How many shootings by ICE and Border Patrol agents since 2017 have been independently verified by video or court records?

1. The datasets reporters cite and what they actually verify

The Trace, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence and federal immigration enforcement, has compiled a dataset of incidents involving ICE and Border Patrol agents and is reported by multiple outlets as counting dozens of incidents—29 as of Jan. 9 in one report and “more than a dozen” in others—but those stories make clear the Trace’s numbers come from news reports augmented by public records and are likely an undercount rather than a clean tally of independently verified cases by video or court ruling ^{[4] [5] [2]}.

2. What “independently verified” means in this reporting context

The Trace and other outlets say they “pieced together” details from police departments, prosecutors, court records and local media to document shootings, which means some incidents are corroborated by court filings or official records while others rest on contemporary reporting; the Trace’s methodology specifically notes using police and court records for verification, but the published pieces in the supplied reporting do not enumerate how many entries in its database have video or court-record confirmation ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Video evidence: high-profile cases versus frequent gaps

Video is available for some high-profile episodes—most notably the Minneapolis shooting that was captured from multiple angles and widely circulated—while other recent cases lack footage; prosecutors and federal investigators have explicitly reported no surveillance or bodycam footage in the Portland Border Patrol shooting, for example, underscoring that video corroboration is uneven across incidents ^{[6] [3]}.

4. Court records as partial corroboration and their limits

Court filings and prosecutions have supplied independent corroboration in specific matters cited by reporters—court documents were used in reporting on the Portland case and other incidents, and the Trace cites police and court records in reconstructing events—but the publicly available reporting does not translate that usage into a single numeric total of shootings “verified” by court records alone ^{[3] [1]}.

5. Discrepancies between agency claims and independent reporting

Department of Homeland Security statements about agents defending themselves frequently conflict with independent video or court evidence in some episodes, and local reporting has repeatedly noted a lack of immediate independent corroboration for DHS characterizations in several shootings, which complicates efforts to count only those incidents that are independently verified ^{[7] [8]}.

6. What can be concluded from the supplied reporting

From the material provided: trackers like the Trace report dozens of incidents since 2017 and explicitly use court and police records to corroborate many entries, while high-profile shootings such as the Minneapolis case are corroborated by video; however, no source among the supplied reporting gives a definitive numeric answer to “how many shootings since 2017 have been independently verified by video or court records,” and notable cases (e.g., Portland) show investigators sometimes find no video even when court filings exist ^{[4] [1] [3]}.

7. Why an exact number remains elusive and what’s needed

An exact, defensible count requires access to the Trace dataset or an equivalent countsheet that flags which incidents are corroborated by video and which by court records, plus cross-checks against federal inspector-general reports and local court dockets; the existing articles establish that many incidents have documentary corroboration but do not provide the itemized, verifiable total requested ^{[2] [1]}.