A running list of ICE deaths and shootings during Trump’s second term
The dramatic increase in the scale, scope and aggressiveness of interior immigration enforcement since January 2025 has led to a spike in injuries and deaths
Since he took office for his second term in January 2025, President Donald Trump has secured funding for a dramatic expansion of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) operations, and Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has overseen an aggressive campaign of enforcement and detention across the country. The scale of the operation has, unsurprisingly, led to a number of deaths and injuries, both in the streets and in the expanding network of detention facilities financed by the extraordinary increase in ICE funding as part of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
While no official tally of fatal shootings or injuries is available, a number of media and activist organizations have offered estimates. Some incidents are difficult to categorize. For example, Elena Catarina Morales-Chan, a 29-year-old Mexican national, drowned along with a 14-year-old boy when the SUV they were traveling in crashed into a canal after fleeing from Border Patrol agents. For this list, we have compiled only confirmed shooting deaths and injuries by both ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents since Jan. 20, 2025, as well as confirmed deaths in ICE detention facilities.
Fatal shootings
According to The Week’s research, eight people have been fatally shot by ICE or CBP agents since President Trump’s second inauguration. The first “officer-involved” immigration killing of Trump’s second term happened on Jan. 20, 2026, when CBP agents got into a shootout near the Canadian border in Vermont, killing German national Ophelia Bauckholt and wounding the driver of the car, Teresa Youngblut. A CBP agent, David “Chris” Maland, was killed in the altercation. Bauckholt and Youngblut were both tied to a cultlike group known as the Zizians, which has been “linked to six killings, one attempted murder and at least one faked death,” said NBC News. Unlike the other killings on this list, Bauckholt’s death was not linked to the Trump administration’s stepped-up interior enforcement campaign.
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On March 15, 2025, a U.S. citizen, 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez, was shot and killed by an ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent in South Padre Island, Texas. The killing followed “what ICE described as a failure to follow law enforcement instructions during a traffic incident as agents worked with local police on immigration enforcement,” said Newsweek. However, sources confirm that HSI was assisting with traffic control following a major accident rather than conducting immigration enforcement operations as ICE claimed. The Department of Homeland Security did not acknowledge the killing until media outlets broke the story in February 2026.
On July 7, 2025, CBP officers shot and killed 27-year-old Ryan Luis Mosqueda after he opened fire on a CBP facility in McAllen, Texas. One McAllen police officer, one Border Patrol officer and one Border Patrol employee were wounded. “The suspect’s vehicle was spray-painted with the phrase “Cordis Die,” which appears in a Call of Duty video game, according to a local law enforcement official,” said CNN.
Silverio Villegas González, a 38-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was shot and killed on Sept. 12, 2025. He “allegedly resisted arrest and attempted to drive his car into officers, dragging one officer,” before he opened fire, said ICE officials. But that account was disputed by witnesses, who “cast doubts on the narrative put forth by DHS,” said the Chicago Sun-Times.
While conducting enforcement operations along the Rio Grande, a CBP agent shot and killed 31-year-old Mexican national Isaias Sanchez Barboza, who had just crossed the border with a group of people. The officer “engaged in an active struggle with the man for two minutes and ultimately discharged his CBP-issued firearm,” said U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
An off-duty ICE officer shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old father of two in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles on Dec. 31, 2025. Porter’s “family and local activists have argued that, contrary to the DHS’s portrayal of the events, Porter was not threatening anyone and was celebrating the new year” by firing shots into the air, said The Guardian. There is no body camera footage of the killing, which remains the subject of active litigation.
An unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, Renée Nicole Good, was killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7, 2026 in the Central neighborhood of Minneapolis, where the Trump administration had dispatched a large number of federal agents as part of a broader operation. Good was observing ICE’s operations as part of the city’s activist response to enforcement operations, and the circumstances of her death remain hotly disputed. Good wielded her car in an “attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Witnesses and video footage of the shooting called that account into question, as Good appeared to be attempting to drive away from the officer when she was shot and killed. A “much more complicated picture is revealed” by the available video evidence, said The New York Times. Her death triggered nationwide protests.
A 37-year-old nurse with Veterans Affairs and U.S citizen, Alex Pretti, was shot and killed on Jan. 24, 2026, in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. Video footage of the killing showed that while Pretti was legally carrying a firearm, he never unholstered it and had been disarmed when the officers fired on him. Footage shows CBP agents firing “at least 10 shots in a span of five seconds” at Pretti while he was already subdued on the ground and seems to “contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the encounter, which the agency said began after an individual armed with a handgun approached the federal agents with the intent to “massacre” them,” said The New York Times.
Deaths in detention
32 people died in ICE detention facilities in 2025, all after President Trump was sworn into office for his second term, according to an analysis in The Guardian. They “died of seizure and heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, tuberculosis or suicide. Some died at ICE detention centers and field offices, others after they had been transferred to hospitals but were still under ICE custody.” It was the highest number of deaths in detention since 2004. The large number of deaths has sparked criticism from advocates and human rights activists who say that the scale of the Trump administration’s enforcement operation — and the haste with which some new facilities are being opened — will lead to unnecessary deaths.
Many of these deaths are shrouded in mystery. The agency’s “public disclosures often come late and have little information,” said The American Immigration Council. Official explanations are frequently contradicted by independent observers. One example is the case of 29-year-old Genry Ruiz-Guillen, who died in ICE custody on Jan. 23, 2025, at the Krome Service and Processing Center in Florida. He had been transferred to ICE after an arrest for domestic battery in October 2024. The official cause of death was “complications of schizoaffective disorder,” according to the Miami-Dade medical examiner. Toxicology reports “showed an excessive mix of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, and doctors suspect neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a treatable but potentially fatal reaction to medication,” said Know Your Rights Report. The “autopsy, toxicology and death reports” available in Ruiz-Guillen’s case “raise questions about his treatment and subsequent death,” said the Miami Herald.
As of Feb. 23, 2026, an additional seven detainee deaths have been reported since the new year, most recently 59-year-old Cambodian national Lorth Sim. His death is under investigation. ICE is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” said ICE in a statement announcing Sim’s death in ICE custody and referring to him as a “convicted alien felon.” (This tally does not include deaths in CBP facilities.)
Woundings
As of Feb. 23, 2026, at least 19 people have been wounded in shootings by ICE or CBP officers since President Trump took office in January 2025. One of them was a 30-year-old U.S. citizen named Marimar Martinez, who was driving in the Brighton Park neighborhood of Chicago, warning neighbors that ICE agents were in the area on Oct. 4, 2025. The precise sequence of events remains disputed, but Martinez was shot five times and survived. While the CBP officer involved in the shooting, Charles Exum, did not have his body camera turned on, another video of the incident shows that he “pulled up behind her, aimed an assault rifle and shouted ‘do something, bitch’ before opening fire,” said The Trace.
Existing evidence appears to “contradict Exum’s account that Martinez tried to run him over and instead indicates she was attempting to drive away,” said Block Club Chicago. Martinez and her attorneys also claim that “recently released evidence showed that Exum and others lied to justify her shooting,” said the Chicago Sun-Times. Federal prosecutors filed assault charges against Martinez but dropped the case on Nov. 20, 2025. (A number of such injuries at the hands of ICE or CBP agents are the subject of ongoing litigation.)
