The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed for months that assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have risen “more than 1,000 percent” as the agency carries out the president’s mass deportation initiative. However, a new analysis of federal court filings shows the increase is vastly lower.
NPR and Colorado Public Radio reported that cases alleging assault of federal officers have increased by just 25% this year. That relatively small uptick occurred as ICE agents increased their interactions with immigrants and other members of the public to carry out President Donald Trump’s agenda.
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The reporting is the strongest rebuttal yet to claims by the Department of Homeland Security, which has declined to provide data substantiating its figure.
What was the spike?
The administration has used the surge claim to justify harsher tactics and more federal deployments around immigration enforcement. Colorado Public Radio noted that assaults against ICE officers have occurred, including cases involving gunfire and a vehicle dragging an agent and an officer who ended up in the hospital. Yet those incidents still do not come close to supporting a 1,000% spike.
Former FBI official Bob Pence warned that exaggerations by law enforcement “jeopardizes trust in that system.” Trump signed an executive order last month that contained the claim of a 1,000% increase in attacks on ICE. The order pledged that anyone who assaults an ICE agent “will face the full extent of the law.”
Colorado Public Radio traced the administration’s escalating rhetoric from June — with officials citing figures of 413%, 500%, 700%, 830% and then “more than 1,000%” — and found no public data backing the claims.
DHS did not release its methodology and instead sent press releases highlighting individual cases.
National surges
Nationally, charges for assault on federal officers rose 25% through mid-September from the same period in 2024. That includes a 74% jump in the second quarter of 2025, driven largely by clashes in Los Angeles during large ICE operations.
Prosecutors secured relatively few indictments from those protests, and some charges were reduced, dismissed or resolved by plea deals, the public media outlets reported.
In one Denver case, the government dropped an assault count in exchange for a guilty plea on a firearms charge.
NPR reported it can take weeks for charges to be filed, meaning totals could still change. But without underlying DHS data, outside validation of the White House’s 1,000% figure remains unavailable.
