Summary
In a review of recent criminal cases, the Associated Press found that at least two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors have been charged with crimes since 2020, and that the alleged wrongdoing includes physical and sexual abuse, corruption, and other misuses of authority. The review also said the cases come as ICE moves to expand its workforce and detention capacity, a change that immigration enforcement critics and experts say can enlarge the opportunity for abuses.
The AP said Congress last year voted to provide ICE with $75 billion to hire more agents and detain more people, with many of the cases it reviewed occurring before that funding decision. Even so, experts told the AP that crimes tied to the agency’s enforcement operations could accelerate as ICE increases in size and as new staff are given more authority to conduct aggressive tactics related to deportations.
ICE’s planned growth has been a central part of the AP’s warning, the review said. The AP reported that ICE announced last month it had doubled in size in less than a year to 22,000 employees after a hiring push, and it compared the prospect to the experience the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency had after it also grew rapidly.
In recounting that earlier expansion, former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske recalled instances in which Border Patrol agents accepted bribes to let vehicles carrying drugs into the U.S., or became involved in human trafficking. Kerlikowske told the AP that he expects ICE will likely face similarly serious problems as it enlarges its ranks.
The AP also highlighted what Kerlikowske described as a particular risk area for ICE agents: unnecessary use of force. He said ICE officers are especially vulnerable to such problems because they conduct enforcement operations while facing protests, according to the AP review, which also pointed to the number of people in ICE detention rising quickly to 70,000.
Alongside the concerns about force, the AP review listed arrests of ICE personnel over the last year as another signal of oversight strain. It reported that the AP found at least nine arrests across the country involving ICE staff, including an assistant ICE field office supervisor in Cincinnati who had been jailed since December after a judge found he posed a danger to the public and had violently assaulted his girlfriend for years.
The AP also reported federal sexual misconduct charges involving ICE employees in Minnesota that it said related to underage girls, including an employment eligibility auditor arrested in a sting operation in November. The auditor has pleaded not guilty, the AP said, and an ICE investigator in the state, the review said, pleaded guilty to sending images and videos of himself having sex with a 17-year-old girl whose background he searched in a law enforcement database.
In Illinois, the AP review described two cases involving incidents that occurred outside Chicago while officers were off-duty but that involved their agency work. It said one ICE agent was charged last month with assaulting a protester who was filming him at a gas station, and that another was cited for driving drunk shortly after leaving work at a detention center with his government firearm in the vehicle.
The AP review further said many of the cases it identified involve violence and sexual abuse by employees or contractors. It reported that a former top official at an ICE contract facility in Texas was sentenced to probation on Feb. 4 after acknowledging he grabbed a handcuffed detainee by the neck and slammed him into a wall, and that prosecutors downgraded the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.
In Louisiana, the AP review said an ICE contractor pleaded guilty in December to sexually abusing a detainee at a detention facility and that prosecutors described sexual encounters with a Nicaraguan national over a five-month period in 2025, during which the contractor allegedly instructed other detainees to act as lookouts.
Beyond assault allegations, the AP review said corruption played a role in several charges tied to ICE authority. It reported that a deportation officer in Houston was indicted last year on charges that he repeatedly accepted cash bribes from bail bondsmen in exchange for removing detainers ICE placed on their clients aimed at targeting them for deportation, and that he pleaded not guilty to seven counts and was released from custody pending trial.
The AP review also described a scheme involving two Utah-based ICE investigators who, it said, were sentenced to prison last year for stealing synthetic drugs known as “bath salts” from government custody and selling them for profit through government informants.
In response to the AP’s findings, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that wrongdoing was not widespread in the agency and that ICE “takes allegations of misconduct by its employees extremely seriously.” She added that many new hires come from other law enforcement agencies and that ICE thoroughly vets their backgrounds.
“America can be proud of the professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out,” McLaughlin said, as the AP review raised questions about how quickly expanding enforcement operations could expose more detainees and detainee oversight responsibilities to misconduct.