Shooting deaths climb in Trump's mass deportation effort

Outrage has grown nationwide over the violent and sometimes deadly tactics used by federal immigration officers in communities across the country.

Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, billed by the Department of Homeland Security as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever, has resulted in three shootings in the first month of 2026.

The killing of Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 by federal officers under U.S. Customs and Border Protection is at least the fourth shooting fatality linked to immigration enforcement since Trump returned to the Oval Office. At least eight other shootings have led to injury, according to a PBS News review of news coverage, as well as tallies from The Trace, NBC News and The Washington Post.

The Trump administration, which has rushed to defend officers' actions often before full evidence is available, faces bipartisan pressure in Congress to turn down the temperature, including calls to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and a public that has grown increasingly skeptical of agents' tactics.

Protests have multiplied in response to federal agents' presence in various cities, from Minneapolis and Chicago to Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., where federal agents have smashed car windows, pointed their guns at civilians and wrestled people to the ground.

The Trump administration has portrayed their agents as victims.

How many deaths have been linked to ICE and other federal immigration agents?

A makeshift memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota, near the site of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last week. Photo by Seth Herald/Reuters

Pretti is the second U.S. citizen and Minneapolis resident to be killed by agents this month.

On Jan. 7, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Good in her vehicle. Trump officials claimed that Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, weaponized her car and "attempted to run" over an officer, later identified as Jonathan Ross. Bystander videos of the incident soon challenged that official account, showing Good trying to pull away.

The pair of fatal Minneapolis shootings are not the only encounters with federal agents that resulted in death since the start of Trump's second term.

• Silverio Villegas González. Federal immigration agents shot and killed the 38-year-old cook from Mexico and father of two during a traffic stop on Sept. 12 in Chicago. DHS claimed that the agent involved in the shooting was "seriously injured" after being dragged by Villegas González's car while he attempted to flee. But footage later obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times showed the agent telling a local officer shortly after the shooting that his injuries were "nothing major."
• Isaias Sanchez Barboza. During "targeted enforcement operations" on Dec. 11 along the U.S.-Mexico border in Rio Grande City, Texas, a Border Patrol agent killed a 31-year-old Mexican citizen after a two-minute "active struggle" with the man. The man had three gunshot wounds, according to CBP's summary of the incident. DHS told NBC News that Texas officials later identified the man as Isaias Sanchez Barboza. The agent has not been identified. Neither DHS or the Texas Department of Public Safety responded to PBS News' request for an update on the investigation by time of publication.

People close to the victims and community leaders have called for greater transparency and accountability following these incidents.

That includes another shooting involving an off-duty ICE agent who shot and killed Keith Porter, a 43-year-old father of two, Dec. 31 at an apartment complex in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles. Witnesses said Porter was firing his rifle into the air in celebration of the new year. The agency said the officer, who lived at the same complex as Porter, responded to an "active shooter situation." DHS said Porter didn't comply with orders to put down the weapon and fired three rounds at the agent, later identified as Brian Palacios.

DHS did not respond to PBS News' questions on how many of these gun-related incidents — fatal or non-fatal — were investigated or are currently being reviewed.

The agency did not respond when asked for the number of federal immigration agent-involved shootings in Trump's second administration, nor did it provide a number for the Biden or previous Trump administrations, making it difficult to assess how the volume of these incidents have changed over time.

An investigation into Pretti's killing is underway, according to a notification sent to Congress and obtained by PBS News. Homeland Security Investigations, ICE's investigative arm, is looking into the incident, while CBP's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted a preliminary analysis of the shooting by relying on body cam footage and internal documentation. There's a process CBP must follow whenever there's an in-custody death or certain other kinds of deaths involving its officers.

CBP confirmed to PBS News that the two officers who fatally shot Pretti have been placed on administrative leave since Jan. 24, adding that this was standard protocol.

From the Senate floor Thursday, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for independent investigations, "not ICE investigating itself."

"ICE, the leadership of which, is a bunch of liars. We don't trust them to do the investigation," he said.

Non-fatal shootings by federal agents

Signs opposing federal immigration enforcement actions are placed in a neighborhood, after the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents, in Minneapolis. Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters

Other people have been wounded by federal officers discharging their weapons in non-fatal incidents, both along the U.S.-Mexico border and in the nation's interior.

