Which ICE agents have died in the line of duty since the agency's founding and what were the circumstances?

1. Official tally and what it covers

ICE’s public materials and outside reporting converge on a post‑9/11 count: ICE’s Wall of Honor is cited as listing 29 officers who “have died since the agency was created after September 11” ^[1]. The agency’s own Fallen Officers/End of Watch pages present individual narratives that pair names with brief circumstances — for example noting on‑duty COVID‑19 exposure and a cancer linked to World Trade Center recovery work among the deaths listed ^[2]. The ODMP (Officer Down Memorial Page) also maintains memorials for DHS/ICE personnel, reflecting the broader law‑enforcement custom of tracking line‑of‑duty deaths ^[4].

2. Representative cases and causes of death reported by ICE

ICE’s public entries and media summaries identify multiple types of line‑of‑duty deaths: an officer who contracted COVID‑19 while working in a county jail and later died (Officer Phillips, exposed June 12, 2020; died July 26, 2020) and a Special Agent (Dennis P. McCarthy) who died of cancer attributed to assignment at World Trade Center recovery efforts ^[2]. The agency also documents violent deaths of agents: for example, Special Agent Anthony S. Minetto was shot during what began as a minor traffic accident and then murdered by the other driver in Sparks, Nevada ^[2], and earlier historical entries describe agents fatally shot in attempts to apprehend suspects ^[2].

3. High‑profile international ambush and the 2011 killing of Jaime Zapata

The killing of Special Agent Jaime Jorge Zapata in Mexico in 2011 is widely reported as one of the most high‑profile post‑9/11 deaths of an ICE special agent abroad; Zapata and a colleague were ambushed and Zapata was murdered by members of the criminal group Los Zetas in San Luis Potosí, Mexico ^[5]. That case has been cited in multiple outlets as emblematic of overseas risks faced by DEA/ICE personnel working on transnational investigations ^[5].

4. Historical scope: pre‑ICE deaths and differing framing

ICE’s Wall of Honor also incorporates deaths that predate ICE’s 2003 formation or that derive from predecessor immigration enforcement agencies; reporting highlights that the memorialized history stretches back decades, with “more than a dozen” officers listed as shot or stabbed to death since 1915 in ICE’s records ^[3]. Mother Jones and other outlets note that the last death tied directly to an enforcement operation in ICE’s records appears to have occurred in 1970, underscoring that some entries preserve a longer institutional lineage rather than strictly post‑2003 operational fatalities ^[3].

5. Why counts differ and where reporting is incomplete

Public counts and case lists vary because ICE’s Wall of Honor mixes personnel from predecessor agencies and post‑9/11 personnel, outside compilations may use different inclusion criteria, and media databases (like ODMP) filter by modern agency names ^{[1] [3] [4]}. The sources provided here name several individual deaths and describe categories of causes, but do not deliver a single, complete roster in full text within the available excerpts; therefore a definitive list of every named agent and full circumstance as an integrated table cannot be reproduced from these snippets alone ^{[2] [1] [3]}.

6. Bottom line

ICE’s published Wall of Honor and reporting converge on roughly 29 post‑9/11 line‑of‑duty deaths and a longer institutional record that reaches back to the early 20th century for predecessor roles ^{[1] [3]}. Notable entries include violent ambushes such as the 2011 killing of Jaime Zapata, off‑duty murders and on‑duty shootings, deaths from occupational disease tied to 9/11 recovery, and pandemic‑related deaths like the 2020 COVID exposure case; however, the publicly excerpted sources available here do not present a single compiled roster sufficient to name every fallen ICE officer and the full circumstance for each in this response ^{[2] [5] [1]}.