How many documented ICE shootings are publicly listed in The Trace/Business Insider dataset, and how are they dated?
Executive summary
The Trace/Business Insider collaboration has two related but distinct public datasets: a six‑year, records‑based analysis covering 2015–2021 that found dozens of ICE‑involved shootings, and an ongoing public tracker that updates incidents in real time; the six‑year review identified at least 59 shootings in 2015–2021 (per The Trace’s analysis of records) while The Trace’s live tracker listed 29 incidents — including 16 shootings — as of January 9, 2026 [1] [2].
1. The core count from the six‑year records review: 59 shootings, 2015–2021
The longform investigation by Lila Hassan — co‑published by Business Insider, The Trace and Type Investigations — relied on records obtained through litigation and additional open‑records requests to compile a multi‑year accounting; that body of reporting found at least 59 shootings involving ICE agents across the 2015–2021 period, and noted no criminal indictments arising from those cases in the public records they reviewed [3] [1].
2. The public, rolling tracker: a separate, updating inventory dated to incident reports
Separately, The Trace maintains a public tracker that aggregates news reports and an online gun‑violence archive to log when federal immigration agents fire weapons, draw weapons, or use less‑lethal munitions; that rolling dataset is dated to the incident dates reported in source media and the archive, and reflected 29 total incidents — 16 of them shootings — as of January 9, 2026, demonstrating that the tracker functions as an evolving, incident‑date timeline rather than a closed multi‑year file [4] [2].
3. How the datasets are dated and why counts differ
The six‑year dataset is rooted in internal ICE records obtained for a defined span (2015–2021) via lawsuit and then cross‑checked with media and local records, so its dating scheme is tied to the official incident dates in those agency records and contemporaneous local reporting [3] [5]. The Trace’s public tracker instead timestamps each entry to the date of the reported shooting or weapon discharge and continuously adds new events, which explains why short‑term counts (for example, “16 shootings” tied to the recent enforcement surge) can differ from the historical total in the closed records review [2] [4].
4. Limitations, undercounts, and competing tallies
Both The Trace and Business Insider explicitly caution that their numbers are likely undercounts because not all shootings or uses of force by immigration agents are publicly reported and because reporting methods vary across jurisdictions; contemporaneous press tallies during recent enforcement actions — which counted “more than a dozen” or “16” shootings — reflect the live tracker’s incident‑dating but do not replace the longer historical compilation [6] [7] [8]. Alternative tallies cited in local reporting have emphasized fatalities (for example, reporting that ICE officers shot and killed 23 people across a broader timeframe), which is a different metric — deaths versus shootings — and stems from separate analysis choices in the joint investigation [3].
5. What readers should take away about the numbers
The safest, evidence‑based summary is that the litigation‑backed, closed study covering 2015–2021 documented at least 59 ICE‑involved shootings (per The Trace/Business Insider records analysis), while The Trace’s ongoing public tracker — dated by individual incident dates drawn from news reports and an online gun‑violence archive — listed 29 incidents including 16 shootings as of January 9, 2026; both projects flag likely undercounting and use different temporal scopes and sourcing, which explains the diverging headline figures [1] [2] [4].