In the most recent incident, a Border Patrol agent in Arizona shot and critically wounded Patrick Gary Schlegel. The Jan. 27 shooting happened after Schlegel fled a traffic stop and fired a gun toward a CBP helicopter flying above, according to the FBI. A Border Patrol agent on the ground then fired and struck Schlegel, who has a criminal history of human smuggling, officials said. The 34-year-old man was charged with assault on a federal officer the following day.

A day after Good's Jan. 7 death, two CBP agents shot a man and woman in Portland, Oregon, during a traffic stop. DHS said the two undocumented immigrants were associated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The city's police chief, growing emotional during his remarks, later confirmed that the pair had "some nexus" to the gang.

DHS said an ICE officer shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg Jan. 14 while attempting to make an arrest in Minnesota. The agency said the officer was being attacked in the street with a shovel or broom handle. The family disputed parts of DHS' account, saying the shooting occurred at the door of Sosa-Celis' home.

Marimar Martinez survived seven gunshot wounds after being shot five times by a Border Patrol agent on Oct. 4 in Chicago. In a high-profile case, federal prosecutors accused Martinez, a U.S. citizen, of ramming her vehicle into an agent before the shots rang out. A judge later dismissed the criminal charges. Martinez's lawyer is now pushing for evidence in the case to be released to show how DHS responds when "their agents use deadly force against U.S. citizens."

ICE officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to "resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers," Homeland Security Department Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to PBS News after Good's death.

McLaughlin said every use-of-force incident and discharge of an agent's firearm is reported and reviewed by the appropriate investigative agency – be it federal, state, local, or tribal law enforcement – in the first response to the incident. From there, ICE conducts an independent review of the incident, she said.

There has also been growing scrutiny of deaths in ICE custody. At least six people have died in ICE detention facilities so far in 2026. That follows a two-decade high of 32 deaths in ICE custody last year, The Guardian reported.

Trump's large-scale operations have ensnared unauthorized immigrants without criminal records and U.S. citizens, not strictly, as the administration has described, violent criminals or the "worst of the worst."

"This is a ramping up of the deportation machinery that was already there," said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst and attorney at the Migration Policy Institute's U.S. Immigration Policy Program.

The key difference, she said: The administration is "taking what had been done at the border — these border policies of fast deportations — and bringing them into the interior of the United States, and it looks very different to be doing immigration enforcement in communities than it does at the border."

Documented encounters with federal agents

A person holds a phone as a federal agent looks on and points from inside a vehicle in Minneapolis. Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Beyond shootings, many Americans have been on the receiving end of immigration agents' use of force as they sweep through their communities.

People have been tackled, tased, mistakenly detained and hit by pepper balls, rubber bullets, tear gas and mauled by an "attack dog."

"We've never in this country had federal law enforcement agents routinely cover themselves up in masks and stand in front of cars or at the side of cars," said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs in ACLU's equality division. "The things that this administration is ordering agents to do are resulting again and again in them violently confronting members of the public."

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Former CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske told PBS News Hour that federal agents are "untrained and unskilled for policing an urban environment."

"They don't have that kind of experience and background and training to work in an environment that can actually become a bit hostile," he said, "and city police officers know how to handle those things."

"It's very obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol do not," he added.

Before Pretti and Good's deaths, groups raised concerns about ICE's tactics. ACLU Minnesota filed a lawsuit against ICE and other federal immigration authorities in December, saying agents violated the constitutional rights of Minnesotans who observed, documented and criticized their actions. Last week, a federal appeals court temporarily lifted a judge's ruling that restricted immigration agents' tactics in Minnesota as the case works through the courts.

In a separate case, Minnesota's chief federal judge excoriated ICE leadership for ignoring more than 90 court orders across 70 cases.

"ICE is not a law unto itself," U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz wrote.

"We never in this country have seen federal agents act with this frequency of committing civil rights violations in my lifetime, which is in recent decades," Shah said, adding that the number of these ICE encounters are likely an undercount.

But verifying these details in reports from around the country and those embedded in lawsuits is "going to give you a sprinkling, not the full story," she added.