WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers say just a single Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer has been referred for discipline over a use of force incident since the Trump administration took office, a revelation that came out of a closed-door briefing held Wednesday with ICE officials on Capitol Hill.
The House Homeland Security Committee meeting covered topics including body cameras, vehicle stops, and officer training. It followed two separate incidents in which ICE officers fatally shot immigrants they were attempting to arrest — one in Maine and one in Houston — occurring within a week of each other.
Those killings have sparked intense scrutiny of the agency, which sits at the center of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort. At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since the administration launched its crackdown. In the Maine case, relatives of the officer who fired the fatal shot say he had a documented history of violent behavior and should never have been authorized to carry a badge and firearm.
Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said ICE officials told the committee that the agency has received 56 complaints of excessive force. Of those, 32 were cleared and one was sent forward for possible disciplinary action — though no actual discipline has been handed down. The remaining cases are still being reviewed.
“It just defies belief that an agency of 20,000 plus officers with all of the chaos that we’ve seen over the last year and a half through the surges and civilians being injured and killed, that no one would be found to have violated use of force with the exception of possibly one person,” Magaziner said.
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment on the matter. Agency leadership has previously pledged to hold officers accountable for policy violations, while also defending agents by pointing to what they describe as a dangerous working environment in which officers face constant threats and personal targeting.
Wednesday’s figures represent a rise from numbers shared in February, when then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons testified before the Senate that the agency had opened 37 excessive force investigations. At that time, 18 had been closed, 19 were pending, and one had been referred for further action.
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the committee, said ICE officials were unable to address the specific shootings in Maine or Houston because both remain open investigations. Thompson said he came away from the briefing unsatisfied, particularly regarding who is responsible for investigating use of force incidents. “Sometimes they said the FBI, sometimes they said HSI. Sometimes they said another entity,” he noted.
Thompson also said officials acknowledged plans to retrain officers who completed a shorter training program that was in use last fall. In June, the Homeland Security Secretary said the agency would expand training for new officers beginning this month. However, Thompson said he was unable to get clear answers on how many officers would be retrained or what that retraining would involve.
Thompson said he and committee chair Rep. Andrew Garbarino, a Republican from New York, plan to follow up with ICE by submitting a written list of questions.
Garbarino expressed appreciation for the agency’s willingness to brief lawmakers. “Today was an important opportunity for Members to receive timely answers on the status of body camera deployment for law enforcement in the field, training and vetting standards and requirements, and current guidance on the use of vehicle stops as part of immigration enforcement,” he said in a statement.
On the topic of vehicle stops, Magaziner said ICE officers were told to only conduct them as a last resort and to use lights and sirens when doing so. However, he noted that this guidance has been communicated verbally rather than through any formal written directive.
Both the Maine and Houston shootings involved immigrants who were inside moving vehicles at the time they were shot, raising pointed questions about how the agency trains officers to handle apprehensions involving cars.
In the aftermath of the Maine shooting, Trump administration officials instructed ICE to pause most vehicle stops. That directive was short-lived, however — the following day, President Trump posted on social media that he wanted the practice to continue.
