Fact check: How many times has ICE used tear gas during raids in 2024?

1. Why the question can’t be answered with a single number right now — reporting stops before 2024 totals

All supplied articles focus on a release of footage and investigations tied to a February 1, 2023 incident at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, where footage shows chemical agents labelled as tear gas used against detainees during a protest and hunger strike. Investigative tallies cited by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights are reported as 29 documented uses of chemical agents at that facility from 2016 through early 2023, and other reporting references a larger count of over 70 uses of force including chemical agents at the same facility, but none of the pieces extend those counts into 2024 or enumerate ICE-wide raids in 2024 ^{[1] [2] [3]}. This leaves the specific 2024 figure unreported in the set of sources provided.

2. What the sources do document — facility-level use and video evidence that spurred scrutiny

The articles document a concrete event: video showing heavily armed guards detaining hunger strikers after using chemical agents at the Tacoma facility, which prompted public scrutiny and reporting in February 2024 about the prior year’s incident. The University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights has compiled facility-specific data on the use of force and chemical agents that journalists rely upon; those compilations provide the primary empirical basis cited in these stories, not an ICE-wide deployment log for 2024. The reporting therefore supports a conclusion that documented use at this facility is established through 2023, but the leap to a 2024 raid count is not supported by these articles ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

3. Conflicting framings — “chemical agents” vs. “tear gas,” and counts of force vs. chemical-agent incidents

The sources sometimes use “chemical agents” and “tear gas” interchangeably, which matters when compiling counts because the categories of force reported by the University of Washington include many types of restraint beyond chemical agents. One report mentions over 70 recorded uses of force, including chemical agents, which conflates broader force incidents with specific chemical-agent deployments. Other items explicitly catalogue 29 uses of chemical agents at the Tacoma site over a multi-year period. The distinction between these metrics—total uses of force versus incidents involving chemical agents—is critical for any accurate 2024 tally, and the supplied materials do not resolve that distinction for 2024 itself ^{[3] [2]}.

4. What’s missing — ICE-wide data, raid-by-raid logs, and 2024-specific reporting

To answer how many times ICE used tear gas during raids in 2024 requires either an ICE operational log, a Freedom of Information Act release, or contemporaneous reporting aggregating raid-level incidents across jurisdictions for that year. The provided sources lack ICE-wide or 2024-specific compilations; they are facility-focused and stop at counts through early 2023. Without a comprehensive dataset or a reporting project covering all ICE operations in 2024, any numeric answer would be speculative and unsupported by the supplied evidence ^{[3] [2]}.

5. Bottom line and how to get a definitive answer — what to request or watch for next

Given the current evidence, the defensible statement is that no source in the provided set documents the number of times ICE used tear gas during raids in 2024; available documentation instead records facility-level chemical-agent use through 2023 and highlights a notable February 2023 incident at the Tacoma processing center. To produce a definitive 2024 count, request ICE operational or use-of-force logs for 2024, seek FOIA releases, or look for investigative projects that compile nationwide detention and raid incidents for 2024; absent that, public reporting will continue to supply facility-specific snapshots rather than an ICE-wide 2024 total ^{[1] [4] [3]}.