Todd Lyons Bragged of Investigations into Just 37 Use of Force Incidents Out of Hundreds - emptywheel

"No sir, this [unintelligible]. We do hold our individuals accountable. That's my point I wanted to make earlier is that, you know, from January 25 to January 26 [looks down at notes] ICE has had 37 open investigations for excessive use of force. So we do hold individuals accountable. Out of those, 18 of those are closed, 19 of those are still pending, and one has been referred for further action, so we do-"

"But as documents FOIAed by American Oversight show - and as reported by Politico - that number reflects just a fraction of the 67 use of force incidents from just the first two months of the Trump term. Caleb Vitello, at the time the official tasked with overseeing field and enforcement operations at ICE, was informed on March 20 that ICE officers had reported 67 incidents where they had used force in the first two months of Trump's term, according to the emails."

"Days before, Vitello was informed that the use of force in the first two weeks of March alone had quadrupled compared with the same timeframe the year before, per another email. Among the 15 or so UOF incident reports included in the FOIA, one describes the killing of a US citizen that had not publicly been attributed to ICE; at least four describe ICE officers shooting themselves ( one, two, three) or otherwise accidentally shooting weapons."

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said ICE holds individuals accountable and cited 37 open investigations for excessive use of force. FOIAed documents and reporting show 67 use-of-force incidents in the first two months of the Trump term, indicating the 37 investigations covered only part of the incidents. Caleb Vitello was informed on March 20 that ICE officers reported 67 force incidents in that period; the same timeframe in 2024 had 17 incidents, a nearly four-fold increase. Vitello was also told use of force in the first two weeks of March had quadrupled year-over-year. FOIAed reports include one killing of a U.S. citizen and at least four accidental self-shootings by officers.

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