What official investigations or internal DHS reviews have been opened about tear‑gas deployments near schools since January 2026?
Executive summary
Since January 2026 multiple federal and state-level inquiries sparked by aggressive federal immigration‑enforcement operations in Minneapolis and Chicago have touched on the use of chemical irritants near schools, but the public record shows investigations are fragmented and focused more broadly on shootings and agency conduct than on a discrete, agency‑announced internal DHS review solely about tear‑gas deployments near schools [1] [2] [3]. Reporting documents DOJ and component investigations, local lawsuits and attorney‑general actions, resignations by federal prosecutors, and stark disagreements between witnesses and DHS about whether chemical agents were used near school zones [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. Federal criminal and civil probes: DOJ and component inquiries have broadened to include crowd‑control tactics
The Justice Department has opened investigations tied to major incidents in Minneapolis — notably the fatal shooting of Renee Good and related confrontations where federal agents used crowd‑control measures — and DOJ statements and reporting show federal attention on these events even as the probes often concentrate on use of force and potential civil‑rights violations rather than a narrow “tear‑gas‑near‑schools” audit [1] [4] [2]. Congressional pressure has pushed calls for independent probes and for reforms to DHS funding, underscoring that DOJ and lawmakers are viewing the deployments and tactics as part of a larger inquiry into federal law‑enforcement conduct [3].
2. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and component investigations: some internal reporting disclosed, but limited scope
Media obtained an initial CBP report into the shooting of Alex Pretti that included descriptions of agent actions during arrests and crowd engagements, indicating components of DHS are conducting internal inquiries into specific use‑of‑force episodes; that reporting includes video evidence of agents throwing and kicking canisters near what witnesses identified as a preschool area, though the CBP report focuses on the shooting incident itself [2]. There is no sourced public notice in the provided reporting of a DHS‑wide internal review explicitly dedicated to tear‑gas deployments near schools since January 2026 [2] [8].
3. State attorneys‑general, lawsuits and multistate legal actions: civil litigation as accountability mechanism
State officials have moved aggressively in court: Minnesota and municipalities filed suit against DHS over the deployments, and a coalition of attorneys general filed briefs supporting Minnesota’s challenge to what they call militarized and illegal federal deployments — filings that explicitly cite incidents involving children and schools and frame litigation as a remedy where criminal inquiries may not address broader policy questions [9] [10] [5]. These civil actions function as formal, public investigations through discovery even if they are not criminal probes.
4. Local investigative actors and resignations: fractures in prosecutorial oversight
Reporting documents resignations by more than a half‑dozen federal prosecutors in Minnesota who cited concern about the direction of investigations into fatal shootings and the exclusion of state and local authorities from evidence — a signal that standard cooperative investigative channels were disrupted and that oversight of crowd‑control tactics, including chemical agents near schools, became contested terrain [6] [1]. Local agencies (e.g., the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension) had been involved but later were limited in access, complicating independent fact‑finding [1].
5. Conflicting official accounts and evidentiary gaps about tear‑gas specifically near schools
Witness accounts and local reporting describe tear‑gas or chemical irritants used near schools and in school zones, with one high‑profile account of a family and infants harmed and descriptions of canisters near a preschool and Roosevelt High School [11] [12] [2] [7]. DHS and its components in multiple statements have denied specific allegations of tear‑gas use at certain school scenes (notably at Roosevelt), creating a direct factual dispute; the public record in these sources does not document a DHS admission of systemic misuse or a published internal DHS review dedicated solely to tear‑gas deployments near schools [7] [13].
6. Bottom line: investigations exist but are diffuse; no single public DHS internal review focused only on school‑adjacent tear gas is documented in reporting provided
The available reporting demonstrates multiple active inquiries — DOJ criminal investigations, CBP/agency incident reports, state civil suits and multistate AG actions, and local prosecutorial turmoil — all of which intersect with allegations of chemical‑agent use near schools, but none of the cited sources identify a singular, public DHS internal review exclusively about tear‑gas deployments near schools opened since January 2026 [1] [2] [9] [6] [7]. The record shows contested facts, competing official narratives, and litigation that may produce further disclosures; the absence of a clearly labeled DHS internal review in the sources may reflect either lack of such a review or limits in the reporting available here [8].