Eight people killed by ICE (5) or Border Patrol Agents (3) since January 20th, 2025. Annual Average Customs and Border Protection Fatal Encounters under Trump are half what they were under Biden,

Over 600,000 people have been booked into ICE detention centers between January 20th, 2025 and July 31, 2026. At the same time, there have been about 170,000 border apprehensions (155,000 at the southwest-border and another 15,000 nationwide). So with eight dead, that comes to a rate of 0.10% of these encounters. our about one per 100,000 people. We have previously written on comparing the Obama and Trump administrations on issues such as people dying in ICE custody, ICE erroneously arresting U.S. Citizens, and mistakenly deporting US citizens. In all those categories, the Trump administration is doing much better than Obama. Unfortunately, the Biden administration didn’t keep data on these issues. As shown below, even including the eight deaths listed below, Annual average Customs and Border Protection Fatal Encounters under Trump are half what they were under Biden, and that even includes deaths from ICE in Trump but not under Biden.

However, there are two points to make.

1) While any death is tragic, these individuals were not blameless. They would likely be alive today if they hadn’t done things like ram agents with their vehicles or engage in a shoot out with agents or fight them. All of those deaths involve one of those cases. They also involved people not obeying lawful orders by law enforcement.

2) In places such as Minnesota, if local police had been involved to control those interfering with ICE agents, such confrontations would likely have been avoided.

Five of these cases, with three of them illegal aliens, involved a ramming, dragging, or trying to run over ICE agents with a car:

• Ruben Ray Martinez (U.S. citizen, South Padre Island, Texas, March 2025, ICE): agents said he rammed a car into an agent.
• Silverio Villegas González (Mexican national, Chicago area, September 2025, ICE): agents said he hit and dragged an officer with his vehicle.
• Renee Good (U.S. citizen, Minneapolis, January 2026, ICE): Good struck an officer with her car and ignored verbal orders from an officer.
• Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (Mexican national, Houston, July 2026, ICE): DHS said he repeatedly fled different scenes and he rammed an ICE vehicle and tried to run over an officer.
• Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero (Colombian national, Biddeford, Maine, July 2026, ICE): agents said he tried to flee and rammed officers with his vehicle. “the vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon.”

Three additional cases all involving Border Patrol agents:

• Ophelia Bauckholt — German national, January 20, 2025, Coventry, Vermont. Killed in a shootout with Border Patrol agents after a vehicle stop near the Canadian border.
• Alex Pretti — U.S. citizen, January 24, 2026, Minneapolis. Shot by Border Patrol agents; Pretti put himself between officers and people they were trying to arrest, disobeyed orders from officers to stop, got into a physical confrontation with officers, and was carrying a gun.
• Isaias Sanchez Barboza — Mexican national, December 11, 2025, Rio Grande City, Texas. Shot by a Border Patrol agent while allegedly trying to flee back toward Mexico. An agent tried to arrest Sanchez Barbosa, a fight broke out within about four minutes, the agent radioed for help, and he fired in self-defense during the struggle.

One comparison is to look at the Customs and Border Protection fatal encounters compiled in the Southern Border Communities Coalition’s CBP file, which includes medical deaths and crashes. Its 2025 and 2026 totals mix later ICE cases into the same list, so they will raise the deaths in those two years relative to other years. There are similar numbers from the ACLU of Texas, but there numbers only go up to 2023.

Customs and Border Protection Fatal Encounters
	Southern Border Communities Coalition		ACLU of Texas
Year	Total Fatal Encounters	Annual Average by Administration	Total Fatal Encounters
2014	12		12
2015	11		11
2016	7	10	7
2017	12		12
2018	17		17
2019	17		17
2020	35	20.25	37
2021	58		63
2022	48		49
2023	45		50
2024	38	47.25
2025*	33
2026 Annualize rate* **	16	24.5	12
* Numbers for these years include ICE cases, so they are inflated relative to earlier years. ** Annualize rate uses data through September (12) and multiplies it by 1.3333.