F.B.I. Quietly Stops Investigating ICE Confrontations, Leaving The Agency To Police Itself

The F.B.I. has quietly told agents around the country that it will stop investigating confrontations with immigration officers,  a move that strips away one of the few remaining checks on federal agents who use lethal force against American citizens and residents. According to people briefed on the internal notice sent Thursday, the bureau will no longer probe claims of assaults on Department of Homeland Security agents, even though those investigations "can provide a crucial means of gathering evidence implicating the agents themselves." 

Responsibility would instead shift to Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit, effectively "leaving the agency to investigate itself." That unit "does not have jurisdiction to investigate civil rights violations," meaning shootings of unarmed people by ICE agents would be far less likely to face scrutiny for whether agents broke the law.

The stakes are not abstract. Nearly two dozen people have been shot by federal immigration agents since January 2025, and six have died,  "including three U.S. citizens." Most involved agents "firing into vehicles." On July 7 in Houston, an ICE agent killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a longtime Mexican immigrant, during a traffic stop; he was "not the target" of the operation. Days later in Maine, an agent shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian man, also in his vehicle.

Meanwhile, the administration has aggressively pursued the public over the same statute it now shields its own agents from,  charging more than 550 people with assaulting federal officers, of whom nearly half of resolved cases "unraveled." Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declared: "It's abhorrent to ever, ever touch a law enforcement officer... we'll prosecute them."

The Justice Department and DHS issued a joint denial, insisting "the relationship between D.H.S. and D.O.J. in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed."

Taken together, the reporting describes a system tilting dangerously out of balance: citizens face felony charges for minor contact with agents, while agents who kill unarmed citizens,  including U.S. citizens shot in their own cars,  may soon face no independent federal investigation at all.

Link: NY Times