Did 296 people get shot by ice during obamas presidency?

1. If the claim were literal, what it would assert and why that matters

A statement that "296 people were shot by ICE during Obama’s presidency" would mean nearly 300 instances in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used firearms to shoot people between 2009–2017, an extraordinary tally that would be reflected in internal logs, independent investigations, congressional oversight and reporting; none of the reporting supplied documents such a number tied specifically to shootings by ICE in the Obama years, and conflating categories—deaths in custody, shootings by any DHS agents, and deaths resulting from medical neglect—can produce inflated impressions ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What the sources actually report about deaths and shootings involving ICE

The National Immigrant Justice Center/ACLU/DWN reporting cited in these materials says 56 individuals died while in ICE custody during the Obama administration, a figure that pertains to deaths in detention and does not equate to 56 people shot by ICE agents in the field ^[1]. Separately, investigative reporting by The Trace describes a multi-year effort to obtain ICE’s shooting logs across administrations and highlights that shootings exist in agency records and that some incidents were not publicly documented until those logs were produced; however, that reporting does not provide an Obama-era total of 296 shootings ^[2]. Other items in the collection concern later years—such as a spike in 2025 detention deaths and recent Minneapolis shootings during the 2025–2026 enforcement surge—but again do not retroactively substantiate a 296-shooting count for 2009–2017 ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

3. How categories get muddled and why a 296 number may be a misread

Advocacy groups and journalists distinguish between multiple datasets—deaths in ICE custody, officer-involved shootings by ICE or other DHS components (CBP/USBP), and broader fatalities linked to enforcement actions—so mixing those produces misleading totals; for example, the ACLU/NIJC report gives a custody-death figure for Obama-era years but does not claim hundreds of shootings, while The Trace’s litigation to obtain shooter logs shows that even counting shootings requires careful parsing of who fired, when, and whether the shooting was fatal ^{[1] [2]}. Wikipedia-style lists and contemporaneous coverage frequently note uncertainty about which DHS component fired in some incidents, further complicating any simple summation ^[6].

4. What the gaps in available reporting mean for accountability and public claims

The Trace journalist’s lawsuit to secure ICE shooting logs underscores that the agency has not fully disclosed its own records without legal pressure, which means public tallies can be incomplete or undercounted—and conversely that unsupported large figures (like 296) lack visible documentary backing in the provided corpus ^[2]. The supplied sources document investigations, advocacy reports and later-year spikes in custody deaths, but none produce an audited, confirmed list showing 296 Obama-era shootings by ICE; given the opaque record-keeping and jurisdictional overlap within DHS, absolute conclusions require primary records that are not present here ^{[3] [2]}.

5. Bottom line: the claim does not stand on the supplied evidence

Based on the reporting provided, the specific claim that 296 people were shot by ICE during President Obama’s tenure is unsupported: the clearest concrete figure offered for that period is 56 people who died in ICE custody (a different category from being shot by ICE), and investigative efforts to compile shooting logs have revealed incidents but not a 296 count attributable to Obama-era ICE operations ^{[1] [2]}. Without primary ICE shooting logs or a credible compiled list showing 296 distinct shootings with dates and actors, the assertion remains unsubstantiated in these sources and likely conflates separate metrics or later-period incidents.