Use-of-Force Expert on What’s Going Wrong in ICE Enforcement Operations

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: We turn now to Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has turned deadly again. In the last few weeks, three people have died during encounters with ICE agents, sparking public outrage and raising questions about law enforcement tactics. Michel Martin speaks to Seth Stoughton, former police officer and now professor of law, about this rise in violence, what might be going wrong, and how to fix it.

 

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks Christiane. Professor Seth Stoughton, thank you so much for joining us.

 

SETH STOUGHTON: Thank you for having me.

 

MARTIN: We’re talking to you today because roughly in the last week, three different people have been killed in with, in encounters with ICE agents — or ICE officers. You know, two of them from being shot in a moving car. One of them was running away and then was hit by another car. 

 

But this is not, these are not the only examples. I mean, federal immigration agents have opened fire in at least 22 incidents since President Trump returned to office, resulting in six deaths, including three US citizens. The Washington Post has reported that they’ve identified like 17 instances in which these immigration officers fired into moving vehicles. They didn’t all result sort of in deaths. And so, just the first question I had for you as a former police officer yourself, as a law professor, and as a person who studies the use of force, how does this strike you?

 

STOUGHTON: Troubling. It’s troubling. Some of it might be attributable to an increase in operations. As we increase the total numbers of ICE encounters, then it makes sense that we’re going to increase the total numbers of even those small percentage of encounters that involve a use of force. The troubling part though, is the consistency that we see between some of these events that have been depicted on the media. We see poor tactics. We see really problematic approaches from ICE officers in the way that they’re stopping cars and the way that they’re interacting with motorists and the way that they’re communicating with people. And then after incidents, we see some troubling things from the agency as a whole that suggests we might not be just dealing with individual officers who may not be as well trained as we might want, or maybe deviating from their training, but instead, there might be some agency level pressures that are creating this behavior that is contributing to bad outcomes.

 

MARTIN: So let’s take these things piece by piece. When you talk about sort of problematic approaches, what are you talking about? Because this is, frankly, this is a job that most of us aren’t gonna have to do. So when you talk about problematic approaches, what are you talking about?

 

STOUGHTON: Sure. That’s a great question. And although most people don’t make traffic stops, most people don’t arrest other people. There are a group of people who do: state and local police officers. State and local police officers make a bunch of traffic stops well over 10 million a year. It’s the most common way for someone to interact with a police officer in the United States. They arrest about a million people a year, according to data that’s reported to the FBI. So, although it’s not in sort of general public knowledge, we do have a specific professional group, officers, who are used to doing exactly the kind of things that we see ICE agents doing: stopping cars and arresting people. And that’s really important because policing as a profession has developed standardized ways that officers stop vehicles or don’t stop vehicles, or approach a vehicle once it’s been stopped or not, or the way that officers may go about arresting someone, for example.  

 

In other words, ICE agents are not writing on a blank slate. They are building on a historical practice that has been developed not in some ivory tower, but on the street as policing and as officers have engaged in very similar actions. It may not be for immigration enforcement, but the actual actions are very similar. So when I’m talking  about problematic practices, I’m looking at things like how ICE agents are actually conducting traffic stops. That is how they’re initiating those traffic stops. In at least some cases we see vehicles that are unmarked. And even worse, some of the vehicles don’t appear to be equipped with, or at least don’t have activated, any kind of emergency lighting — the flashing red, blue, and white lights, overhead lights, or even onboard lights, right? And that’s really problematic. 

 

In policing, we have a general preference for marked units that is visibly identifiable police vehicles to stop cars, one, so that people know it’s a police officer that’s stopping you.  And two, so that the overhead lights that are flashing alert, not only the driver that someone is trying to stop, but also all of the other motorists or pedestrians on the road who now have to address that there are vehicles stopped in what might be a lane of traffic. So when ICE deviates from that specific very basic practice, it creates some problems. 

 

We also see deviations with how the stops are being initiated instead of stopping vehicles within normal activation of emergency lights. We’re seeing a lot of these boxing in maneuvers. Box in maneuvers do have a role in policing, but it’s a pretty limited role because it is a dangerous technique and it’s one that has to be performed in a particularly precise way. That is, as you’re boxing in another car, you generally want the police vehicle to be very close to even making contact with the front and the rear bumper of the car that you’re trying to box in. If you don’t do that, they can just angle their way out. When we see a lot of the ICE agents stops when they’re cutting off vehicles or doing boxing maneuvers, there’s a half car length, three or four feet between their car and the vehicle they’re stopping. So even if it was appropriate to use a boxing in maneuver — which it’s not clear to me that’s the case — they’re not actually performing the boxing and maneuvers very well. 

