How does the number of ICE agent fatalities compare to other law enforcement agencies since 2020?

1. ICE officer deaths are uncommon and, by some measures, lower than other police forces

Analysts who reviewed ICE and Border Patrol figures conclude that deaths among immigration enforcement officers are lower than the norm for U.S. policing: one Cato analysis reports that in 2025 the death rate for Border Patrol and ICE agents was well below that of other law enforcement, and that historically the police death rate has been multiple times higher than for immigration officers ^[5], a finding echoed by reporting that ICE officer deaths and assaults are “not outsized compared to other law enforcement” ^[1].

2. The leading causes of ICE personnel deaths have been illness and accidents, not battlefield‑style violence

Investigations into ICE fatality data show COVID‑19 and long‑term health effects tied to events such as 9/11 figure prominently among causes of death for ICE staff, with vehicle accidents and other non‑shooting causes also common; Mother Jones and OPB reporting highlight COVID‑19 as a leading cause and note that many agent deaths are not the dramatic, on‑street killings invoked by some political rhetoric ^{[6] [1] [2]}.

3. Public rhetoric about “deadly” risks to ICE officers is not uniformly supported by the agency’s own data

The Trump administration and DHS have framed recent enforcement as exposing ICE officers to surges in violence, and DHS released data claiming a large percentage increase in assaults in a short period ^[7]; but independent reviews find little evidence that ICE faces “severe and widespread danger” on the scale used to justify militarized deployments, and ICE’s internal records show very few historic examples of agents being killed during enforcement operations ^{[6] [1]}.

4. A different, urgent problem: ICE agents’ use of lethal force against civilians has risen and draws scrutiny

While officer fatalities are comparatively low, reporting documents a marked increase in shootings and deadly force used by immigration agents in recent years: investigations and compilations by outlets including Wired, The Trace, The Marshall Project and The Guardian identify dozens of shootings by immigration agents since 2015 and especially since mid‑2025, with multiple civilian deaths and few criminal prosecutions of agents ^{[4] [8] [9] [10]}. That trend is a separate dimension of “danger” — it speaks to risk to the public and to questions about oversight, not to fatalities among agents themselves ^{[8] [11]}.

5. Data limitations and what remains unclear from available reporting

None of the provided sources supplies a comprehensive, side‑by‑side count of ICE agent fatalities versus every other federal, state and local agency strictly for the 2020–2025/26 window, so comparisons rely on reported rates and sampled analyses rather than a single definitive dataset ^{[5] [6]}. Reporting does make clear, however, that ICE agent deaths are largely not from on‑duty homicides and that the agency’s death rate has not topped other police agencies in the reviewed years ^{[2] [5]}.

6. What the contrast means for policy and public perception

The mismatch between political claims of extraordinary peril to ICE officers and the empirical pattern of relatively low agent fatalities amplifies two competing narratives: one that seeks broader powers and armed deployments to protect officers ^[7], and another that points to the real problem of increased use‑of‑force by agents and rising detainee deaths as the urgent accountability questions ^{[8] [3]}. Both narratives shape public policy, but the factual record in these sources supports the conclusion that ICE agents die on duty at lower rates than many other police forces, even as the agency faces scrutiny for causing civilian deaths and overseeing rising numbers of deaths in custody ^{[5] [8] [3]}.