The FBI will no longer participate in investigations into alleged assaults on immigration agents and will instead defer those cases to Homeland Security Investigations, FBI field offices were informed on Thursday, sources said.
Homeland Security Investigations is an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and both agencies are overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, meaning the immigration enforcement agency would effectively be investigating incidents involving its own agents.
The change was first reported by another news organization. The FBI and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The shift follows fatal shootings by federal immigration officers in Texas and Maine earlier this month. On July 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Mexican national in Houston who had lived in the U.S. for decades, and days later an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine.
Earlier this year the FBI surged resources in Minnesota to investigate alleged assaults on immigration officers who were carrying out enforcement operations in Minneapolis, and some of those cases were later dismissed after prosecutors reviewed the evidence.
The issue became a flash point after a fatal encounter between an ICE officer and Renee Good; the Justice Department pressured the FBI and prosecutors to treat the investigation as an assault on a federal officer as opposed to a civil rights investigation into her killing, prompting several prosecutors and an FBI agent to resign.
Homeland Security Investigations was tasked with leading the federal investigation into the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, with the help of the FBI, a decision that raised questions among current and former federal law enforcement officials; after concerns were raised, the FBI and the Civil Rights Division were ordered to take the lead on that probe and the investigation remains ongoing.
HSI is not typically tasked with investigating officer-involved shootings and is not structured or equipped to handle core elements of such cases, including ballistics analysis, forensic processing, firearm examinations, video review and large-scale witness canvassing.