When Federal Agents Kill Citizens During Raids, These Programs Offer Recourse

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Two Americans dead within three weeks. Both shot by federal agents during immigration raids in Minneapolis. Both families now facing a legal system that makes accountability maddeningly difficult to achieve.

Renée Nicole Macklin Good, 37, was killed by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, while sitting in her car. Alex Pretti, also 37, an intensive care nurse, was shot multiple times by Border Patrol agents on January 24, dying from wounds to his back and chest. The deaths sparked protests, congressional investigations, and urgent questions about what legal options exist when the person who pulled the trigger works for the federal government rather than local police.

While families of people killed by city cops have relatively clear paths to sue under federal civil rights law, families harmed by federal officers operate in a much more constrained system. Two main options exist, and both face serious obstacles.

The Federal Tort Claims Act—passed in 1946 to let citizens sue the government for certain negligent acts—remains the most viable path for wrongful death claims. But it comes with strict procedural requirements, narrow exceptions, and a $500,000 damage cap. The alternative, a constitutional remedy called a Bivens action that once allowed citizens to sue federal officers directly, has been so severely gutted by recent Supreme Court decisions that legal experts now describe it as effectively dead for cases involving immigration officers.

Operation Metro Surge deployed roughly 2,000 federal officers to Minneapolis starting in December 2025, resulting in 3,000 to 4,000 arrests. ICE has more than doubled its workforce in a single year—from 10,000 officers when Trump took office in 2025 to over 22,000 by early 2026. The legal structures designed to hold these officers accountable haven’t expanded. They’ve contracted.

The Federal Tort Claims Act: How It Works

If you want to sue the federal government for money after an officer kills your family member, the FTCA is probably your only shot.

The government normally can’t be sued—an old legal rule that prevents people from suing the government. The FTCA partially removes that protection, allowing citizens to sue when federal employees cause injury or death through negligent or wrongful acts committed within the scope of their jobs.

First, within two years of the incident, you must file an administrative claim with the relevant agency—for ICE shootings, that’s the Department of Homeland Security. This means filling out a government form that requires detailed descriptions of what happened, names and addresses of witnesses, itemized damages, and supporting documentation including medical records and incident reports.

You can’t skip this step and go straight to court. The administrative claim is mandatory. The agency then has six months to investigate and respond—they may approve, negotiate, or deny your claim. If they deny it, or if six months pass without a final decision, you can then file a lawsuit in federal court.

What you can recover is capped at $500,000 per person, regardless of how severe the harm or how culpable the government’s conduct. That’s the limit for incidents after July 2009.

The Exceptions That Block Most Claims

The FTCA contains two exceptions that make cases involving shootings particularly difficult. The first is the “exception for intentional harm,” which bars claims arising from assault, battery, false imprisonment, and similar intentional acts. However, law enforcement officers’ intentional torts aren’t barred under this exception, as long as they fall into categories like assault, battery, or false arrest.

The second exception excludes claims “based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty,” whether or not the discretion was abused. The government’s argument goes like this: officers must exercise discretion in determining when and how much force to use. Therefore, use-of-force decisions are protected discretionary functions. If courts accept this logic, most FTCA claims arising from officer-involved shootings get dismissed before reaching a jury.

The Supreme Court addressed this in Martin v. United States (2025), a case where federal officers raided the wrong house in suburban Atlanta and assaulted innocent occupants. The Court held that when officers’ conduct violates a clearly established constitutional rule, courts should analyze whether true discretion exists.

Attorneys arguing for families have seized on this language to contend that if an officer violated the Constitution, they weren’t making a discretionary choice, because officers have no discretion to violate the Constitution. The Ninth Circuit has accepted this reasoning in some cases, holding that “federal officers do not possess discretion to violate the Fourth Amendment.”

Other courts haven’t. Different federal courts disagree on whether the discretionary-function exception can be overcome even when conduct was unconstitutional. The practical result: FTCA wrongful death claims are possible in theory but face substantial barriers in practice.

Evidence Access and Control

Building an FTCA case requires evidence: police reports, witness statements, autopsy records, ballistics analysis, video footage. In the Minneapolis cases, federal authorities have been reluctant to share. The FBI revoked the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s access to evidence in the Renée Good shooting, citing federal investigative protocols. Families attempting to build cases depend on materials that federal agencies may classify as part of an ongoing investigation or resist releasing to preserve confidentiality.

Bivens Actions: A Remedy Dismantled

For decades, an alternative existed. Citizens could sue federal officers directly—in their individual capacity rather than against the government—for violations of constitutional rights. This remedy came from a Supreme Court case involving federal narcotics officers. Bivens stood for over fifty years as a check on federal law enforcement misconduct.

