Did people get shot by ICE during the obama administration?
Executive summary
Yes — federal immigration officers have shot people in years that include the Obama era, but the sources provided do not deliver a definitive, itemized list of shootings that occurred specifically during President Barack Obama’s full terms; instead they show that journalists and researchers have pursued ICE shooting records spanning the Obama-to-Biden timeframe and that deaths in ICE custody were documented during Obama’s administration [1] [2].
1. Why the question matters: force, accountability and a federal agency’s record
Shootings by immigration agents are not just criminal-justice incidents; they test federal use-of-force rules, recordkeeping and oversight of a politically charged agency — an issue investigative reporters and advocacy groups have repeatedly flagged, including efforts to obtain ICE’s internal shooting logs that span multiple administrations [1], and civil-rights groups documenting deaths in custody during the Obama years [2].
2. What the reporting supplied actually shows about timelines and records
A reporter who sued ICE to get shooting logs says the agency eventually produced records covering not only the Trump administration but “President Barack Obama’s last year up until President Joe Biden,” indicating those logs include incidents from the tail end of Obama’s tenure; the same reporter described a dataset that extends through 2021 and includes off-duty shootings and other uses of firearms [1]. Separately, an advocacy report documents 56 deaths in ICE custody during the Obama administration — a distinct but related accountability issue that confirms serious harms occurred under ICE while Obama was president [2].
3. What can and cannot be concluded from these sources
The supplied sources prove two things: journalists and advocates sought and obtained ICE shooting records that include the Obama-to-Biden transition period [1], and there were dozens of deaths in ICE custody during Obama’s tenure [2]. They do not, however, present a clear, labeled catalog in which each shooting is explicitly dated to a specific year within Obama’s two terms; therefore these sources alone cannot be cited to name particular shootings and shooters that definitively occurred during 2009–2017 without consulting the underlying logs or contemporaneous reporting [1] [2].
4. Competing narratives, political framing and agendas
Coverage of more recent shootings has become a political flashpoint, with administrations, local officials and advocacy groups offering sharply different frames — ranging from “justified self-defense” defenses by federal officials to calls for accountability from civil-rights groups and former presidents [3] [4] [5]. The investigative reporting cited demonstrates that transparency struggles — lawsuits to get records and advocacy reports on detention deaths — complicate the public’s ability to settle competing narratives about when and why shootings occur [1] [2].
5. What a thorough answer would require beyond these sources
To produce a definitive, date-by-date answer naming each shooting involving ICE during the Obama presidency would require the underlying ICE shooting logs and contemporaneous incident reports or independent news investigations, which the reporter in [1] pursued via litigation; the sources given report that such records exist and span Obama’s last year but do not reproduce a full, attributable list tied to 2009–2017 for immediate verification [1].
6. Bottom line
Based on the provided reporting, investigators and journalists obtained ICE shooting logs that include the Obama-to-Biden timeframe and civil-rights groups documented deaths in ICE custody during Obama’s years, which together indicate that lethal and nonlethal firearm incidents connected to immigration enforcement were part of the agency’s record across administrations; however, the supplied sources do not by themselves lay out a precise, public catalog proving each specific shooting occurred during the entirety of Obama’s presidency, so a fully granular confirmation requires consulting the primary incident logs or contemporaneous news accounts [1] [2].