How often have ICE or Border Patrol agents been injured by bites in the past decade, and what were the outcomes?

1. What the public record actually contains about bite incidents

There is no centralized, public dataset in the provided reporting that counts bite injuries sustained by ICE or Border Patrol agents over the past ten years; mainstream stories and agency communications cite isolated events rather than a decade-long statistic, and investigative outlets and fact-checkers focus on a few high-profile episodes rather than compiling every minor assault or scuffle in agency logs ^{[1] [4] [3]}.

2. The high-profile Minneapolis case and its reported outcome

Multiple outlets reported that an anti-ICE protester allegedly bit off an HSI or federal officer’s finger during chaotic Minneapolis demonstrations in January 2026 and that DHS publicly circulated a graphic image of the injury, which officials used to describe the severity of threats to agents; the reporting frames this as a singular, gruesome wound rather than part of a recurring pattern ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Disputed evidence and the role of fact-checking

Fact-checkers and local reporting warn that visuals and claims from the protests have been contested: Snopes noted that images and videos circulating after protests are often difficult to link definitively to named individuals or single incidents, and other outlets documented discrepancies between agency narratives and footage in separate enforcement episodes, underscoring that alleged bite injuries sometimes enter the record without independent medical- or bodycam-confirmed corroboration in the public domain ^{[3] [4]}.

4. How agencies and advocates interpret isolated bite claims

DHS and agency spokespeople have used reports of violent assaults, including the circulated finger photo, to argue that enforcement operations face escalating physical risks — a framing that can justify increased operational security or secrecy — while critics and some journalists caution that highlighting exceptional acts of violence during protests can serve political or institutional agendas and may not reflect routine day-to-day risks faced by agents ^{[2] [5]}.

5. Context from related safety and violence data

Broader coverage of ICE and Border Patrol activity in 2025–2026 emphasizes shootings, deaths in custody, doxxing, and other physical threats to or by agents, rather than bites specifically: advocacy reporting and outlets like The Marshall Project and The Guardian have cataloged shootings and deaths linked to immigration enforcement, showing the media spotlight has concentrated on lethal force and custody fatalities more than on bite injuries ^{[6] [7] [8]}.

6. What can be concluded about frequency and outcomes

Based on the materials provided, human-bite injuries to ICE or Border Patrol personnel appear to be rare in publicly reported accounts over the past decade and are represented mainly by isolated, high-profile allegations with contested evidence; the clearest reported outcome in the available sources is an allegedly severed finger publicized by DHS and reported by major outlets in January 2026, but the absence of an authoritative agency tally or medical documentation in the supplied reporting prevents a definitive count or systematic assessment of outcomes ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

7. Caveats, competing narratives and where the record is thin

The record supplied lacks a decade-long official log of non-fatal assaults specifically classified as “bites,” and reporting shows disputes over images and witness claims in high-profile incidents; therefore any numeric claim about frequency would be speculative without access to internal injury reports, worker-compensation claims, or an independent database that specifically tracks bite injuries to federal immigration personnel ^{[4] [5]}.