Were there ice shootings during the obama terms
Executive summary
A straightforward reading of the available reporting shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was involved in lethal incidents and deaths during the Obama administration, and investigative reporters have obtained agency shooting logs that include the end of Obama’s term — but the sources provided do not supply a comprehensive, public list in this packet proving a specific count of officer-involved shootings across the entire Obama presidency [1] [2]. In short: yes, deadly uses of force and deaths in ICE custody occurred during Obama’s time in office, but the dataset on formal "ICE shootings" is incomplete in the supplied reporting and requires fuller public records to enumerate precisely [1] [2].
1. What the records and watchdog reports actually say
Advocacy and watchdog reporting documents that people died while in ICE custody across multiple administrations; one coalition report cited in the supplied material states that 56 individuals died while in ICE custody during the Obama administration, a figure presented to highlight medical neglect and systemic failures in detention rather than a tidy accounting of shootings alone [1]. That report frames those deaths as connected to substandard medical care and inspection failures, underscoring systemic accountability issues within ICE even as it does not break every death down by cause in the snippets provided [1].
2. Investigative journalism uncovered ICE shooting logs that include Obama’s term
A long-form investigation by a journalist who sued ICE for records says she obtained agency logs covering ICE shootings that span back to the final year of the Obama administration — reporting which implies that incidents of agents firing their weapons were recorded in that period and were not fully disclosed to the public without litigation [2]. The reporter’s account describes difficulty getting full records from ICE, a multi-year legal effort to force disclosure, and the eventual production of logs that covered Obama’s last year, indicating that agency use-of-force incidents existed in that timeframe even if the public summaries were sparse [2].
3. Distinguishing deaths in custody from “ICE shootings”
The media and advocacy sources supplied mix different categories — deaths in custody, officer-involved shootings, and other lethal uses of force — and the reports make clear those are distinct phenomena; the ACLU/NIJC report centers on detention deaths linked to medical neglect and inspection failures rather than cataloguing only shooting incidents [1]. That distinction matters because a tally of 56 detention deaths under Obama [1] does not equate to 56 shootings by ICE agents; some deaths occurred in detention from illness or alleged neglect, while other records and logs referenced by reporters document agents firing weapons [1] [2].
4. Context, constraints and alternative viewpoints
ICE and federal defenders have historically resisted broad public disclosure of use-of-force logs and internal investigations, which complicates independent assessments — a point underscored by the reporter’s need to sue for logs and ICE’s initial refusal to provide records [2]. Advocacy groups emphasize systemic neglect and the human toll of detention [1], while some pro-enforcement outlets emphasize the relative rarity of wrongful arrests or errors in numerical terms and defend broader ICE operations [3]. The supplied reporting therefore shows competing agendas: watchdogs and civil-rights groups pushing for transparency and accountability [1] [2], and enforcement-aligned voices stressing operational necessity and arguing that errors are a small fraction of total actions [3].
5. Bottom line and what remains unresolved
The supplied sources together establish that fatal incidents and agent use-of-force events involving ICE occurred during the Obama administration and that investigative reporting recovered ICE shooting logs that include Obama’s final year [1] [2]. The packet does not, however, include a definitive, contemporaneous ICE-produced list enumerating every officer-involved shooting across the entire Obama presidency, so a precise tally and contextual breakdown of causes (shooting vs. medical death vs. other) cannot be supplied from these materials alone [1] [2]. To move from the confirmed existence of such incidents to a full accounting would require obtaining the complete ICE logs and internal investigative findings that reporters and advocates have had to litigate for [2].