The Supreme Court spent the past two decades systematically dismantling it. In Hernandez v. Mesa (2020), the Court declined to extend Bivens to a Border Patrol agent’s shooting of a Mexican teenager across the border, holding that regulating border patrol conduct involves national security and foreign policy concerns. In Egbert v. Boule (2022), the Court declined to permit a Bivens suit against a Border Patrol officer for constitutional protections against excessive force, despite the plaintiff being a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.

The Court’s reasoning: border enforcement operates in a context with national security implications, so Bivens liability shouldn’t extend to border officers even in conventional excessive-force scenarios. Justice Thomas’s majority opinion stated that “the risk of undermining border security provides reason to hesitate before extending Bivens into this field.”

The practical effect: individuals shot by ICE or Border Patrol officers cannot sue those officers directly for constitutional violations. Even if an officer violated a clearly established constitutional right, even if the violation was intentional and egregious, the victim or their family has no Bivens recourse against that officer. The only remaining option is an FTCA claim against the government, with all the obstacles described above.

Justice Sotomayor, dissenting in Egbert, argued that the Court’s reasoning gave blanket protection to an entire category of federal officers from individual liability.

Qualified Immunity: Additional Protection for Officers

Even when Bivens claims were available, a separate rule called qualified immunity protected officers. Qualified immunity holds that government officials are immune from suit unless they violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right.

In practice, this has become an exceptionally potent shield. Courts often dismiss cases based on qualified immunity before trial, meaning officers often get dismissed from cases before discovery occurs. Even if a plaintiff can establish that a constitutional right was violated, an officer may still win immunity if the right wasn’t “clearly established” in case law at the time of the incident. This creates a perverse dynamic where officers can escape liability for constitutional violations if they’re the first ones to commit that particular variety of constitutional wrong.

In the Minneapolis shootings, qualified immunity would shield the individual officers even if families somehow succeeded in establishing a Bivens claim. Neither family could point to prior case law establishing that ICE officers shooting individuals in these specific circumstances violated “clearly established” rights.

The combination of Bivens restrictions and qualified immunity doctrine creates a situation where individual federal officers enjoy more protection from personal liability than local police officers, who can still be sued under a federal law that lets people sue local police for constitutional violations.

Congressional Reform Efforts

The deaths of Good and Pretti prompted urgent calls for congressional action. On February 4, 2026, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a letter to Republican leadership outlining proposed guardrails for DHS enforcement: requirements for judicial warrants before entering homes, identity verification for officers, prohibition of face coverings, restrictions on enforcement in sensitive locations, standards for use of force, body camera requirements, and preservation of state and local investigative authority.

Congress also linked funding to accountability. Rather than passing a full-year appropriation for DHS, Congress approved only a two-week funding patch, using the appropriations process as leverage to demand reforms. Whether this leverage works depends on Congress maintaining focus and on the Senate—currently controlled by Republicans aligned with the Trump administration—being willing to condition funding on restraints to enforcement.

Beyond immediate responses, broader legislative efforts have been pursued. There’s a federal law that makes it a crime for officials to violate constitutional rights, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 242, but prosecutors rarely bring charges under this statute, averaging only 41 cases per year nationwide. Prosecutors have to prove the officer knew they were violating the Constitution and decided to violate it anyway, a standard a 1945 Supreme Court ruling established in Screws v. United States. Congress could lower this standard from “willfully” to “knowingly or recklessly,” making prosecution more feasible.

California lawmakers proposed legislation in January 2026 allowing residents to sue ICE officers under state law, bypassing Bivens restrictions. Illinois has adopted similar protections, and legislators have introduced the NOEM Act to amend civil rights law to explicitly include federal officers.

State Criminal Prosecution

While much attention has focused on civil remedies, an alternative path exists: state and local criminal prosecution of federal officers for homicide or other state crimes committed during enforcement.

Federal law enforcement officers are not categorically immune from state prosecution when they commit crimes while acting in their capacity. However, state prosecutors charging federal officers with crimes is rare, and federal officials have sometimes resisted or impeded state investigations.

In the case of Renée Good, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has been pursuing a state-level investigation into potential criminal charges against the ICE officer responsible for her death. Moriarty submitted formal requests to the federal government for all evidence, including physical evidence, video recordings, the names of officers involved, and medical records. The FBI revoked the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s access to the crime scene and investigative materials, citing investigative protocols.

