Politico reports:

Top Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials knew as early as March of last year that officers were using dramatically more force against civilians and the targets of their enforcement operations, months before ICE and Border Patrol officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

Internal emails obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act request from the liberal-leaning watchdog nonprofit American Oversight show that top officials knew the amount of force — be it lethal force or non-lethal efforts to physically restrain or subdue people or neutralize threats — used by ICE officers was rapidly rising after President Donald Trump took office and that incidents were occurring nationwide.

Caleb Vitello, at the time the official tasked with overseeing field and enforcement operations at ICE, was informed on March 20 that ICE officers had reported 67 incidents where they had used force in the first two months of Trump’s term, according to the emails. In the same time frame in 2024, that number was 17 incidents, representing a nearly four-fold increase.

Days before, Vitello was informed that the use of force in the first two weeks of March alone had quadrupled compared with the same timeframe the year before, per another email.

The Department of Homeland Security has insisted that officers are complying with the standards set forth in their training and that officers continue to practice “incredible restraint” in using force. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the documents, which were shared first with POLITICO.

The contents of the emails challenge the administration’s assertions and efforts from its backers in the wake of the Minneapolis shootings to downplay incidents involving ICE’s use of excessive force by arguing that such cases were infrequent.

“These are hard issues that we should spend time talking about, because they’re tragic and awful, but also, thankfully, rare,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said at a Thursday oversight hearing about the response to Minneapolis.

The FOIA request also turned up incident reports from operations across the country where officers used force during arrests and apprehensions. They include one March 10 incident where Border Patrol and ICE officers smashed a woman’s car windows as they sought to apprehend two unauthorized immigrants. One of the unauthorized immigrants was tased and then needed to receive medical attention due to vomiting and some scratches. At least one person in the reports from Trump’s first two months in office died as a result of an encounter with immigration officers.

The emails and incident reports show that cases of ICE and Border Patrol using force go beyond isolated instances circulating on social media and surges in major cities such as Minneapolis. They also show that agency leadership has been aware that nationwide, the agency’s officers are using more aggressive tactics as the Trump administration has sought to increase the number of deportations of unauthorized immigrants.

The emails and documents also do not reflect particular urgency on the part of ICE leadership to respond to that trend, either by directing more training or by establishing whether the increase tracks with a general increase in enforcement and deportation operations. [Continue reading…]