What independent datasets exist to compare ICE assault claims with other federal and local law enforcement assault rates?
Executive summary
Independent, reusable datasets exist to compare ICE’s own reports of assaults on its officers with other law‑enforcement assault metrics, but researchers must stitch together federal sources (ICE/DHS), nonpartisan trackers (TRAC, Deportation Data Project), state/local crime bureaus, and court records because no single authoritative comparative database is available; important limitations and contested interpretations in the public record mean any comparison requires careful methodological choices [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. ICE and DHS administrative datasets — the starting point, not the whole story
ICE publishes Enforcement and Removal Operations statistics that include arrest categories and some operational counts useful for denominators and context — these are the official primary data for ICE activity and are updated on an agency portal [1] — and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) provides monthly tables and a persist dataset that standardizes many CBP/ICE encounter counts and book‑out outcomes useful for time‑series analysis [2]; however, those administrative tallies document ICE activity and reported incidents but do not, by themselves, validate claimed sudden surges in assaults without independent corroboration [1] [2].
2. Independent trackers for transparency and longitudinal work
Nonprofit and academic aggregators fill gaps: TRAC at Syracuse compiles independent, nonpartisan immigration enforcement statistics that let researchers query prosecutions, arrests, and detention flows for trend comparisons against federal releases [3] [6], while the Deportation Data Project (ACLU‑sourced) provides a long span of ICE enforcement actions to enable longer‑term analysis and cross‑validation of ICE’s own releases [4]; these datasets are essential for researchers seeking consistent series across administrations but focus on enforcement counts rather than officer‑assault incident coding.
3. Federal court records and prosecutorial data as an alternative measure of assault incidents
Investigations that tested DHS/ICE claims turned to federal court records and prosecution filings and found the number of federal cases alleging assault on ICE agents rose, but “nowhere near” the exponential rates claimed by agency public statements — a CPR News examination shows a mismatch between DHS rhetoric and what fee‑for‑service prosecution records reveal, pointing researchers to PACER and US Attorneys’ case statistics as a necessary cross‑check [5].
4. Local and state law enforcement statistics for comparative baselines
Comparing ICE assault claims to local police assault rates requires state and municipal datasets: CPR News used Colorado Bureau of Investigation assault tallies to note that local officer assaults in Colorado have been relatively flat, offering a local baseline against which federal claims can be contrasted [5]; Brookings and other policy centers also supply contextual analyses of training and staffing changes that matter when comparing agencies with different missions and exposure [7] [8]. Researchers must therefore pair ICE/DHS numbers with state crime reports and police‑department use‑of‑force/assault logs to build apples‑to‑apples comparisons [5] [7].
5. Use‑of‑force and shooting incident trackers — limited but instructive
Journalists and nonprofits assemble use‑of‑force trackers that capture shootings and serious force incidents by immigration agents; for example, The Trace identified five ICE gun‑related use‑of‑force incidents in FY2023 per DHS reporting and has compiled incident narratives useful for qualitative comparisons [9]. Yet these trackers underline a structural gap: federal use‑of‑force data are not as centralized or transparent as local police dashboards, complicating rate calculations per officer or per contact [9].
6. How to compare: practical steps and caveats for researchers
To produce a defensible comparison, combine ICE/ OHSS administrative counts (for denominators and arrests) with TRAC/Deportation Data Project time series (for independent trends), query federal court and U.S. Attorney prosecution records for assault charges (to validate reported incidents), and pull state/local police assault datasets for baseline rates — while explicitly documenting differences in definitions (what counts as an “assault”), exposure (number of contacts or arrests), and incentives (political messaging from DHS that commentators have flagged as exaggerated) because DHS public claims of massive percent increases have been challenged by independent reporting [10] [5]. If a researcher needs national comparative assault rates per officer or per encounter, those numbers will have to be derived from combining sources rather than found in a single existing dataset [2] [3] [4] [5] [9].