How many were shot and killed by ice agents during the Biden and Obama administrations
Executive summary
There is no clear, publicly documented tally in the provided reporting of how many people were shot and killed by ICE agents specifically during the Obama or Biden administrations; federal agencies repeatedly declined to provide a simple count and researchers have had to sue for records to build a picture of ICE use of deadly force [1] [2]. Reporting and advocacy documents distinguish between deaths in ICE custody (which are counted and reported) and shootings by immigration agents in the field (which are scattered across investigations and media accounts), and the sources here do not supply an authoritative number for either administration [3] [4].
1. What the records and reporting actually show — fragmented incident lists, not neat administration tallies
Investigations by outlets such as The Trace and others assembled incident-level records of ICE agents firing weapons over many years and documented individual fatal shootings (for example, a February 23, 2018 fatality in Virginia), but these projects rely on piecing together public records, local reporting and internal logs rather than a single, agency-published count organized by presidential term [4] [2]. Journalists and researchers repeatedly ran into limits: DHS and ICE did not provide comprehensive, administration-by-administration summaries when asked, forcing reporters to rely on FOIA suits and public-record reconstructions rather than a simple official total [1] [2].
2. Why the numbers are elusive — agency opacity and different categories of death
DHS and ICE separate categories of harm — “in custody” deaths (medical, suicide, other causes while detained) versus agent-involved shootings during enforcement actions — and the reporting shows agencies often refuse to aggregate or release shooting logs on demand, necessitating litigation to obtain even partial records [3] [2]. PBS News noted DHS did not respond when asked for the number of federal immigration agent-involved shootings in either the Trump or Biden administrations, underscoring that the agency was not supplying a cross-administration tally to the public [1].
3. What can be cited from these sources about Obama and Biden specifically
The materials provided document that many deaths in ICE custody occurred over multiple administrations (for example, an advocacy report cites 56 deaths in ICE custody during the Obama administration), but that figure is about custody deaths, not shootings by agents in enforcement operations, and therefore does not answer the specific question about being “shot and killed by ICE agents” [3]. The Trace and related investigations compile individual shootings spanning years and include incidents from 2018 onward, which falls during the Trump era and not consistently within earlier administrations’ records; those pieces confirm that shootings happened but do not translate to a complete Obama- or Biden-era fatality count in the sources provided [4] [2].
4. Competing narratives and political context
Advocates and watchdogs frame the problem as systemic and persistent across administrations, arguing that outdated use-of-force policies and weak accountability mean shootings recur unless top leadership changes practice [4] [2]. By contrast, administrations and some federal officials have tended to treat individual shootings as the subject of internal or DOJ review and sometimes publicly declare actions justified before probes conclude, which complicates independent counting and accountability [1] [5]. Media reconstructions have focused heavily on post-2023 and Trump-era incidents, which skews public attention away from earlier periods even as researchers pursue long-term logs [6] [7].
5. Bottom line and limits of available evidence
Based on the reporting provided, an authoritative number of people shot and killed by ICE agents during the Obama administration or during the Biden administration cannot be produced: the agencies have not supplied consolidated, administration-specific counts and the sources here offer incident-based reporting, lawsuits to obtain logs, and custody-death totals that do not equate to agent-inflicted shootings [1] [2] [3]. To answer definitively would require access to the full ICE shooting logs or an agency-produced breakdown by date and outcome — documents the sources show were withheld or only partially released [2].