How does DHS define and report 'assaults' on ICE officers, and how have independent audits evaluated those claims?
Executive summary
DHS and ICE claim large percentage increases in “assaults” on ICE officers in recent years, but the underlying counting rules, data sources, and reporting practices are fragmented and have been questioned by independent auditors and reporters [1] [2]. The DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) has repeatedly found that definitions, systems, and cross‑reporting between ICE systems and other DHS components were incomplete or inconsistent, leaving room for misstatement or confusion about what counts as an “assault” [3] [4].
1. How DHS and ICE define and record “assaults” — multiple systems, unfinished definitions
DHS and ICE rely on a patchwork of internal reporting systems and policies rather than a single, transparent public metric: ICE significant incidents are tracked in systems such as SEN (Significant Event Notification) and UFAD, and the OIG has recommended that DHS finalize the definition of “reportable assaults” to explicitly include attempted assaults and standardize fields across systems [3]. The OIG audit found that in FY2017 thirty‑three assaults documented in SEN were not reported in UFAD, demonstrating incomplete cross‑reporting; the report also recommended finalizing definitions and training to improve assault reporting [3]. DHS oversight architecture — including the OIG and CRCL — can inspect and audit reporting, but there is no wholly independent civilian body outside DHS that catalogs or verifies every ICE internal statistic before the agency releases it publicly [5] [4].
2. What DHS publicly reported and how those claims were presented
DHS issued public statements and a press release asserting dramatic percentage increases — figures like “more than 1,300%” or “over 1,000%” increases in assaults, massive upticks in vehicular attacks and death threats — often framed as evidence that sanctuary rhetoric and protests endanger officers [1]. Those public statements typically did not cite a published dataset or a clear methodology in the press material; reporting shows DHS sometimes provided links to past press releases rather than a reconciled data file explaining the numerator, denominator, or time windows used for the percent changes [2] [6].
3. What independent audits and watchdog reporting actually found
The DHS OIG’s audits have focused on the internal mechanics: in 2018 it documented incomplete reporting, system mismatches, and recommended finalizing definitions and improving training so assaults and attempted assaults are consistently captured [3]. Broader watchdog and news reporting has probed DHS’s public claims and found that the agency did not make underlying data available and that external journalists and analysts could not reproduce the large percentage jumps DHS announced; CPR News reported that ICE denied requests for the raw data and DHS could not explain how it arrived at a “1,000 percent” figure when pressed [2]. Advocacy groups and policy analysts likewise flagged DHS statements as unsupported by available evidence and labeled some headline percentage claims false or unsubstantiated [7] [8].
4. Gaps, ambiguity, and competing interpretations
Auditors and reporters identify three overlapping problems: definitional ambiguity (what counts as an assault, and does videotaping or doxxing qualify under an expanded definition?), system fragmentation (multiple databases with missing cross‑entries), and lack of public transparency (no released dataset or methodology accompanying sensational percentage claims) [3] [9] [2]. Independent OIG capacity exists to audit DHS, and OIG reports show it has flagged reporting weaknesses, but OIG audits do not automatically validate every public claim—rather they assess controls, data systems, and whether ICE followed its own policies [4] [10]. Where DHS made aggressive public claims without publishing supporting data, journalists and advocates concluded the claims were not corroborated by visible evidence and, in some cases, were contradicted by court outcomes or charging decisions highlighted in contemporaneous reporting [2] [11].
5. What this means for interpreting DHS’s assault statistics and next steps
The combination of OIG findings about inconsistent reporting practices and external reporting that DHS did not provide reproducible data means that dramatic headline percentage increases should be treated cautiously unless DHS publishes a clear methodology and underlying incident list [3] [2]. The OIG has already recommended standardizing definitions and improving cross‑system reporting; implementing those recommendations and publishing a reconciled dataset or metadata would enable independent verification and reduce disputes over the scale and nature of assaults on ICE officers [3] [4]. If DHS continues to make policy changes or operational decisions based on these statistics, transparency about definitions, timeframes, and whether incidents include attempted assaults, threats, or non‑physical acts will be necessary for public trust and for independent audits to evaluate the claims conclusively [3] [10].