A law enforcement misconduct expert explained that under law, if an ICE officer commits a criminal act in Minnesota—such as murder or manslaughter—the officer is “subject to a Minnesota investigation and Minnesota law,” and the officer could not claim “absolute immunity” as a federal officer performing duties. If the state obtained an indictment, the officer would have the right to move the case to federal court instead of remaining in state court, but removal doesn’t eliminate state criminal jurisdiction.

The Trump administration has resisted state investigation of officers’ conduct in the Minneapolis cases, suggesting that political leadership opposes state-level mechanisms for holding enforcement accountable. The practical effect is that even where state criminal jurisdiction theoretically exists, resistance and incomplete access to evidence can thwart state prosecution efforts.

Institutional Failures in Oversight

Federal agencies like DHS, the FBI, and the Justice Department investigated the shootings and quickly exonerated the involved officers or resisted providing evidence to independent investigators. Officials characterized both victims as threats to officers—describing Good as “running over” an officer and Pretti as approaching officers “with intent to inflict maximum damage”—claims contradicted by video evidence. Yet leadership made these pronouncements before any investigation concluded.

DHS had an Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that reviewed use-of-force incidents to assess policies and training, but it was disabled by the Trump administration in 2025. This elimination of internal oversight mechanisms means that even if families don’t pursue external remedies, there’s no longer an internal DHS entity tasked with reviewing whether officers’ conduct followed the rules and policies and whether systemic reforms are needed.

The investigation into Good’s shooting has reportedly included scrutiny of her political associations and alleged connections to activist groups, rather than focusing solely on the legality of the officer’s use of force. This mixing of civil rights investigation with apparent investigation of the victim’s political activities raises concerns about whether federal investigators are investigating fairly or defending the shooting.

Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge in Minnesota, issued a statement in late January 2026 criticizing ICE for violating at least 96 court orders in Minnesota since January 1, 2026, calling the pattern “deeply concerning” and stating that “ICE is not a law unto itself.”

What Families Face

For bereaved families considering action, the system presents difficult choices with uncertain outcomes.

An FTCA claim offers potential monetary compensation but requires navigating a complex administrative process, faces a $500,000 damage cap, and may be barred by the discretionary-function exception if the government argues successfully that the officer’s use of force involved discretionary judgment. The process typically requires retaining counsel experienced in tort law, gathering extensive evidence, and waiting months or years for resolution.

A Bivens action against individual officers is now foreclosed in immigration contexts due to Egbert v. Boule. Families pursuing civil rights claims might explore whether state-law equivalents exist or whether the incident might trigger investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, but criminal investigation of officers is rare, and prosecution requires proving willful violation of someone’s constitutional rights.

State criminal prosecution, if pursued by local prosecutors despite resistance, faces evidentiary obstacles but remains theoretically possible.

Beyond litigation, families might seek to influence policy through congressional advocacy, media attention, or other political channels to pressure for reform. The Minneapolis shootings have generated substantial media coverage and prompted congressional action precisely because families and community members maintained public pressure and refused to accept exonerations at face value.

Conclusion: A System Designed to Protect the Government

The tragic deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti have exposed a troubling mismatch between the scope and aggression of immigration enforcement and whether the system can hold officers accountable when they use deadly force.

The Federal Tort Claims Act provides some pathway to compensation but contains exceptions and damage caps that limit recovery and impose burdensome procedural requirements. Bivens actions have been so severely restricted by recent Supreme Court decisions that they’re now unavailable for immigration cases. Qualified immunity shields individual officers from personal liability even when they violate constitutional rights. Internal mechanisms within DHS have been weakened or eliminated. Investigations often prejudge cases in favor of officers rather than conducting objective inquiries.

Congressional action has begun, with lawmakers proposing statutory reforms, leveraging appropriations to demand measures, and calling for legislative creation of new civil rights remedies. But the ultimate viability of these reform efforts depends on Congress maintaining political will to constrain enforcement despite the Trump administration’s resistance.

State and local prosecutors retain theoretical authority to investigate and prosecute officers for state crimes, but face practical obstacles including obstruction and incomplete access to evidence.

For families of citizens killed by officers, the path to justice remains constrained, uncertain, and often inadequate. The system has not kept pace with the dramatic expansion of enforcement. Two families in Minneapolis are learning what recourse looks like when officers kill citizens during raids. It looks like Standard Form 95, six-month waiting periods, $500,000 damage caps, discretionary-function exceptions, and FBI officers blocking state investigators from crime scenes. It looks like a system designed to protect the government from the people it’s supposed to serve.

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