to the bystander, and appears to slap away the arm of a Border Patrol agent who tries to take the phone back. 

“You’re going down motherfucker,” someone shouts in response. Then, multiple agents swarm Briggs and take him into custody. The Border Patrol agent who Briggs “made contact with” later vaguely claimed to have experienced pain in his wrist, according to the criminal complaint in the case. 

For DHS, this is the kind of violence that justifies sending in the troops.