By Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown increasingly is sparking violent confrontations with both migrants and U.S. citizens, a development grimly underscored by an ICE officer’s fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman this week.
Under Trump’s orders to ramp up deportations, masked immigration officers have surged into Democratic-led cities, sprayed tear gas in residential streets, tackled people in parking lots and pointed guns at bystanders trying to film them.
A federal officer in Minneapolis dragged a woman through a snowy street in an incident last month that the city’s police chief called an “egregious disregard for human dignity.”
These contentious encounters, which have come amid a push to quickly recruit and train thousands of new officers, have stemmed from a dramatic shift in the approach to immigration enforcement, according to current and former immigration officials.
The White House demanded a steep increase in immigration arrests in late May, leading officers to change tactics, embracing showy sweeps over more targeted arrests of people with serious criminal records. Since then, officers have been met with more public backlash and resistance, at times creating tense standoffs.
“It’s this high-visibility, high-footprint, high-contact form of operation that invites danger,” said former ICE official Scott Shuchart, who served in Joe Biden’s administration.
Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have all defended the ICE officer who killed Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother of three, and portrayed her as an agitator trying to disrupt enforcement operations.
Within hours of the incident, Noem alleged that Good tried to ram the officer with her vehicle in an act of “domestic terrorism.”
In response to a Reuters request for comment, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson accused Democrats and news outlets of demonizing ICE officers and encouraging backlash.
“The Democrats’ lies have directly fueled their supporters to harass and impede law enforcement, which is the cause of any tensions and puts officers at risk,” Jackson said.
The ICE officer involved in the fatal shooting, Jonathan Ross, fired the first of three shots as Good’s vehicle moved past him, a Reuters analysis of the available visuals showed.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin defended the Trump administration’s approach and said the officer in Minneapolis feared for his life.
“ICE law enforcement officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations,” she said.
One former ICE official who spoke with Reuters blamed Democratic leaders for fueling the backlash by refusing to cooperate with ICE and publicly criticizing their work. Another said it was jarring to see protesters following officers with whistles, trying to disrupt their work. In Minnesota, they have been pelted with snowballs.
ICE POISED TO RAMP UP IN 2026
The administration is preparing to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to hire more immigration officers and intensify its operations, raising concerns such violence could grow in the coming year. Several current and former ICE officers, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak openly about sensitive matters, expressed concerns that ICE could bring on less-qualified candidates with its accelerated hiring push.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said earlier this month that it had hired 12,000 new ICE officers on top of an existing force of 10,000, although some questioned whether that many were actually fully hired and working.
DHS’ internal watchdog is conducting a review of ICE’s hiring practices, with staff expected to visit the department’s Georgia training facility in coming weeks, one of the former ICE officials said. The new curriculum cuts involved halving training for firearms and tactics, the former ICE official said.
The training for new ICE officers had previously been five months but the Trump administration reduced it to two months as part of its effort to speed up hires, McLaughlin said, adding that it was done to “cut redundancy” and that candidates still meet the same standards.
Even as immigration enforcement becomes more contentious and ICE adds thousands more officers, the agency will have less oversight than in previous years after several DHS oversight bodies experienced mass staffing cuts last year.
SHOOTINGS FOLLOW IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN
Federal immigration officers have shot people in 16 incidents since Trump intensified his crackdown in June, according to The Trace, a non-profit news outlet that tracks gun violence.
In some of the cases, immigration officials said agents were under threat due to vehicles being used as weapons, though video evidence and judges later raised questions about those claims.
The incidents included the fatal shooting in Chicago of a Mexican father of two after dropping off his kids, the shooting of a TikTok streamer in Los Angeles and a U.S. citizen in Chicago.
John Tsoukaris, a former top ICE official who retired in July, said the ICE officer who fired the fatal shots in Minneapolis may have been within the bounds of protocol and that an investigation would be needed to determine the facts.
“In these very stressful and challenging situations, officers have to make a split-second decision,” said Tsoukaris, who was a field office director for ICE’s office in Newark, New Jersey. “We should not rush to judgment of the officer’s actions without the full picture.”
‘KAVANAUGH STOPS’ OPEN DOOR TO BROAD SWEEPS
The Supreme Court in September said the Trump administration could stop people in U.S. cities for reasonable suspicion of violating immigration laws based on factors such as having brown skin or speaking Spanish, a position defended by Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a concurrence at the time.
Opponents of Trump’s aggressive enforcement say such “Kavanaugh stops” by ICE and Border Patrol have inflamed tensions.
Darius Reeves, a former ICE field office director who retired in 2025, said the Trump administration’s confrontational approach is putting officers at risk and increasing the likelihood of violent interactions.
Reeves, who spent more than two decades at the agency, said ICE historically tried to minimize its public presence and operate in a more targeted manner.
“We should not be flooding these neighborhoods and antagonizing people,” Reeves said. “This is not going to go well.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Craig Timberg and Diane Craft)
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