This weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement accused me — a policy scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute — of causing assaults on its agents. I’m just the latest in a long line of people — mayors, governors, members of Congress and more — whom ICE has blamed for a rise in violent confrontations with their deportation agents.
In fact, ICE is endangering its own agents. According to the Trump administration, ICE agents suffered about 90% fewer assaults under President Joe Biden than under President Donald Trump. Biden’s ICE better protected agents by adopting interior enforcement policies that reduced chaotic interactions with the public.
This weekend, ICE accused me — a policy scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute — of causing assaults on its agents.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is doing the opposite, demanding agents conduct operations in ways they’ve rarely done before. According to my analysis of ICE records, ICE is arresting 1,100% more people on the streets — that is, outside of jails, prisons or police custody — than it did even in 2017 during the first Trump administration. Most of these people have no criminal records.
This nearly matches DHS’ claimed 1,000% increase in assaults on ICE agents this year over last year. DHS agents in masks have been told to “go out on the streets” and detain random people to see whether they are here illegally.
The result is chaos. DHS’ targets don’t know why they’re being approached or what their rights are. Agents don’t know what to expect, either, putting them on edge. Onlookers often believe they are watching masked men abducting their friends and attempt to intervene.
Here’s an example: A U.S. citizen from California named Andrea Velez was on her way to work when an ICE agent ran her over. The agent reported he was chasing someone else because that person didn’t want to talk to him. ICE accused Velez of deliberately stepping in the agent’s way and charged her with assault, but the case was dismissed.
Another U.S. citizen watching Velez get picked up and carried away for seemingly no reason attempted to block ICE from driving away with her. An agent pepper-sprayed him inches away from his eyes, and the man swiped back, knocking off the agent’s baseball hat. He, too, was arrested and charged with assault.
So we ended up with two purported assaults on ICE, both stemming from the decision to “go out on the streets” and grab random people. These interactions never would have happened under Biden because his administration prohibited racial profiling in immigration enforcement and focused enforcement on public safety threats who were usually already secured behind bars.
When Biden’s ICE did target someone on the streets, it was a carefully planned operation with numerous agents working as a team to catch a specific public safety threat — not random, unplanned encounters with unknown people. This intentionally focused on officer safety. ICE has overturned this policy so that it can maximize arrests and meet a 3,000-per-day arrest target set by the White House.
Which brings us to the incident that led ICE to blame me for assaults. In that case, two agents working alone pulled over a Hispanic driver after he dropped off his two young U.S. citizen children at school. ICE officers receive little training in traffic stops, and these two failed to ensure he had turned off his car and removed his keys — a common police practice — before they reached inside.
The result is chaos. DHS’ targets don’t know why they’re being approached or what their rights are.
The driver appears to have panicked when he realized the officers were ICE and started to back up. Video shows that rather than step away from the moving car, one ICE agent pulled a gun, while the other held on to the moving car with his hands. When the driver didn’t stop, the agent who initially held on to the car shot and killed him. Though the seconds just before the shooting were off camera, DHS says the agent was “dragged.”
In its X post, ICE claimed I caused assaults on its officers by spreading “misinformation” about the case. That misinformation? An NBC News report that showed ICE lied about some facts. ICE called the man a “criminal,” but he had no criminal record, just years-old traffic citations. ICE said the officer was “severely injured,” but the officer reported that he had only a few scrapes. “Nothing major,” he said. But these discrepancies aren’t the most important point: This incident and injury to an ICE agent most likely wouldn’t have happened at all before Trump for several reasons. First, ICE wouldn’t have targeted a noncriminal living here for decades. Second, it wouldn’t have sent two agents alone. Third, they wouldn’t have gone without a clear plan to arrest him safely. Fourth, while we can’t know what motivated his attempted flight, many people are now well aware of the inhumanities that befall immigrants in Trump administration ICE custody — everything from months in horrific ICE detention centers away from their families to deportations to random authoritarian countries or even straight to foreign prisons. By treating immigrants more humanely, Biden took away a reason to flee agents or potentially engage in physical confrontations. Humane immigration policy, focused on public safety threats, would also increase public support for ICE operations, reducing hostility in the community. Contrary to ICE’s implication, I don’t want ICE officers to be harmed. Indeed, I am more interested in ICE officer safety than ICE itself is. ICE cares more about running up the deportation numbers than protecting its officers. If ICE returned to Biden’s interior enforcement policies, officers, Americans and immigrants would all be safer.
David J. Bier
David J. Bier is the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. 
