What publicly available FOIA records and lawsuits have produced ICE use‑of‑force logs since 2015?
Executive summary
Public records and litigation since 2015 have produced a patchwork of ICE use‑of‑force material: agency FOIA libraries and proactive disclosure pages publish policies and some logs, targeted FOIA lawsuits by advocacy groups and journalists have forced release of inspection reports and incident files, and third‑party repositories track requests and litigation—but no single, comprehensive public “use‑of‑force database” compiled by ICE for 2015–present is identified in these sources [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. ICE’s own FOIA programs and proactive disclosures: what’s officially posted
ICE maintains FOIA libraries and proactive disclosure pages that include FOIA logs, management directives and records “likely to become the subject of three or more requests,” and the DHS FOIA Library similarly hosts departmental use‑of‑force policies; those public portals are the first stop for any researcher seeking officially released ICE use‑of‑force material [5] [6] [2] [1].
2. Journalists’ litigation that forced release of officer incident files
Reporting and litigation by news organizations led to release of detailed use‑of‑force incident records covering multiple years; investigative journalists from outlets cited in reporting forced ICE to disclose records showing shootings and other force incidents between roughly 2015 and 2021, exposing patterns that advocates describe as a “culture of impunity” [3]. The source notes those disclosures came only after litigation and that ICE often resists releasing such documents under FOIA exemptions [3].
3. Advocacy group FOIAs and lawsuits producing inspection reports and local facility logs
Civil‑rights and immigrant‑rights groups have used FOIA suits to extract inspection reports and facility‑level force logs; for example, the National Immigrant Justice Center and partners released FOIA‑obtained ICE inspection documents revealing multiple “immediate uses of force” and chemical agent deployments at the Farmville detention facility, along with internal contract and discrepancy reports obtained through FOIA or litigation [4]. The Immigrant Defense Project and allies pursued FOIA litigation around home‑raid policies and received ICE and DHS training and practice documents in a case that concluded in 2019, producing a tranche of agency materials though not framed as a consolidated use‑of‑force log [7].
4. Litigation and watchdog suits that widened access beyond single incidents
Longstanding FOIA litigation by watchdogs—such as TRAC—has challenged ICE’s broader withholding practices and abrupt changes in disclosure, showing that suits can compel data releases or at least force adjudication over what ICE must publish; TRAC’s suits targeted enforcement and detainer records and highlighted ICE’s shifting disclosure posture beginning in 2017 [8]. These cases signal that systemic access to use‑of‑force logs has been produced incrementally and unevenly via adversarial processes [8].
5. The intermediaries and repositories that collect FOIA outputs
Nonprofits and data projects maintain public repositories and FOIA‑request trackers that aggregate ICE releases and litigation outcomes—examples include the Deportation Data Project’s FOIA page and The FOIA Project’s request and litigation tools—helping researchers find which FOIA requests or lawsuits yielded records relevant to force and detention practices [9] [10]. These aggregators do not themselves create logs but point to where released records live.
6. Limits, incentives and the politics of disclosure
Multiple sources document that ICE historically resisted disclosure and carried a large FOIA backlog through 2015, prompting both internal reform efforts and heavy use of exemptions; advocates and journalists argue that information was obtainable only through litigation, while ICE’s FOIA pages emphasize proactive posting where feasible—an institutional tension reflecting competing incentives to disclose versus control sensitive enforcement information [11] [3] [2]. The available documents therefore reflect adversarial wins and agency curation rather than continuous, comprehensive public use‑of‑force logs covering every year since 2015.
Conclusion: what researchers can actually use right now
Researchers seeking ICE use‑of‑force logs since 2015 will find material in three practical streams: ICE/DHS FOIA and proactive libraries for policies and some released logs [1] [2], FOIA litigation outputs and inspection reports obtained by journalists and advocacy groups that produced incident‑level files [3] [4] [7], and third‑party repositories and trackers that catalog requests and suits [9] [10]. None of the provided sources documents a single, exhaustive ICE use‑of‑force log for 2015–present; further FOIA filings or court victories would be required to assemble a definitive, consolidated public dataset.