Washington, DC – This weekend, the New York Times reported that FBI field offices were quietly told the bureau will no longer investigate confrontations involving ICE agents, shifting that responsibility to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE itself. In other words, the agency responsible for these shootings will now investigate its own agents. DHS and the Department of Justice deny any policy has changed, but given this administration’s track record, forgive us if we don’t take their word for it.
The change comes as the death toll keeps climbing. At least seven people shot and killed by on-duty federal immigration agents since Trump took office, including Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián in Biddeford, Maine, both killed within the last two weeks.
The violence has spread beyond agents on duty and headline-making cases. In Aurora, Colorado last week,a GEO Group employee shot a woman protesting outside the detention facility. In St. Augustine, Florida, another man died during enforcement operations. And in a devastating New York Times essay, Rachel Reyes wrote about her son, Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen shot and killed by an ICE agent in South Padre Island, Texas, in March 2025. Together, these cases reveal an enforcement apparatus with no meaningful accountability at any level, from the agents in the field to the contractors profiting from detention to the leadership overseeing it all.
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, issued the following statement:
“An agency with a growing body count doesn’t get to investigate itself, yet that’s exactly what this administration is doing. By any measure, it’s a coverup. DHS and DOJ can deny it all they want, but this is the same administration that stood by while an FBI agent got forced out of the bureau for simply investigating Renee Good’s killing. It’s the same rogue agency whose officers are blocking investigators from doing their jobs in Houston right now. Every week brings more terror to communities and more devastation to families demanding answers this administration refuses to provide. Congress and DHS don’t get to hand ICE the keys to its own investigation. They owe the families of Salgado, Duran, Martinez – the entire country – a real, independent accounting of what their agents have done.”
