ICE and Border Patrol Have Shot 31 People Since January 2025. Eight Are Dead. Two Were U.S. Citizens.
Renée Good was a 37-year-old mother of three. On January 7, 2026, an ICE agent shot and killed her during a raid in Minneapolis. She was unarmed. She died.
Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the VA hospital. On January 24, 2026, Border Patrol agents shot and killed him in Minneapolis. He was unarmed. He died.
Both were U.S. citizens. Both were killed by immigration enforcement officers. The agents who killed them are still on duty.
Since Trump took office in January 2025, immigration officers have shot 31 people. Eight are dead. This isn’t border enforcement. This is a pattern of violence with zero accountability.
The government initially tried to justify killing Alex Pretti by claiming he “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Pretti approached officers with a gun and “violently resisted” disarming. That’s what they told the public.
Then the videos came out. At least four different videos from eyewitnesses, verified and analyzed by NBC News, contradicted the administration’s claims. Pretti wasn’t attacking anyone. He was filming federal agents conducting an operation. They tackled him. Then they shot him.
But the agents who killed him faced no consequences. They’re still working.
Renée Good’s family hired civil rights attorney Antonio Romanucci—the same lawyer who represented George Floyd’s family. Eyewitnesses said federal officers blocked medics and bystanders from rendering aid after she was shot. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division declined to open an investigation into the agent who killed her. Instead, they’re investigating her widow.
Read that again. They won’t investigate the agent who killed an unarmed woman. They’re investigating the woman’s grieving spouse.
This is what happens when you militarize immigration enforcement and give agents unchecked authority. People die. Citizens die. And the government rushes to defend the killers before investigations are even complete.
The Washington Post documented that the Trump administration has declared 16 DHS shootings justified before investigations were completed. They’re defending shooters before gathering evidence. That’s not accountability. That’s cover-up.
And the shootings keep happening. At least 13 shootings involved agents firing at or into civilian vehicles—a practice banned or discouraged by most police agencies including the federal Department of Justice. Agents shot into moving cars 13 times. Two people died.
Five of the people shot were U.S. citizens. American citizens shot by immigration agents on American soil.
Trump deployed 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis alone. That’s five times the size of the Minneapolis Police Department. They’re conducting the “largest immigration enforcement operation” in DHS history. And they’re shooting people.
Last year saw a record 32 deaths in ICE custody. This year is on track to surpass that. Six people died in ICE detention facilities in January 2026 alone. Two died at the same Texas facility in the same month.
Organizations have documented brutal detention conditions: overcrowding, lack of medical care, no access to legal representation. People are dying in custody not because enforcement is tough. They’re dying because conditions are inhumane.
Meanwhile, ICE issued a memo in May 2025 authorizing officers to forcibly enter people’s homes without judicial warrants. That’s a violation of Fourth Amendment protections that have existed for centuries. But they did it anyway.
Renée Good had three children who will grow up without their mother because an ICE agent shot her. Alex Pretti dedicated his career to caring for veterans and died because Border Patrol agents killed him and then lied about it to justify the killing.
Their families deserve answers. They deserve accountability. They deserve justice.
Instead, the agents who killed them remain on duty. The administration defends them before evidence is gathered. And the Department of Justice investigates victims’ families instead of investigating the shooters.
This is state-sanctioned violence. This is what happens when you give unchecked power to people who face zero consequences for abusing it.
Thirty-one people shot. Eight dead. Five U.S. citizens among them.
And Trump’s response? Deploy more agents. Expand operations. Defend the shooters.
Still think this is about border security?
Sources:
Wikipedia: “List of shootings by U.S. immigration agents in the second Trump administration”
NBC News: “List: ICE and Border Patrol shootings as Trump doubles down on immigration enforcement”
PBS NewsHour: “Shooting deaths climb in Trump’s mass deportation effort”
The American Prospect: “A Running Count of How Many People ICE Has Killed and Injured”