FOIA documents reveal ICE knew of 353% force increase before Minneapolis killings

Between January 19 and March 20, 2025, ICE officers reported 67 use-of-force incidents -- nearly four times the 17 incidents during the same period in 2024 under Biden. That is a 353% increase in force by federal immigration agents against civilians in just two months. The data came from internal emails that ICE leadership received in real time.

Acting ICE Director CVCaleb Vitello, who served from January 20 to February 21, 2025, received briefings on the rising force numbers. After Vitello was reassigned, the emails continued flowing to other senior officials. Despite the clear upward trend, no public statement was issued and no operational changes were announced to address the spike.

ICE leadership focused its attention on the 28 assaults against ICE agents during the same period, emailing about them prominently. The 67 force incidents by agents -- more than double the assaults on agents -- received no similar emphasis or calls for corrective action in the documents obtained by American Oversight.

The documents include 10 detailed use-of-force reports from early 2025

One describes agents shattering a woman's car windows in 🌲Washington state on March 10, 2025, while trying to detain two undocumented people

During the encounter, agents tased one individual who then needed medical attention Another report describes an ICE officer firing multiple rounds into a car after the driver accelerated forward.

American Oversight filed its FOIA requests with DHS in early 2025 seeking records on enforcement and use-of-force practices. DHS failed to release the records within the legally required timeframe. American Oversight sued in June 2025 to force disclosure, and only through that litigation did these internal emails become public in February 2026.

On January 7, 2026 -- months after leadership received the force increase data -- ICE agent JRJonathan Ross shot and killed RGRenee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis

Ross fired three shots as Good's car moved forward and to the right, away from him

Weeks later, Border Patrol agents killed APAlex Pretti, also 37 and a U.S. citizen, who was holding a phone and observing a nearby enforcement operation The DOJ later dropped charges against two men arrested during the Pretti incident after federal agents admitted making false statements under oath.

The training materials American Oversight also obtained show ICE agents were instructed on Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and on de-escalation techniques. The gap between what agents were trained to do and what the force data shows they actually did suggests a systemic breakdown between policy on paper and practice on the street.

FOIA, signed into law in 1967, gives any person the right to request records from federal agencies

Agencies must respond within 20 business days

But agencies routinely miss deadlines, and requesters often must sue to get records released American Oversight alone has filed nearly 2,000 FOIA requests and close to 100 lawsuits since its founding in 2017 The ICE documents are a case study in why litigation is often the only way to make FOIA actually work.