The New York Times reported that ICE agents around the country have been told the FBI will no longer investigate claims of assault against immigration officers. FBI managers received written notice of the change, and ICE agents learned of it from their FBI counterparts.
The timing and the mechanics are the story. In fatal ICE shootings, the FBI's role has been to determine whether agents were actually assaulted before they opened fire, the factual question at the center of the disputed killings of Renee Good, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, in each of which the government's assault claim was contradicted by video, witnesses, or the agency's own later admissions. Under the change, those assault claims would instead be examined by Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE itself, and because DHS lacks jurisdiction over civil-rights violations, the shift makes it less likely that agents who shoot unarmed people will ever face a federal civil-rights investigation.
The change came days after the third deadly ICE vehicle encounter in a week and Trump's order that agents resume traffic stops. Common Dreams distilled the objection: the fox is guarding the henhouse. The Justice Department and DHS both denied any change had occurred, saying “the FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” a denial that sits against the Times's reporting of written notice to FBI managers (see ICE Suspended Vehicle Stops After Its Second Wrong-Man Killing. Trump Ordered Them Resumed: 'We CANNOT Give Up... THE TRAFFIC STOP!', Federal Immigration Officers Have Fatally Shot at Least 10 People Since Trump's Second Term Began and An ICE Officer Kills Renee Good in Minneapolis; Noem Calls It Domestic Terrorism and Trump Falsely Says She Ran Over the Officer).