Under Trump, a Shift Toward ‘Absolute Immunity’ for ICE

 

Under Trump, a Shift Toward ‘Absolute Immunity’ for ICE

 

Since the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, administration officials have defended the use of deadly force, which agency guidelines say should be a last resort.

 

Hamed Aleaziz Nicholas Nehamas

By Hamed Aleaziz and Nicholas Nehamas

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/politics/trump-ice-immunity.html

Jan. 15, 2026, 10:56 a.m. ET

 

The instructions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents explain in clear terms how to defuse dangerous encounters: Use “minimal force” when trying to remove people from cars. Issue commands in “professional,” “firm,” “courteous” voices.

 

“First step in arresting an occupant of a vehicle is NOT to reach in and grab him, unless there are specific circumstances requiring that action,” reads one internal ICE document providing legal guidance for uses of force during vehicle stops. It was reviewed by The New York Times, along with other training materials. ICE officials will thoroughly investigate any encounter, but “deadly force” is allowed only when agents believe lives are in danger.

 

The fatal shooting of Renee Good last week by an ICE agent in Minneapolis — and the quick reaction by Trump administration officials to declare the agent a hero and Ms. Good a villain — has put a new focus on whether federal agents enforcing President Trump’s deportation drive have been properly prepared for confrontations on city streets. The response of Mr. Trump and his top lieutenants to the killing has also underscored how they have embraced what is supposed to be a last resort under the written standards: using lethal force in self-defense.

 

Rather than encourage agents to de-escalate combustible encounters, as the agency guidelines emphasize, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have provided tacit approval for more aggressive tactics.

 

 

Several weeks before the shooting, a top ICE official told officers to take “decisive action” if threatened. Immediately after, Mr. Trump and other administration officials said Ms. Good had tried to run the agent over, although a Times video analysis found that she appeared to have turned her vehicle away from him.

 

“That guy is protected by absolute immunity,” Vice President JD Vance said last week of the ICE agent who killed Ms. Good, 37. “He was doing his job.”

 

On Tuesday, the Homeland Security Department reiterated that sentiment to its agents, posting a clip on social media of Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, saying, “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”

 

Tensions in Minneapolis have boiled over in the days since Ms. Good’s death. On Wednesday night, a federal agent in the city shot and wounded a man who was attacking him, officials said. The episode led to hours of clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers.

 

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said ICE agents were using appropriate tactics.

 

“The entire Trump administration stands behind our heroic ICE officers who are conducting themselves with the utmost professionalism and integrity, while making American communities safer,” Ms. Jackson said in a statement. “It is not an ‘aggressive tactic’ to defend yourself from an individual using their car as a deadly weapon — ICE officers have a right to self-defense.”

 

Tricia McLaughlin, a homeland security spokeswoman, said that “ICE law enforcement officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers” and are “highly trained in de-escalation tactics.”

 

The Minneapolis shooting has also revealed the risks of Mr. Trump’s decision to send ICE on large-scale sweeps through cities, a move that has thrust agents into confrontations with hostile crowds. Most ICE agents are not trained to handle crowd control, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office. That is in part because ICE has historically focused on targeted arrests that attract less attention and rarely put its officers in conflict with the public.

 

Moreover, the agency is rapidly expanding its ranks, already more than doubling its number of law enforcement personnel, after an infusion of $75 billion in new funding over four years. It has expedited its training programs to accommodate the new recruits, including reducing training on how to handle vehicle stops, according to a former official at the federal government’s law enforcement academy who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal homeland security policies.

 

Ms. McLaughlin said there had been no reduction in training on vehicle stops.

 

Federal officers do not have “absolute” immunity from prosecution, although the U.S. Constitution makes it difficult for states to prosecute them for actions taken while on duty. They can also face federal charges. But that is unlikely to happen in the Minneapolis case.

 

In a sign of the administration’s priorities, the Justice Department has decided to investigate Ms. Good’s widow and groups that monitor and protest immigration agents, rather than open a civil rights inquiry into whether the actions of the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, were legal. In a statement, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said there was “no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into the shooting.

 

Administration officials have said ICE will conduct an internal investigation.

 

Mr. Trump has shown no signs of ordering ICE to back off, raising the possibility of further conflicts between agents and protesters. “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” he wrote on social media on Tuesday.

 

Scott Shuchart, a senior ICE official in the Biden administration, said the message from Trump administration officials to agents was to “disregard their years or decades of training” and “disregard what lawyers have told them.”

 

The Times reviewed internal homeland security documents that included training materials, use-of-force guidelines, legal guidance prepared by ICE lawyers and firearms policies. The training materials are from 2025, while the guidelines on use of force were published in 2023 and remain current.

 

The documents spotlight the importance of techniques intended to avoid heated confrontations.

 

“When feasible, authorized officers must employ tactics to de-escalate by the use of communication or other techniques during an encounter to stabilize, slow or reduce the intensity of a potentially violent situation,” one document states.

 

The documents also describe a “use-of-force continuum” that officers may follow.

 

The continuum begins with officers being present on the scene with a “professional, courteous demeanor.” It progresses to issuing verbal commands. Officers may then deploy “soft techniques” like the use of “touch pressure points” or “chemical agents,” and then “hard techniques” such as “strikes with a hand, arm, foot, leg, head or the whole body” or the use of “impact weapons.” The final step is deadly force, including firearms, “strangulation techniques” and “edged weapons.”

 

When officers use force, they must be offered “psychological first aid services” as soon as possible.

 

The materials make clear that officers are entitled to escalate the use of force as quickly as they see fit and can use lethal measures if there is “an imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death to the officer or to another person.”

 

In Ms. Good’s case, the question of whether Mr. Ross was in danger has been a point of contention.

 

Videos show federal agents quickly approaching the maroon S.U.V. that she had stopped in the street on Jan. 7, partially blocking the road. One of the agents cursed as he demanded that Ms. Good get out of the car before almost immediately trying to open the driver’s side door, reaching through the open window.

 

After Ms. Good drove her car forward, Mr. Ross, who had been walking in front of her vehicle and recording video on his cellphone, shot and killed her.

 

Mr. Ross is an experienced ICE officer who served as a firearms instructor for the agency’s field office in St. Paul, Minn., and also received extra training as a member of its tactical team. Tactical team members typically receive crowd-control training. In court records, he described serving in the Iraq war.

 

But he and the ICE agents involved in the shooting of Ms. Good may not have followed some aspects of their training, documents and interviews suggest. ICE officers are generally advised not to stand in front of or behind stopped vehicles to avoid being run over, according to three former senior agency officials.

 

Customs and Border Protection, which like ICE is part of the Homeland Security Department, tells agents to “avoid standing directly in front of or behind a subject vehicle,” according to a use-of-force policy posted on its website.

 

A lawyer for Mr. Ross did not respond to requests for comment.

 

While opportunities for oversight have been rare under the Trump administration, the department’s inspector general’s office said in an online notice that it was conducting an audit of ICE’s hiring and training processes.

 

In addition, the office has started an audit of how ICE investigates “allegations of excessive use of force” and disciplines officers.

 

That audit began this month.

 

Alexandra Berzon, Alicia Parlapiano and Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

 

Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.

 

Nicholas Nehamas is a Washington correspondent for The Times, focusing on the Trump administration and its efforts to transform the federal government.