Federal Agents Were Told F.B.I. Will No Longer Investigate ICE Confrontations
Senior officials deny such a change is in the works, despite guidance shared with agents around the country in recent days.
Devlin Barrett covers the F.B.I., and Hamed Aleaziz covers immigration.
Federal agents around the country were told in recent days that the F.B.I. would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents — cases that sometimes yield evidence that could be used to prosecute Department of Homeland Security agents implicated in violent encounters, according to people briefed on the decision.
If enacted, such a change would sharply limit law enforcement scrutiny of immigration agents, as the Trump administration draws mounting criticism over killings at the hands of federal officers. In the last two weeks, two fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas and Maine have thrust the government’s tactics back into the spotlight.
F.B.I. managers around the country received a written notice informing them of the change on Thursday, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communications. The same day, some ICE agents around the country were notified by their F.B.I. counterparts.
The guidance shared with them said that the bureau would stop investigating claims of assaults against Department of Homeland Security agents, the people said. Even though such investigations are intended to determine whether the officers were in fact attacked, they can provide a crucial means of gathering evidence implicating the agents themselves.
A joint statement by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, however, denied that any such change was underway.
“The relationship between D.H.S. and D.O.J. in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and F.B.I. will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the statement said. “This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Under the change, responsibility for investigating cases involving federal immigration officers would likely fall to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, effectively leaving the agency to investigate itself, according to guidance circulated among F.B.I. and ICE agents.
Cases involving an assault on a federal officer have been a source of tension inside federal law enforcement agencies for more than a year. White House and Justice Department officials have pushed prosecutors to bring charges in as many of them as possible, particularly as Americans protest the administration’s immigration crackdown.
Under the federal statute, felony charges can be brought against anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal law enforcement officer.
Trump administration officials have claimed that language means anyone who makes physical contact with an agent should be charged with felony assault, which is punishable by up to eight years in prison.
“It’s abhorrent to ever, ever touch a law enforcement officer, which is why anytime anybody does that and it’s a federal officer, we’ll prosecute them,” the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said in an interview in May on CNN.
An investigation by The New York Times found that the Trump administration had filed charges against more than 550 people for assaulting federal officers. Of the more than 400 cases that had been resolved, nearly half had unraveled, with charges being thrown out or withdrawn, or the defendants being acquitted.
Under the Trump administration, when ICE agents have shot and killed people, the F.B.I. has been assigned to scrutinize a narrow question: whether the agents were assaulted before the gunfire.
While the bureau in past administrations has investigated potential civil rights abuses and law enforcement misconduct, it has been limited from doing so in high-profile ICE shootings over the last year, according to law enforcement officials.
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