Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement have spent much of the year raising the alarm about ICE agents facing assaults as part of their duties. In April, for example, the Department of Homeland Security, which ICE falls under, asserted that assaults against ICE officers have increased 300%.
A month later, that figure grew. “ICE officers are now facing a 413% increase in assaults,” DHS claimed in May. In June, officials added, “New data reveals that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500% increase.” As July got underway, ICE said the new figures pointed to a nearly 700% increase.
Part of the concern with these statistics is the reliance on percentage growth. Let’s say your savings account had $1 in May, but $2 in June. You might be tempted to celebrate the “100% increase” in your savings, but you’d still only have a couple of bucks in the account. Or put another way, percentage increases only tell part of a larger story.
When The Washington Post’s Philip Bump took a closer look at this last month, his analysis explained, “That ICE uses a percentage is telling. A 413 percent increase could mean that the number of assaults went from 200 in 2024 to 1,026 in 2025 — or that it went from eight to 41.”
It was against this backdrop that the federal agency shed new light on the data this week. The New Republic explained:
On Tuesday, Bill Melugin of Fox News reported on X that DHS told him assaults against ICE and federal immigration enforcement are now up 690 percent from last year. While ICE has previously stuck to publishing percentages, Melugin was given raw data, reporting 79 assaults against immigration enforcement agents between January 21 and June 30, up from 10 that took place in the same time last year. It’s important to emphasize that assaults on law enforcement personnel are wrong and shouldn’t happen. A total of 79 assaults is too high a number, which ideally would be zero. But 79 assaults against ICE agents between Jan. 21 and June 30 works out to an average of roughly one assault every other day. Again, I’m not condoning or defending such violence. The fact remains, however, that roughly one assault every other day doesn’t sound like a crime epidemic targeting a specific agency’s officers. All of this is of particular interest now because many ICE agents are conducting raids while wearing masks to hide their identities, and Trump administration officials have defended the practice by pointing to the alleged violence ICE personnel have confronted. But if these assaults aren’t quite as common as a “690% increase” might suggest, the administration might need new talking points.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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