Is there a compiled, authoritative list of shootings by U.S. immigration agents across administrations (Obama–Trump–Biden), and who maintains it?
Executive summary
There is no single, publicly accessible, government-endorsed “authoritative” list that compiles every shooting by U.S. immigration agents spanning the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations; instead, scholars, journalists and advocacy groups have assembled partial databases from court records, agency logs and media reports while federal agencies keep much of the granular use‑of‑force material tightly controlled [1] [2]. Those private compilations — led by outlets like The Trace and investigative groups such as Type Investigations, supplemented by data sources like the Gun Violence Archive and ad hoc newsroom timelines — are the closest practical resources, but they acknowledge gaps and likely undercounts [3] [4] [1].
1. What the official record looks like — internal logs, limited public summaries
The Department of Homeland Security and its components maintain internal use‑of‑force and shooting logs, and DHS reporting has disclosed summary counts for some years (for example CBP firearm‑related incidents reported for fiscal year 2023), but these agency summaries are not a comprehensive, case‑by‑case public catalogue across administrations and often lack investigative or contextual detail [5]. ICE, in particular, has historically kept detailed use‑of‑force logs closely held and has resisted releasing full records to researchers and reporters, a point documented by litigation and reporting [1] [2].
2. Who has tried to compile cross‑administration lists — journalists, investigators, and databases
A handful of investigative outlets have built the most systematic datasets: The Trace has been tracking gun incidents tied to immigration enforcement and pursued litigation to obtain ICE shooting logs that spanned multiple administrations [3] [2], while Type Investigations published a multi‑year probe into ICE’s deadly‑force history that relied on public records, bodycam footage and documents obtained through litigation [1]. Newsrooms such as The Guardian and collaborative newsroom projects have also compiled incident lists using third‑party databases like the Gun Violence Archive plus local reporting [4].
3. Crowd‑sourced and open platforms — Wikipedia and local timelines
Publicly editable compilations — notably several Wikipedia pages that list shootings and raids during specific periods or administrations — have sprung up and are regularly updated by contributors, but they are not official and vary in completeness and sourcing [6] [7]. Local TV and newspaper timelines (for instance the Get the Facts analysis cited by WBALTV) provide additional incident lists but are similarly dependent on media reports and sometimes on aggregated third‑party datasets [5].
4. Strengths and limits of the private compilations
These journalist‑ and NGO‑maintained lists are valuable because they stitch together fragments from court filings, bodycam releases, agency documents produced through lawsuits and news reporting, but their creators themselves warn the numbers likely undercount real incidents because shootings and firearm incidents involving immigration agents are not consistently made public or uniformly reported across jurisdictions [3] [4] [1]. The Trace’s reporter Lila Hassan used litigation to force partial production of ICE logs, showing both what's possible and how incomplete public access has been [2].
5. The question of “authority” and political context
No independent, nonpartisan government entity currently publishes a definitive, publicly accessible, cross‑administration catalogue that the research community unanimously treats as authoritative; instead, the most authoritative‑in‑practice sources are investigative projects and aggregated databases that have publicly disclosed their methods and limits — and their work operates in a politically charged environment where administrations and agency spokespeople may frame incidents very differently [1] [8]. Journalists and watchdogs argue that agency opacity and selective disclosures create incentives for external actors to compile their own lists, while officials sometimes emphasize self‑defense or operational necessity [9] [10].
6. Bottom line for researchers
For a researcher seeking the best available cross‑administration picture, the recommended approach is to consult multiple independent compilations — The Trace’s tracker and reporting, Type Investigations’ dataset and major newsroom compilations (The Guardian, AP, Reuters, local timelines) — while treating agency summaries as partial and checking primary documents obtained via public‑records suits where possible; there is no single government‑maintained, fully public, authoritative roster covering Obama through Biden to date [3] [1] [4] [5].