Number of shootings by ice sharks during Obama years
Executive summary
The sources supplied do not provide a definitive count of “shootings by ICE” during Barack Obama’s presidency; investigative reporting indicates records exist and have been obtained for portions of recent years, but federal agencies have repeatedly withheld comprehensive tallies for prior administrations, making a precise number for the Obama years unavailable from the provided material [1] [2]. Reporting by The Trace and others documents efforts to pry loose ICE shooting logs and notes investigations that cover overlapping spans, but those accounts stop short of publishing a clean, administration-wide total for Obama’s eight years [1].
1. What the question is really asking and why it matters
The user’s query—“Number of shootings by ice sharks during Obama years”—appears to be seeking the count of incidents in which ICE or related federal immigration officers fired their weapons while Obama was president; this is distinct from deaths in detention or later episodes under other administrations, and it demands agency-level shooting logs or an independent dataset that disaggregates incidents by date and agency (ICE, CBP, Border Patrol) to answer accurately [2] [1].
2. What the available reporting actually shows
Investigative journalist Lila Hassan’s reporting and related projects obtained ICE shooting logs through litigation and assembled multi-year data that illuminate a pattern of agent-involved shootings, but Hassan’s work and related coverage focused on a subset of years and found that ICE was initially reluctant to produce full records, requiring a two-year legal fight to obtain logs that covered the end of the Obama era through later administrations—not a simple, public tally labeled “Obama years” [1]. PBS reporting underscores the opacity: DHS and ICE repeatedly declined to provide a clear count of agent-involved shootings even for more recent administrations, which complicates historical comparisons and prevents a straightforward answer from public agency statements alone [2].
3. What numbers are present in the sources — and what they are not
The supplied sources do include related figures—such as the ACLU/NIJC claim that 56 individuals died in ICE custody during the Obama administration—but that statistic refers to deaths in detention, not shootings by ICE officers in the field or during enforcement actions, and therefore cannot be equated with agent-involved shootings [3]. The Trace’s account confirms that ICE had internal shooting logs and that some incidents were not publicly documented until obtained via lawsuit, but it does not present a definitive, administration-wide shooting total for Obama’s full term in the material provided [1].
4. Why a single, authoritative number is elusive
Three constraints explain the gap: ICE and DHS have historically resisted releasing consolidated shooting tallies and sometimes provided numbers without underlying records, investigative reporters have had to sue for logs which then covered limited timeframes rather than neatly mirroring presidential terms, and contemporary coverage of later, high-profile shootings has focused attention on more recent incidents—creating an archival blind spot for the broader Obama years in these particular sources [1] [2]. That combination means public-facing journalism and agency responses in the provided sources cannot deliver the precise count requested.
5. Alternative viewpoints, potential agendas and next steps for verification
Advocacy groups and investigative reporters presented the withheld logs as evidence of systemic problems and under-reporting by ICE, suggesting an agenda to increase transparency and accountability [1] [3]; agency statements and some administration officials have argued incidents were lawful and investigated, which reflects an institutional defense posture and a political incentive to frame operations as justified [2]. To arrive at the exact number, one would need either (a) the full set of ICE/CBP/BP shooting logs covering 2009–2017 released publicly or to journalists, or (b) an official DHS/ICE accounting that breaks incidents down by date and actor—neither of which appears in the supplied reporting [1] [2].
Conclusion
Given the material provided, it is not possible to state a verified number of shootings by ICE officers during the Obama presidency; the reporting documents that logs exist and that journalists obtained pieces of them after litigation, but it does not publish a single, authoritative Obama-era total, and public agency refusals to share comprehensive counts are explicitly noted [1] [2]. Any precise figure would require access to the complete ICE shooting logs or an official DHS breakdown for 2009–2017, neither of which is present in these sources.