How ICE Use-of-Force Rules Differ From Other Federal Agencies

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good during an operation in Minneapolis last week. ICE operates under use-of-force rules that allow agents more freedom to decide when to use deadly force than FBI, DEA, or ATF personnel have.

While FBI personnel must meet a strict standard—facing a threat happening right now that could kill or seriously hurt someone—before firing their weapons, ICE’s use-of-force policy allows personnel to shoot when they “reasonably believe” force is necessary. That’s a lower threshold that gives individual agents more discretion in deciding when a situation justifies lethal force.

An FBI agent facing a suspect in a vehicle would need to demonstrate that the vehicle posed an immediate, unavoidable threat to life. An ICE agent in the same situation operates under guidelines that emphasize the agent’s perception of threat rather than an objective standard of danger happening right now.

FBI Policy Requires Immediate Threat

The FBI’s deadly force policy requires agents to face a threat happening right now that could kill or seriously hurt someone before using lethal force. The threat must be happening right now, not potentially about to happen or theoretically possible.

Justice Department guidelines that govern FBI operations specify that personnel should use “only the force that is reasonable given what’s happening” in the circumstances. The policy requires ways to calm down a situation and avoid using force when feasible. It prohibits firing at moving vehicles unless the vehicle itself is the weapon being used against the agent or others.

FBI personnel receive approximately 110 hours of use-of-force training at Quantico, including extensive practice drills that simulate real situations. They’re retrained quarterly.

ICE Policy Allows More Agent Discretion

ICE operates under Homeland Security Department guidelines that give personnel authority to use deadly force when they “have a reasonable belief that the subject poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.” That “reasonable belief” standard—rather than requiring an actual immediate threat—creates more room for what the agent personally thinks is happening.

One standard asks whether danger exists right now. The other asks whether the agent thought it existed.

ICE’s training requirements tell another part of the story. New ICE deportation officers receive approximately 13 weeks of basic training at the federal law enforcement academy in Georgia. Roughly 32 hours are dedicated to use-of-force instruction—approximately one-third of what FBI personnel receive. The curriculum focuses heavily on arrest techniques and defensive tactics, with comparatively less emphasis on calming down situations to avoid using force.

DEA and ATF Follow Stricter Justice Department Rules

The Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operate under Justice Department policies similar to the FBI’s. DEA officers must justify deadly force under the same standard as FBI personnel: a threat happening right now that could kill or seriously hurt someone. They receive comparable training—approximately 18 weeks at Quantico with extensive use-of-force scenarios.

ATF personnel follow identical Justice Department guidelines. All three agencies share a critical feature that ICE lacks: they’re housed within the Justice Department, meaning they fall under DOJ’s office that investigates shootings by law enforcement. That office operates independently from the agencies it investigates.

ICE sits within Homeland Security. Internal investigations are conducted by DHS’s Office of Inspector General—which reports to the same cabinet secretary who oversees ICE operations.

Different Investigation and Oversight Systems

When an FBI agent fires their weapon, multiple independent reviews kick in automatically. The incident is investigated by the FBI’s Inspection Division. The division that checks if civil rights were violated reviews it. The U.S. Attorney’s office for the district where it occurred examines it. The DOJ Inspector General can also investigate independently.

ICE shootings follow a different path. DHS’s Office of Inspector General investigates, but recent reports show that office doesn’t have enough staff to investigate quickly and often takes years to complete investigations. ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility conducts its own separate internal investigation.

The FBI publicly reports every incident where its personnel fire their weapons, including detailed summaries of circumstances and outcomes. ICE doesn’t maintain a publicly accessible database of use-of-force incidents. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that ICE couldn’t provide complete data on how many times its personnel had used force over a five-year period.

Training Hours and Methods Differ Substantially

FBI personnel must qualify with their firearms four times per year and complete annual training to prove they still know the rules, which includes updated scenario training reflecting recent incidents and policy changes. The scenarios are designed by behavioral psychologists and use-of-force experts.

ICE requires personnel to qualify with their weapons twice annually. Use-of-force refresher training is required annually but consists primarily of reviewing policy rather than hands-on scenario work. Some ICE field offices supplement this with additional training, but it’s not standardized across the agency.

FBI scenario training includes exercises where personnel are penalized for firing too quickly, even when a threat is present. The goal is to teach agents to pause and think. ICE training emphasizes agent safety and quick response to threats.

