DHS asserts assaults on federal law enforcement have risen by more than 1,300%

Misleading

Facts are technically correct but framed in a way that likely leads to a wrong impression. Learn more in Methodology.

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Data from DHS/agency reports and independent statistics corroborate whether assaults on federal law enforcement increased by more than 1,300% over a specified baseline and timeframe.

Source summary
DHS/ICE released details about a January 14, 2025 incident in Minneapolis where federal officers say three Venezuelan nationals assaulted a federal law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle during an attempted arrest. The officer fired one defensive shot, striking Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg; the officer and Sosa-Celis were hospitalized and all three suspects were taken into ICE custody. DHS said the three individuals entered the U.S. under the Biden administration and criticized local leaders for not cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. ICE identified the suspects as Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna, and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma and described their prior immigration or criminal histories.
Latest fact check

Evidence confirms that the Department of Homeland Security has publicly asserted that assaults on its law enforcement officers have risen by more than 1,300%, but the underlying data and framing are highly selective and not transparently documented. A January 8, 2026 DHS press release reports 275 assaults on ICE officers from 20 January–31 December 2025 versus 19 in the same period in 2024, which indeed represents roughly a 1,347% increase, but these are ICE-specific numbers, not all federal law enforcement, and DHS provides no detailed breakdown of what counts as an “assault” or how reporting practices may have changed. External reporting and BBC Verify note that DHS has repeatedly used very large percentage increases in assaults and vehicular attacks without publishing full underlying datasets or clear definitions, and that ICE has expanded both its workforce and enforcement activity under the Trump administration, which would itself tend to increase absolute numbers of confrontations. Because the claim accurately reflects an internal DHS year‑over‑year comparison but presents a dramatic, ICE‑specific spike as a generalized crisis for all federal officers without sufficient methodological transparency or context about changing operations, the statement is best characterized as misleading, not strictly true or false.

Timeline

  1. Update · Jan 16, 2026, 12:38 AMMisleading
    Evidence confirms that the Department of Homeland Security has publicly asserted that assaults on its law enforcement officers have risen by more than 1,300%, but the underlying data and framing are highly selective and not transparently documented. A January 8, 2026 DHS press release reports 275 assaults on ICE officers from 20 January–31 December 2025 versus 19 in the same period in 2024, which indeed represents roughly a 1,347% increase, but these are ICE-specific numbers, not all federal law enforcement, and DHS provides no detailed breakdown of what counts as an “assault” or how reporting practices may have changed. External reporting and BBC Verify note that DHS has repeatedly used very large percentage increases in assaults and vehicular attacks without publishing full underlying datasets or clear definitions, and that ICE has expanded both its workforce and enforcement activity under the Trump administration, which would itself tend to increase absolute numbers of confrontations. Because the claim accurately reflects an internal DHS year‑over‑year comparison but presents a dramatic, ICE‑specific spike as a generalized crisis for all federal officers without sufficient methodological transparency or context about changing operations, the statement is best characterized as misleading, not strictly true or false.
  2. Update · Jan 16, 2026, 12:25 AMMisleading
    Department of Homeland Security press releases in November 2025 and January 2026 report that assaults against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers rose from 19 incidents in 2024 to 238–275 in 2025, which DHS describes as a roughly 1,150–1,347% increase in assaults on ICE law enforcement. However, DHS has not released the underlying incident-level data or methodology, and these figures are specific to ICE, not to all federal law enforcement officers. Independent analyses of federal court records by NPR and the Los Angeles Times find only about a 25–26% rise in charges for assault on federal officers over comparable periods, not an order-of-magnitude jump, while USA Today notes that broader DHS statistics previously showed far higher baseline assault counts than the “19” cases now being used, indicating that the percentage increase is driven by a very narrow and selectively defined baseline. Verdict: Misleading, because DHS’s internal tallies can be used to compute a >1,300% rise in reported assaults on ICE officers from a tiny, selectively defined prior-year baseline, but publicly verifiable data show only modest increases and do not support such a dramatic escalation for federal law enforcement officers generally.
  3. Original article · Jan 15, 2026

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