 

We see the same thing in the way that ICE officers are often approaching vehicles sometimes stepping into or maintaining positions in front of or behind a vehicle, which exposes the officer to danger if the vehicle moves. Or sometimes just breaking windows with very, very little provocation, right? Not giving the person in the car an opportunity or an explanation to comply, but instead breaking windows rail really abruptly in a way that can actually provoke someone to flee rather than to comply.

 

MARTIN: I was gonna ask you about that, because being stopped is stressful. It’s scary. When you were sort of trained as, as a law enforcement officer, are you trained to deal with the fact that people are scared? Not necessarily ’cause they’ve done something wrong because you were scary by definition. So how, how are you trained to… 

 

STOUGHTON: Yes. 

 

MARTIN: …deal with that? Because one of the things I can’t help but notice in seeing video of some of these encounters is officers cursing at people, calling them epithets, and I’m just wondering, is that, is that normal?

 

STOUGHTON: The short version is no, it’s certainly not normal in the context of what we expect from professional policing in 2026, officers know and typically get training that scared people make bad decisions. There are lots of elements of police tactics, including communications about avoiding conflict, avoiding tension or deescalating conflict and tension that’s occurred. Traffic stops are actually a great example. Officers are generally taught that when they initiate a traffic stop, one of the best ways to mitigate the fear, the nerves, that can come from a traffic stop is to introduce yourself, identify your agency, and explain the reason for the stop: Hi, I’m Officer Stoughton with the local police department. I stopped you today because I noticed that when you made that right turn, you didn’t come to a full and complete stop at the stop sign. And then to provide clear instruction about what you need and what’s going to happen. If I can just get your license and registration, I’ll check everything out. If it checks out, I’ll give you a warning and send you on your way. The reason that officers do that is not just sort of philosophical commit to professionalism, it’s that it makes people feel better. It lets them know what’s coming, and it lets them know that this is a pretty normal encounter, even if it is unusual for them, because maybe they’ve never been stopped before. 

 

The same thing is true as officers are interacting with someone who they might want to arrest. So I ran your background. You do have an outstanding ar — warrant. I’m placing you under arrest. Go ahead and turn around, put your hands behind your back for me. That doesn’t require screaming or yelling or profanities or epithets. The whole point is to try and keep things as calm, as stable as the situation allows. 

 

MARTIN: So that leads me to a question of whether are these people engaging in these stops poorly trained, or is this intentional conduct being dictated by their superiors for some purpose, apart from best practice, best law enforcement practice? Because what I’m hearing you say is these deescalation tactics and these professional tactics for making a stop, are not just to make the person feel better, it’s to protect the officer as well. It’s a best practice because it protects both parties.

 

STOUGHTON: I don’t have a complete answer there. I would note that ICE has been in the business of immigration enforcement since it was created. So the idea of stopping people, arresting people or detaining them on civil immigration orders — even conducting raids — that’s not new to the agency. I have a really hard time believing that the agency and that officers at the agency haven’t been exposed, either recently or historically, to the kind of training that we’re talking about, right, the basic professional approaches that we’re talking about. Maybe, maybe newer officers aren’t getting that training. Again, I’d be surprised because they go to one of the federal law enforcement training centers for their basic training. And even if the training schedule is compressed, these are the kind of things that I would certainly expect to be continued even in a compressed training schedule, because they are essential, not just for the effective performance of the job, but for the safe performance of the job, right? Ensuring the safety of the agents and the community members.

 

MARTIN: After these most recent killings administration officials reportedly instructed ICE to suspend most vehicle stops while it reviewed its tactics. Okay? But just hours later, President Trump publicly disagreed, writing on one of his social media platforms, “we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP” — in all caps. What do you make of that? And what message does it send when the president sort of contradicts this in such a public way?

 

STOUGHTON: I think what it tells me is that we don’t actually know who’s calling the shots or what the basis for their strategic and tactical decisions are. It would certainly make sense to me if you have an agency that has identified a potential problem for the agency to take not even a full step back, but just a half step back and say, All right, how do we improve future outcomes? How do we make our enforcement efforts safer and more effective? And by the way, I’m not even getting into the immigration policy debate here, right? It’s not about whether ICE agents should be engaged in the kind of operations they’re engaged in. All we’re focusing on now is how they should be doing it — assuming they are engaged in these operations — how should they be doing it? And the answer, and I think this answer would probably be shared by whoever at the agency decided to pump the brakes a little bit, should be: they should be performing these operations in a professionally appropriate, competent way that is not likely to prove counterproductive and undermine the safety of the officers and the community members involved. Maybe the administration does not entirely share that perspective, but I, it feels like a breakdown in communication about what is happening and why it’s happening.

