Immigration and Customs and Enforcement officials have claimed since June that assaults on their own officers have climbed sharply, with the White House insisting in a September executive order that attacks are up "more than 1,000 percent."
While the number of assaults on ICE agents have increased, there is no public evidence that they have spiked as dramatically as the federal government has claimed.
An analysis of court records shows about a 25% rise in charges for assault against federal officers through mid-September, compared with the same period a year ago.
Undisputably, ICE agents have at times faced increasingly dangerous work conditions and assaults around the nation, including some that could have turned deadly.
The agency promises that every person who assaults an ICE agent "will face the full extent of the law," according to an executive order signed by President Trump.
But Colorado Public Radio's search of federal court records for charges of assault on a federal officer over the past five years found that while the number of assaults on federal officers has risen, there was no evidence for a rise in assaults on the scale the White House claims.
Despite repeated requests for data to back up their eye-popping statistics, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly declined to provide any justification to CPR or NPR for continuing to make its assertions.
ICE is under pressure to find and remove millions of people from the country who are here without legal status. As operations and protests have increased, it's not surprising that the number of charges for assault against federal agents have climbed at least 25% this year — with increased confrontations between them and protesters in Los Angeles and Chicago. It can take weeks for charges to be filed, so the latest number may not reflect the total number of assaults that have occurred recently.
Recent alleged assaults on ICE agents
Fifteen people were charged this summer after what authorities called a July 4 plot to lure ICE agents out of an Alvarado, Texas detention center, where they were then fired upon. A civilian police officer was wounded. In other cases, criminal affidavits show that Customs and Border Protection officers have been punched on patrol. Another ICE agent in California said he was dragged by a car. In Omaha, an ICE agent was slammed to the ground during an arrest and had to be hospitalized. Last month, a sniper opened fire on an ICE detention center in Texas, killing two detainees, though federal officials believe immigration agents were his target.
But even taking into account those serious incidents, together they still don't come anywhere close to the administration's claim of a 1,000% increase in assaults over just a few months.
Former FBI agent and leader Bob Pence said that when law enforcement officers engage in hype or make outright misleading statements, it jeopardizes trust in the criminal justice system.
Pence, a 30-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation wrote a book published in 2020, "My Non-Political FBI: From Hoover to a Violent America."
To Pence, exaggerating claims of assault on ICE officers has a cost.
"There are a number of ramifications, if the public can't believe what law enforcement is saying then law enforcement probably can't depend on the cooperation of citizens to report information to them accurately," he said.
Nationwide, charges of assault on all federal officers across all agencies didn't start to rise until recently.
In the last three months, case filings of assaults on all police officers nationwide jumped 74% from the previous quarter, CPR's analysis shows. Most of that increase can be attributed to clashes in Los Angeles, where ICE has engaged in large-scale enforcement operations since June.
Those incidents have led to protests throughout that city. But those, and others nationally, have also provided indications that the public broadly is beginning to question the credibility of some of the federal government's claims.
A man in Washington, D.C., in August threw a ham sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent and was charged with assaulting a federal officer. But prosecutors, a couple of weeks later, failed to get a grand jury to indict him.
In Los Angeles, federal prosecutors attempted to get felony indictments against at least 38 people involved in those protests and civil unrest or near immigration raids. They persuaded citizens to indict their neighbors just seven times, according to local reporting. Other charges were dismissed, reduced to misdemeanors or resolved by plea deals.
For Homeland Security and ICE claims of a 1,000% increase in assaults to be true, there would also have to be thousands of other assaults that did not result in criminal charges. This despite the government's claim that all assaults on federal agents will be prosecuted.
But requests for any data kept by that agency were denied, with a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security declining to cite the source of that data or the methodology used to arrive at the increase it announced in August.
They did send one email with six links to previously issued press releases, again citing a 1,000% increase in assaults without explanation. Later, DHS sent an email with press releases for 12 cases of assault on agents.
Even in cases where video does clearly show an assault — though perhaps not as dramatically as ICE says — it is no guarantee that the case will result in a conviction.
Take the case of Venezuelan Abraham Gonzalez-Romero.
Gonzalez-Romero's initial Colorado criminal cases were shaky. State prosecutors charged him with attempted murder with little evidence except that he was in possession of a firearm at a scene where shots were fired. The only witnesses to the case were also in the country without authorization and had credibility problems.
The local charges were eventually dismissed.
On Feb. 28, ICE agents were waiting for him as he left the Denver County jail, having been notified of his pending release by the Denver Sheriff after ICE asked about him. They flashed their badges and began walking towards him, he ran and was captured on jail video knocking an immigration agent to the ground.
It was a minor skirmish with no injuries. But that didn't stop his case from entering the national immigration debate.
Just a week later, House Republicans hosted a panel of big-city mayors, including from Denver, Chicago and Boston, to talk about so-called sanctuary policies.
Colorado Republican Rep. Jeff Crank told the story about Gonzalez-Romero, but he went far beyond the ICE agent's account.
"In Denver, you require that the Denver Police Department release Tren de Aragua gang members into the streets, uncuffed," Crank said, animated as he addressed Denver Mayor Mike Johnston in the House hearing. "Just last week, it resulted in an illegal Tren de Aragua member assaulting and biting — and biting! — an ICE agent … You're putting police officers at risk to score political points and it's outrageous."
But in court, federal prosecutors made no effort to prove Gonzalez-Romero bit, or even attempted to bite, an agent and his attorney said it never happened. Federal public defender Kelly Christl also said in court "there's no evidence to support that" he was a Tren de Aragua gang member. Crank's office did not respond to questions about where he got his information about the bite.
Then, despite the promise that all assaults on ICE agents would be prosecuted to the fullest extent, the government dropped the charge of assault on an officer in a plea deal. Gonzalez-Romero was sentenced to time served on a gun charge, but he remains in ICE custody in Denver.
A former ICE agent's perspective
Scott Mechkowski, a former Deputy Field Office Director for ICE in New York City, said the court filings will never fully reflect the frequency of assaults on immigration agents.
"The way it's presented and prosecuted in federal court is different for us," he said. "Like we were told — most of the time our guys got bit or they got punched — and we were told (by federal prosecutors) that's part of the job."
Mechkowski said the only people who fully collect the number of assaults on ICE officers is ICE.
Other federal jobs more perilous, according to charges filed
While not backing up the enormous increases in assaults claimed by ICE and Homeland Security leaders, the federal data does make one thing clear: At least in Colorado, in recent years it has been far more dangerous to be an employee with the federal Bureau of Prisons or the Bureau of Indian Affairs than an ICE agent.
Between 2015 and June 2025, the the largest number of assaults on federal officers in Colorado took place on Indian Country land and in the state's federal prisons.
But Denver immigration attorney Christine Hernandez said that in cases where federal officials exaggerate statistics or agents distort facts, there is a credibility cost for federal law enforcement.
Just this year, she has represented people where judges ask for evidence on links to gang affiliations and other stated facts and the prosecutors can't furnish it.
"We've never seen this before," Hernandez said. "You don't know what the government is going to say. A lot of times, they don't have evidence, they don't present evidence to back up the charging document. You're supposed to have your evidence in place. That's their job. And it's not happening."
Copyright 2025 NPR
