How have reporting organizations compiled lists of shootings involving ICE agents during 2025 and what methodologies did they use?
Executive summary
Reporting organizations compiled 2025 lists of shootings involving ICE agents by assembling public records, newsroom investigations, lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests, then cross-checking those sources against local reporting, legal filings and interviews to create event-by-event chronologies [1] [2]. That approach produces the most complete public accounting available but leaves systematic gaps because federal investigations are slow, often opaque, and some incidents never make the public record [3] [2].
1. Source aggregation: news reports, local footage and public filings
Many compilers began by scouring mainstream and local news accounts and publicly posted video or eyewitness material to identify incidents, a method The Trace says underpins its 2025 totals and which other outlets mirrored when tallying shootings in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and elsewhere [3] [4] [5]. That aggregation strategy lets journalists capture incidents visible to communities and on social media but inherits those platforms’ uneven coverage, meaning tallies are often “likely an undercount,” as The Trace explicitly warns [3].
2. Legal discovery and lawsuits as data mines
Investigative reporters supplemented publicity searches with litigation records and civil suits: The Trace’s multi‑year reckoning relied on suing the federal government for shooting logs and then combining those logs with media reports and legal filings [1]. Wired’s account likewise describes suing for records and issuing multiple FOIA requests to cross‑analyze agency documentation with press accounts and court materials to reconstruct incidents and patterns [2].
3. FOIA and official logs: confirming names but hitting redactions
Reporters used FOIA and court‑ordered disclosures to obtain internal ICE or DHS logs that list use‑of‑force events, which enabled naming agents, time stamps and locations in some cases, but those records are frequently redacted or litigated, limiting completeness and timeliness [1] [2]. Journalists note that obtaining those logs can take years, so contemporary 2025 lists necessarily rely on a mix of finalized records and provisional media accounts [2].
4. Cross‑checking with prosecutors, oversight agencies and independent databases
Investigations cross‑referenced federal and state investigatory announcements, prosecutor statements and independent compilations such as academic or watchdog databases; Axios and the Marshall Project used that triangulation to situate 2025 incidents in longer trends and to flag where local prosecutors sought additional evidence [6] [5]. Still, jurisdictional battles—federal investigators sometimes exclude state investigators—and inconsistent sharing of evidence leave gaps that reporters must note [7] [8].
5. Interviews and on‑the‑ground reporting to fill narrative gaps
Reporters conducted dozens of interviews with victims’ families, law‑enforcement sources, former agents and legal experts to understand context and to test official accounts, an approach central to The Trace and Wired reconstructions and to coverage of high‑profile Minneapolis and Los Angeles shootings [1] [2] [4]. Those interviews yield texture and competing narratives—families and activists often contest official self‑defense claims—so compilers present alternative viewpoints alongside documentary evidence [4] [6].
6. Biases, incentives and institutional opacity shaping methodology
Outlets face competing incentives: watchdog reporters aim for comprehensive counts and sue for records [1], while government releases emphasize officer safety statistics and rising assaults to justify operations [9], an implicit agenda that shapes what data become public. Investigative methods therefore foreground public records and litigation because agency reporting is selective and sometimes used politically, a limitation reporters explicitly call out [3] [9].
7. What these methodologies produce — and what they cannot
The combined toolkit—media aggregation, FOI litigation, lawsuits, interviews and cross‑checking with prosecutors—yields a documented list of named incidents and patterns that is more detailed than official tallies, but scholars and journalists uniformly warn the results are provisional: slow federal inquiries, redactions, disputed witness accounts and incidents that never surface publicly mean published lists likely undercount total shootings and cannot resolve every legal question about culpability [3] [2] [7].