Vehicle Shooting Policies Vary Between Agencies

Most federal law enforcement agencies now prohibit or severely restrict firing at moving vehicles. The FBI’s policy states that personnel “should not discharge their firearms at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly force is being used against the agent or another person present, by means other than the moving vehicle.”

That last clause is critical: the vehicle itself doesn’t justify firing. There has to be another weapon involved, or the vehicle must be used in a way that makes it impossible for the agent to move out of its path.

ICE policy on vehicle shootings is less restrictive. While it discourages firing at moving vehicles, it allows personnel to do so when they “reasonably believe” the vehicle poses a threat of death or serious injury. No requirement that the threat come from something other than the vehicle. No explicit instruction that personnel should move out of the vehicle’s path rather than shoot.

Political Leadership Can Influence ICE Shooting Reviews

When FBI personnel shoot someone, permanent Justice Department lawyers at Justice Department headquarters—people who don’t work for the FBI and whose jobs don’t depend on maintaining good relationships with FBI leadership—review the case for potential civil rights violations. They can bring federal charges if warranted.

When ICE personnel shoot someone, the review happens within Homeland Security, where political appointees ultimately control the process. Senior administration officials, including the President and the Homeland Security Secretary, publicly defended the Minneapolis incident as justified before any investigation concluded. Justice Department leadership typically refuses to comment on ongoing investigations into FBI shootings.

Federal personnel can be charged under state law, but they can remove the case to federal court and claim federal personnel are immune from state prosecution. State prosecutors often lack resources to overcome these defenses. In practice, state prosecutions of federal personnel are extremely rare.

ICE Doesn’t Publish Shooting Data Publicly

FBI data on incidents where personnel fire their weapons is public and detailed. The FBI publishes an annual report breaking down such incidents by field office, type of incident, and whether the person shot was armed.

ICE doesn’t publish comparable data. Public records requests for use-of-force statistics often take years to fulfill and produce results with large sections blacked out. We don’t know how many people ICE personnel shoot each year, how many of those incidents are ruled justified, or whether certain field offices have higher rates of force than others.

Mission Differences Don’t Fully Explain Policy Gaps

The FBI evolved from a detective agency into a law enforcement organization that investigates complex crimes—work that rarely requires immediate use of force. Its culture emphasizes investigation over confrontation.

ICE, created in 2003 from parts of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs Service, has always focused on catching and removing people. Its mission involves physically apprehending and removing people, often people who don’t want to be apprehended.

That mission difference doesn’t necessarily justify looser use-of-force standards. DEA personnel also conduct operations against people who resist arrest, often people involved in violent drug trafficking. They manage to do it under the stricter Justice Department guidelines.

ICE has faced less public and political pressure to make its rules stricter than other federal agencies. The FBI reformed its policies after congressional hearings and public scrutiny of incidents in the 1990s. ICE operates with less public attention and fewer checks on its power.

Specific Changes Would Align ICE With Other Federal Agencies

Bringing ICE’s use-of-force standards in line with other federal agencies would require several changes. First, adopt the Justice Department’s standard requiring a threat happening right now rather than the current “reasonable belief” threshold. Second, explicitly prohibit firing at moving vehicles except in the narrowest circumstances. Third, triple the use-of-force training hours and make practice drills that simulate real situations in calming down tense encounters mandatory.

Fourth, move investigations of shootings outside Homeland Security’s leadership structure. Let the Justice Department’s division that checks if civil rights were violated review ICE incidents the same way it reviews FBI incidents. Create independence in the oversight process.

Fifth, require public reporting of use-of-force data. Every incident where personnel fire their weapons, every use of a taser, every time an agent points a weapon at someone. Publish it quarterly with enough detail that patterns become visible.

None of this would prevent ICE personnel from defending themselves when threatened. It would require them to meet the same standards that FBI, DEA, and ATF personnel meet every day while doing comparably dangerous work. If those agencies can operate effectively under stricter rules, there’s no obvious reason ICE can’t do the same.

The Policy Gap Lacks Justification

The question isn’t whether ICE personnel need to use force sometimes—they do. The question is whether they should operate under different, more permissive rules than other federal law enforcement agencies. The gap isn’t justified by mission differences or operational needs.

Congress has the authority to require ICE to adopt Justice Department use-of-force standards. The Homeland Security Secretary could implement stricter policies without legislation. Neither has happened, despite years of advocacy from civil rights groups and recommendations from government watchdogs.

What’s clear is that the current system allows ICE to operate under standards that other federal agencies abandoned years ago as inadequate.

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