How many shootings involving CBP agents occurred under the Obama administration compared with the Trump administration?
Executive summary
Contemporary reporting documents dozens of shootings involving federal immigration agents during the Trump administration’s recent enforcement surge, with several outlets compiling counts for CBP specifically — but reporters and officials say comparable, verified totals for the Obama years are not publicly available from the agency, making direct apples‑to‑apples comparison impossible with the sources at hand [1] [2].
1. What the counts in the reporting actually show about the Trump era
Investigations and trackers assembled by news outlets and nonprofits show a marked number of shootings involving Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other DHS immigration agents during President Trump’s recent term: The Trace’s tracker reports that CBP agents were involved in 18 shootings in its dataset through late 2025 [1], while a public crowdsourced Wikipedia list of immigration‑agent shootings in the second Trump administration puts the total of immigration‑agent shootings at “at least 30” since Jan. 20, 2025 — a list that groups CBP, Border Patrol and ICE incidents together and flags classification ambiguities [3]. Major news organizations have also documented several high‑profile fatal shootings in early 2026 — including Minneapolis cases that prompted federal and state probes — and cited multiple incidents in which initial government accounts were later contradicted by video evidence [4] [5] [6].
2. Why an Obama‑era total can’t be confidently reported from these sources
Multiple reporting threads make plain that CBP, DHS and related agencies have not provided a clear historical tally for earlier administrations: PBS noted that the agency declined to give numbers for the Biden or prior Trump administrations and said the lack of agency disclosure “makes it difficult to assess how the volume of these incidents have changed over time” — the same absence of comprehensive official data applies to the Obama years in the available reporting [2]. Other pieces and advocacy groups discuss abuses or higher rates of confrontations under prior administrations in qualitative terms, but none of the provided sources offer a definitive, verifiable count of shootings involving CBP specifically during the Obama presidency [7].
3. How journalists and trackers construct these counts — and their limits
Trackers like The Trace and crowdsourced compilations lean on news reports, public records and sometimes official disclosures to compile incident lists, which produces undercounts or classification inconsistencies: The Trace itself warns its numbers—18 CBP‑involved shootings in its report—are likely an undercount because “shootings involving immigration agents are not always publicly reported” [1]. Wikipedia’s list groups agencies and sometimes assumes CBP involvement when multiple DHS agents were present, a methodological choice that can inflate or obscure pure CBP‑only counts [3]. Major outlets have likewise had to rely on body‑cam footage, local filings and agency statements in the absence of a centralized, transparent federal tally [2] [8].
4. Political context, competing narratives and why it matters
Counting disputes are political: proponents of stricter enforcement emphasize officer‑justified uses of force and point to administration statements defending agents, while critics — from the ACLU to former presidents and local officials — argue deployment choices and messaging have escalated confrontations and obscured transparency [6] [7] [9]. Several outlets documented a pattern in the Trump administration of rapid public defenses of agents that were later challenged by video or investigative reporting, underscoring how disputed narratives complicate efforts to compile accurate historical comparisons [10] [5].
Conclusion: what can be stated, and what cannot
From the sources provided, it is supportable to say recent Trump‑era reporting documents dozens of immigration‑agent shootings and that The Trace identified 18 incidents involving CBP specifically in its dataset through late 2025 [1] [3]. It is not supportable, from these sources, to give a reliably sourced numeric total for shootings involving CBP during the Obama administration because officials declined to supply such historical breakdowns and the reporting reviewed does not contain an authoritative Obama‑era count [2] [7]. Independent verification would require agency disclosure or a systematic public‑records compilation covering the earlier period.