What is ICE and what powers do its agents have to use force?

The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Minneapolis woman Renee Nicole Good has sparked protests across the US and increased scrutiny of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

ICE has made thousands of arrests since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, often in public settings.

Those actions have increasingly led to clashes with local protesters who oppose the way the agency operates.

ICE is taking the lead in carrying out the Trump administration’s mass deportation initiative, which was a central promise of Donald Trump’s election campaign.

The US president has significantly expanded ICE, its budget and its mission since returning to the White House. The agency enforces immigration laws and conducts investigations into undocumented immigration. It also plays a role in removing undocumented immigrants from the US.

ICE was formed as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, a response to the terror attacks on 11 September 2001. The legislation created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with ICE as one of its subsidiary agencies.

ICE sees its mission as encompassing both public safety and national security. However, its powers are different to those of the average local police department in the US.

Its agents can stop, detain and arrest people they suspect of being in the US illegally. However legal permission to enter a home or other private space requires a signed judicial warrant.

Agents can detain US citizens in limited circumstances, such as if a person interferes with an arrest, assaults an officer, or ICE suspect the person of being in the US illegally.

Despite this, according to news organisation ProPublica, there were more than 170 incidents during the first nine months of Trump’s presidency in which federal agents held US citizens against their will.

These cases included Americans they had suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

ICE’s use of force actions are governed by a combination of the US Constitution, US law and the Department of Homeland Security’s own policy guidelines.

Under the US constitution, law enforcement “can only use deadly force if the person poses a serious danger to them or other people, or the person has committed a violent crime”, said Chris Slobogin, director of the criminal justice programme at Vanderbilt University Law School.

But the US Supreme Court has historically granted broad leniency to officers making in-the-moment decisions without the benefit of hindsight.

A DHS policy memo from 2023 states that federal officers “may use deadly force only when necessary” when they have “a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” to themself or another person.

In Minneapolis, US citizen Good was killed while behind the wheel of her car. The Trump administration says the agent acted in self-defence but local officials insist she posed no danger.

During the political row that followed Good’s death, Minnesota officials sued the administration in an attempt to block the deployment of federal immigration agents in the state.

Typically, ICE operates inside the US, with some staffing abroad. Its sister agency, US Customs and Border Protection, technically patrols the US borders.

But those roles have become increasingly blurred, as the Trump administration pulled agents from a range of federal law enforcement agencies to participate in immigration enforcement. Border Patrol officers increasingly operate within the US, taking part in raids with ICE.

ICE and other agencies have deployed hundreds of officers to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and now Minneapolis, in partnership with other federal law enforcement agencies.

About 2,000 agents from ICE and other federal agencies were deployed Minneapolis as of 14 January, officials told BBC’s US partner CBS News, as well as an additional 800 US Customs and Border Protection agents.

The scale of Trump-era deportations have been significant.

The administration said it had deported 605,000 people between 20 January and 10 December 2025. It also said 1.9 million immigrants had “voluntarily self-deported”, following an aggressive public awareness campaign encouraging people to leave the country on their own to avoid arrest or detention.

An immigrant who encounters ICE can face a variety of outcomes.

Sometimes an individual is temporarily held, then released after questioning. In other circumstances, ICE will detain and transfer that person to a larger detention facility, of which there are several throughout the US.

While many immigrants continue to fight for legal status while detained, if they are unsuccessful, they may ultimately be deported.

About 65,000 people were in ICE detention as of 30 November 2025, according to data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse’s immigration project, a compendium of government data from Syracuse University.

Immigration lawyers have told the BBC that, once ICE detains an individual, it can sometimes take days for families or lawyers to find out where they are.

Many communities have pushed back when ICE and partner agencies like the Border Patrol carry out operations.

It is now common for residents to film ICE agents as they carry out arrests. Some encounters between ICE and the public have become aggressive or violent.

During ICE operations in Chicago, Illinois, a collective of media organisations sued the Border Patrol. They alleged agents used improper force against journalists, religious leaders and protesters.

A federal judge sided with the group, before an appeals court overturned the decision.

Good is not the only individual injured by gunfire during an immigration enforcement operation.

It emerged that an ICE officer shot a Venezuelan man in the leg in Minneapolis in the days after Good’s death. The DHS said federal officers were conducting a “targeted traffic stop” when a Venezuelan national was shot after resisting arrest and assaulting an officer.

There were also two incidents in Los Angeles in October in which agents shot at drivers, the Los Angeles Times reported. DHS said in both instances that the drivers had threatened the officers with their vehicles.

ICE officers, and other immigration agents, have also been criticised for wearing masks while carrying out their operations.

DHS officials have defended the practice, saying it protects agents from doxxing – being identified online – or harassment.

Americans have a complicated view of Trump’s immigration enforcement plans, polling suggests.

A little more than half believe some level of deportation is necessary, an October 2025 survey from the non-partisan Pew Research Center suggested. That’s roughly the same number as Pew found the previous March.

But the same poll suggests that Americans have concerns about Trump’s methods.

It found that a majority of US adults – 53% – believed the Trump administration was doing “too much” to deport undocumented immigrants. About 36% backed the approach.