 

MARTIN: I and other reporters have asked the Department of Homeland Security multiple times over the last couple of months about their tactics, procedures, and strategy. Okay? Especially, you know, earlier this year, there was a lot of focus on Minnesota where two US citizens were killed in encounters with ICE. You know, one was driving a vehicle, one was was on the street. So in defending its tactics, DHS has said repeatedly that ICE officers are facing an 8000% increase in death threats and a more than 1300% increase in assaults while carrying out arrests. And so their argument is that this is, their mission is increasingly dangerous, and that is what justifies these tactics. How do you respond to that?

 

STOUGHTON: So this is where being a researcher helps a little bit, because whenever we see numbers like that, I want to know what we mean by those numbers. How are we defining those numbers, right? When we’re talking about an 8000% increase in death threats, is that at an individual level or are they pulling comments on social media that are not actually directed at agents specifically, but have some rhetorical flare, right? There’s a huge difference between those two things. Especially with what we consider to be a death threat. 

 

In a country with the First Amendment, we certainly have the right to criticize, including in very harsh terms, the way government acts. Now, in no way am I supporting threats of violence or wishes of violence, right? Political violence or interpersonal violence is something that we should not condone and should condemn. And I do condemn very strongly. But when they say an 8000% increase in death threats, I’d like to know exactly what they mean and how they’re developing that number. The same thing is true with assaults. If someone is driving away from a traffic stop and they pass by a ICE vehicle, or if an ICE agent has to step out of the way because they were standing in front of the car in a position that they never should have been in, is that really an assault? Or is that an interaction that is sort of incidental to the nature of the encounter, right? Something that is effectively one, entirely avoidable, had officers used good tactics, and two, is really more of an attempt to escape. 

 

Here’s another example. If ice agents are arresting someone and that person is resisting and pulling away, is that an assault? Because if that’s what you mean, a 1300% increase in assaults, then that might actually just go along with an increase in operations, right? The more operations you have, the more resistance you’re going to have. And if you’re classifying that as an assault, that feels kind of inevitable.

So given this administration’s history, I have to admit that I am at least somewhat skeptical of numbers that they throw out without some specific definitions and methodology to support them.

 

MARTIN: You actually wrote about immigration agency tactics earlier this year. Earlier this year, there were some very high profile incidents where two United States citizens were killed in encounters with ICE, neither of whom was the target of an ICE operation. You said that one of the biggest departures from professional policing is “the failure of agency leadership to respond responsibly to critical incidents.” Like tell us what you mean by that.

 

STOUGHTON: Unfortunately, we have a long history of critical incidents like officer involved shootings in the United States, and that means we have a pretty well-informed body of professional knowledge among police executives and among folks who look at and study this field about how an agency should respond. And maybe more importantly, how an agency shouldn’t respond. For example, it takes a while to generate even good preliminary facts about an incident, and then it takes a little longer to check those facts out, right? In a sort of trust but verify approach, you don’t want an agency head to be providing information to the public that is maybe speculative. You don’t want them to characterize information before we actually know what that information is, and we have a chance to understand the full context. You don’t have to wait months and months for a complete investigation, but you do have to wait some period of time until you feel pretty confident in the nature of the information that you’re providing.

 

And what we’ve seen from ICE this year has been extremely confident, definitive statements about what happened and about how to characterize what happened. That is, these are the facts and officers acted appropriately in this situation. And often those statements have come within hours of the critical incident. And there —  it’s just not credible to think that there is the type of robust, methodical investigation that we need to come to that kind of conclusion in that timeframe. And when those statements have been offered and then been discredited with publicly available video, for example, that shows often pretty clearly that what’s being said did not happen in the way that it’s being described. Rather than taking an appropriate level of backtracking and saying, We are continuing to look into this. This is an emerging investigation. We are still understanding and gathering the facts. What you see is statements doubling down on the initial description and characterization. That’s just not professional leadership.

 

MARTIN: Professor Seth Stoughton, thank you so much for talking with us.

 

STOUGHTON: Thank you for having me.