Report: “ICE Officials Knew Use of Force Was Rising Well Before Minneapolis Shootings”

Tuesday, we released a tranche of records obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailing troubling training practices and a sharp escalation in use-of-force incidents by ICE officers soon after President Trump returned to the White House (more on that here).

First reported this morning by Politico, the records indicate that top ICE “officials knew as early as March of last year that officers were using dramatically more force against civilians and the targets of their enforcement operations, months before ICE and Border Patrol officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.”

“These records paint a deeply troubling picture of the violent methods used by ICE. In just the first months of this administration, ICE’s own data shows a dramatic spike of nearly 400 percent in use-of-force incidents — with people hospitalized, bystanders swept up in operations, and even the death of a U.S. citizen. Behind every statistic is a person, a family, and a community forced to live with the consequences of ICE’s aggressive and inhumane enforcement tactics,” said our Executive Director Chioma Chukwu. “What’s more, these records demonstrate a stark disconnect between the constitutional standards on which ICE claims to train its officers and the abusive and deadly enforcement practices we see detailed in these incident reports and on the streets of American cities in places like Minneapolis. The records include a memo authorizing the use of controversial extra-judicial warrants for removal, along with documents showing that training instructors were directed to tell anyone who asked that the practice was under review. This suggests ICE knows its practices are deeply problematic — and is deliberately hiding the ball to avoid public scrutiny.”
According to the report, “The contents of the emails challenge the administration’s assertions and efforts from its backers in the wake of the Minneapolis shootings to downplay incidents involving ICE’s use of excessive force by arguing that such cases were infrequent.” Additionally, Politiconoted the documents detail the muddled training officers receive, pointing to a May memo from ICE chief Todd Lyons supporting “the administration’s controversial move to allow ICE to enter homes with only an administrative warrant,” that conflicts with a training slidedeck indicating “that instructors were advised to tell participants if specifically asked about” the practice “that the policy is ‘under review.’”