ICE Agents Are Even Worse At Being Cops Than You Think

For decades, American law enforcement has carefully cultivated an image of tactical prowess and professionalism. Police have worked hand in hand with Hollywood and PR firms to portray officers as highly trained, disciplined, and infallible — from “Dragnet”-era TV shows shaped by LAPD advisers to today’s consultants who polish police press releases. The goal was to earn public trust and political capital by presenting cops as consummate pros who never miss a step. Modern police departments see public perception as something not so much earned but managed through media strategy, with the hope that a shiny image of competence will justify their aggressive tactics (and budgets).

But that carefully crafted myth is slipping and falling on its ass — quite literally. In Minnesota, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent chasing protesters on a winter street slipped on literal ice and wiped out hard, a clip so perfectly symbolic it feels like satire, except it’s real. This video and other incidents featuring ICE agents bungling basic police work have deflated these efforts to project unflinching competence.

The humiliation was so instant that it went viral, with outlets treating the public’s mockery as a story in itself — publishing roundups of the “hilarious reactions” to our own dystopian reality as comedy, rather than an armed and deadly federal agency spiraling in front of its citizens. Instead of the steely-eyed heroes ICE promotes in its recruitment materials and PR spectacles, we’re left with slapstick pratfalls and blunders. It would be hilarious if it weren’t also so dangerous.

Slapstick on the Streets

ICE has been going viral for its Keystone Cops routines nearly since Donald Trump infused billions of immigration enforcement dollars into DHS and its subagencies last summer. In October, a TikTok from Whittier, California, shows an ICE team attempt to detain a handcuffed man, who promptly breaks free and takes off. Two agents give chase, huffing behind him, until one officer’s legs give out, unintentionally ending the operation on the pavement. The agent crashes hard to the ground mid-chase and clutches his knee while the handcuffed man vanishes around a corner. Bystanders can be heard cheering the escapee, even urging him to “Keep going!” The ICE officer, decked out in tactical gear, eventually hobbles away, his dignity (and probably ligaments) in tatters.

Weeks earlier, another ICE operation-turned-gaffe ended with guns drawn. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, bystanders captured video of an ICE agent in a chaotic struggle in the middle of a busy street. Amid the scuffle, the agent drops his handgun onto the pavement. Gasps ring out as he scrambles to grab the weapon — then, shockingly, he appears to swing the gun up and aim it toward the crowd of onlookers. The moment looks like a parody of what not to do at a law enforcement safety briefing. 

“It could have gotten way out of control very quickly,” Raphael Talisman, who filmed the scene, told NBC New York, adding, “It was such a dangerous situation.” It’s true: An officer losing control of his firearm in a crowd is every police chief’s nightmare scenario. A Department of Homeland Security official later claimed the target was resisting arrest. But watching the video, any “resisting” is beyond the point, and it’s hard to see the professionalism in an agent damn near gifting his duty weapon to said target.

Then there are the smaller fiascos that have chipped away at the facade. In one incident (immortalized on Instagram), an ICE agent appeared to lock himself out of his own car during an operation — a stupefying lapse in basic procedure.

The same bungling that makes ICE officers look like clowns also makes them more likely to hurt people and spark chaos.

During ICE operations in Chicago in October, agents managed to turn their chemical weapons on fellow law enforcement officers during a protest. As agents fired tear gas and pepper balls into crowds, Chicago Police Department officers on the scene were caught in the crossfire and left visibly disoriented, undone not by protesters, but by their federal counterparts.

These blunders aren’t confined to the streets. ICE has proven equally ham-fisted behind the scenes. 404 Media reported in August that during a manhunt for a fugitive, ICE and other federal officials accidentally added a random civilian to their group chat — a thread in which agents were actively discussing the operation and sharing sensitive details. The stranger, who is not a law enforcement official, suddenly had a front-row seat to intel: the target’s Social Security number, license plate tracking data, criminal history, and even a copy of ICE’s “Field Operations Worksheet” listing plans and targets. In other words, the elite deportation force that routinely “condemns dangerous doxxing” of its agents effectively doxxed its own suspect.

Even basic interagency communication — or recognition — seems beyond ICE’s grasp. Over the summer, ICE agents in Arizona stormed a federal courthouse on the hunt for an undocumented individual. In their zeal, they mistook a man for their suspect, sweeping him into custody — only to discover he was actually an on-duty deputy U.S. Marshal. The deputy “fit the general description of a subject” ICE was after, officials later admitted. He was released once his law enforcement identity was “quickly confirmed” by colleagues, but the damage was done. 

