FBI to ICE Agents: Investigate Your Own Murders of Migrants

Internal guidance moves a key investigative function from an outside agency to ICE's own Homeland Security Investigations unit, even as DOJ and DHS publicly deny anything has changed.

WASHINGTON — Twenty-two people died in ICE custody last year. At least 30 have been shot by immigration agents since President Trump took office. And now, according to internal FBI guidance, the one federal agency positioned to independently examine those encounters is stepping back.

FBI field offices nationwide were told in writing that the bureau will no longer take the lead on “assault on a federal officer” cases involving ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agents. Those cases — the routine paperwork that follows any claim an officer was attacked — have long doubled as the FBI’s primary window into ICE shootings, since they generate the witness statements, video evidence and forensic work that can later support a civil rights case against an agent who used deadly force.

Under the new guidance, that work moves instead to Homeland Security Investigations — ICE’s own investigative arm, operating inside the same department as the agents whose conduct would be under review.

DOJ …