How have official DHS casualty tallies and public reporting on use of force by immigration agents changed since January 2025?
Executive summary
Since January 2025, DHS has moved toward more standardized and frequent public reporting of immigration enforcement activity and has been operating under a department-wide use-of-force policy updated in 2023 that increased requirements for collecting and reporting force data [1] [2]; however, independent reviews and GAO reporting continue to flag undercounting and data-quality problems that limit confidence in official casualty tallies and assessments of agents’ use of force [3] [4].
1. The formal mechanics changed: more centralized, more frequent publication
DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics began publishing immigration enforcement monthly tables with a set schedule “as of January 2025,” committing to update those tables monthly on the third Thursday and to construct datasets from component operational reports, which institutionalizes more frequent publication of operational statistics than historical ad‑hoc releases [5]; that same push toward standardized formats for use‑of‑force reporting is reflected in OHSS’s separate use‑of‑force incident product, which states data were validated with component statistical officials and will be updated annually [4].
2. Policy groundwork: a department-wide use-of-force policy and new data requirements
DHS issued an updated department policy on use of force in 2023—the first since 2018—which explicitly tightened training expectations (de‑escalation, duty to intervene, implicit bias) and added new requirements on collecting and reporting use‑of‑force data across DHS components [1] [2]; components are expected to align their individual policies and reporting systems (for example CBP’s Assaults and Use of Force Reporting System) with that department framework to improve consistency [6].
3. GAO and other reviewers say tallies still undercount and need fixes
The Government Accountability Office found that DHS’s 2022 start of systematic collection still allowed agencies to submit multiple reportable uses of force as a single incident—effectively undercounting actual uses of force—and recommended clearer guidance and strengthened data collection and analysis to enable oversight [3] [7]; GAO’s work focused on DHS components with the most officers (CBP, FPS, ICE, Secret Service) and reviewed incident reports from fiscal years 2021 and 2022 to identify these methodological problems [3].
4. Public reporting since Jan 2025 emphasized enforcement outcomes, complicating casualty visibility
Public DHS messaging since January 20, 2025 has highlighted ICE arrests of criminal and national‑security targets—framing enforcement activity in press releases rather than foregrounding use‑of‑force or casualty tallies—which shifts attention to removals and arrests even as questions about force persist [8]; external reporting has documented large operational metrics such as deportation counts claimed by the administration through 2025, but those enforcement tallies are separate from standardized use‑of‑force casualty reporting and do not substitute for validated incident data [9].
5. Political pressure, oversight bills, and allegations sharpen scrutiny but not consensus
Legislative actors and watchdogs have responded to post‑2025 enforcement with bills to codify DHS use‑of‑force rules and with FOIA requests documenting alleged excessive force; for example, a 2025 congressional bill would require semiannual public reporting of every use‑of‑force incident after a series of incidents cited by sponsors, and watchdog FOIA compilations have catalogued concerns about aggressive tactics during immigration enforcement [10] [11]; these actions increase political and public pressure for better casualty tallies but also reflect competing agendas—oversight and transparency advocates pressing for mandatory reporting versus departmental and component interests in operational discretion [10] [11].
6. Bottom line: structural improvements without fully reliable casualty counts yet
Institutional reforms—a 2023 DHS policy and the January 2025 move to scheduled OHSS monthly reporting—have improved the architecture for tracking use of force and enforcement outcomes, but auditors and DHS’s own statistical office acknowledge data definitions, reporting practices, and validation issues that can undercount uses of force and complicate casualty tallies; available sources document the reforms and the shortcomings but do not provide a single, uncontested casualty tally or proof that those shortcomings have been fully fixed [1] [5] [3] [4].