Buffoonery Meets Brutality

It’s tempting to laugh off these episodes as schadenfreude — mighty ICE brought low by its own ineptitude. Public ridicule has value: It punctures the aura of invincibility that agencies like ICE prefer to project. But there’s a darker side to these blunders. Incompetent policing isn’t just embarrassing; it’s dangerous. The same bungling that makes ICE officers look like clowns also makes them more likely to hurt people and spark chaos.

Consider the tragedy in Minneapolis. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen, was shot and killed by an ICE agent during a botched encounter on a snowy Minneapolis street. When Good, who lived on the block, tried to drive away, an ICE officer inexplicably stepped in front of her SUV. According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the officer felt threatened by a crowd of angry neighbors and opened fire into Good’s moving vehicle, killing her. Noem rushed to label the incident as self-defense and smeared Good and other locals as a “mob of agitators” engaging in domestic terrorism. But state and city officials flatly dispute that narrative, noting that video of the incident shows the officer was not in imminent danger when he fired.

To put it plainly: an ICE agent’s poor tactics — panicking under pressure and placing oneself in a position in which you must shoot yourself out of — turned a routine morning into a deadly confrontation. This is precisely the kind of scenario every police academy warns about, yet ICE’s cowboy approach disregarded those basic safety tenets, and now an innocent woman is dead. 

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation found that since July, immigration agents have fired at or into civilian vehicles at least 13 times, injuring eight people and killing at least two, including Good, whose death has ignited protests and drawn fresh scrutiny of federal enforcement tactics. Every time an agent fires into a vehicle, they’re not just discharging a weapon — they’re gambling on turning a two-ton machine into an unguided missile on the road. 

Lowering the Standards, Giving Out Guns

None of this is mysterious. ICE has been sprinting through a hiring binge with shorter training, looser requirements, and flashy bonuses — a volume-over-competence strategy that oversight experts warned would come at a cost. When you lower the bar and then hand people guns, badges, and balaclavas, you don’t get professionalism — you get dystopian cringe, the kind that’s funny until someone gets hurt. Former ICE Acting Director John Sandweg put it plainly, saying, “We’ve lowered our standards,” an acknowledgment that agents are being put into situations for which they’re under-trained.

Meanwhile, ICE’s credibility is shot — not just with the public, but also with other law enforcement agencies. Police chiefs around the country have complained that ICE’s heavy-handed tactics are further damaging the public’s trust in law enforcement. Immigrant communities, already fearful, now see local cops and ICE as one big threat, which makes them less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigations. That in turn makes cities less safe for everyone, police included. It’s a perverse irony: By trying to play Rambo in our streets — and doing it badly — ICE is undermining the very “officer safety” principles that police preach among themselves and have spent decades cultivating as a mythic, artificially inflated persona for the public.

Basic police academy doctrine emphasizes situational control and safety: Maintain your weapon retention, know your target and what’s beyond it, don’t create crossfires, don’t stand in front of moving vehicles. Yet time and again, ICE agents have flouted these rules. Policing will never look pretty; it’s a de facto impossibility ingrained in the system. But there’s a gulf between force and plain incompetence.

What we’re seeing with ICE is what happens when an agency is flooded with money and political mandates (a whopping $170 billion boost last year toward immigration and border enforcement) but not the training or discipline to match. They’ve become a force of poorly supervised shock troops — “tactical cosplay,” as one commentator put it — and it shows. Every face-plant and flippant wave of a gun is a dangerous broadcast for the world to see.

ICE’s defenders may shrug off the viral ridicule or insist that clownish behavior is legally justified to “get the job done!” But this isn’t a circus — it’s law enforcement. When officers behave like buffoons, public faith dies a little more, and the risks to life and liberty rise. A nation forced to watch routine incompetence — embarrassing, self-inflicted failures by one of the most expensive arms of the state — is a nation less willing to extend trust to police, or to any state authority, at all. And that erosion makes everyone less safe.

If America’s deportation force can’t chase a suspect without falling over, or make an arrest without pulling a gun on bystanders, perhaps it’s time to ask, what purpose do such they really serve, other than to put us all in danger? As we watch these agents literally fall over themselves, one thing becomes clear: The only thing more dangerous than an overzealous cop is an incompetent one.