The Accountability Gap in Federal Immigration Enforcement
In January 2026, two people — Alex Pretti and Renée Good — were killed during federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. In Pretti’s case, the Hennepin County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Investigative reporting later identified the Customs and Border Protection agents who fired the fatal shots.
These deaths sparked public outrage and renewed calls to “defund ICE.” But while that debate reflects real anger, it misses a deeper and more consequential problem: federal immigration agents operate under weaker accountability rules than state or local police, even when enforcing the law far from the border, inside American cities.
If Congress does not address that structural gap, similar incidents will continue — regardless of how much money is added or cut from any single agency.
Federal Immigration Enforcement Is Not Local Policing
Federal immigration agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are part of the Department of Homeland Security. Their core mission is immigration enforcement and border security, not local public safety. That distinction matters because it shapes training, oversight, and how constitutional protections are applied in practice.
At the border, courts have long recognized a “border search exception” to the Fourth Amendment, allowing searches and seizures that would not be permitted elsewhere in the country. But Minneapolis is not the border. In the interior of the United States, the Fourth Amendment’s ordinary rules — probable cause, reasonableness, and limits on the use of force — are supposed to apply fully.
Yet federal immigration agents often operate in interior cities under the same institutional culture and legal framework developed for border enforcement. When force is used, accountability mechanisms look very different from those governing local police departments.
The Civil Accountability Gap
One of the most significant differences involves civil liability.
For decades, people whose constitutional rights were violated by federal officers could sometimes sue those officers personally under a legal doctrine known as Bivens. That remedy functioned as a federal counterpart to civil rights lawsuits routinely brought against state and local police.
In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has sharply limited when Bivens claims are allowed. Courts now routinely dismiss civil lawsuits against federal immigration agents — including cases involving shootings — on the grounds that immigration enforcement presents a “new context” and that only Congress, not the courts, may authorize such remedies.
The practical result is stark. When a local police officer uses excessive force, victims or their families can usually bring a civil rights lawsuit, even if criminal charges are never filed. When a federal immigration agent does the same, families are often told that no civil lawsuit is available at all — even if the constitutional violation is clear.
Rights exist on paper, but the legal mechanism to enforce them is missing.
Internal Oversight Without Public Accountability
Oversight gaps compound the problem. Use-of-force incidents involving CBP or ICE are typically investigated internally, by the same department that employs the agents involved. Unlike many local police departments, federal immigration agencies are not subject to civilian review boards, and disciplinary outcomes are rarely disclosed publicly.
Body-worn camera footage is often withheld or released only after prolonged public pressure or litigation. In the Pretti case, local authorities sought court intervention to preserve evidence, citing concerns that federal agencies might otherwise destroy or withhold it. Only after widespread scrutiny did DHS announce plans to expand body-camera usage — a step that, while welcome, remains discretionary and uneven rather than a statutory requirement.
Why “Defunding ICE” Isn’t Enough
All of this points to a broader conclusion: budget cuts or agency rebranding alone will not fix the problem.
The issue is not simply how much money ICE or CBP receives. It is the legal framework that governs federal agents’ conduct and shields them from accountability when constitutional violations occur — particularly when those agents are operating inside U.S. communities rather than at the border.
Without structural reform, abuses can persist under any funding level.
What Congress Actually Needs to Fix
If Congress wants to prevent future abuses, several reforms are essential.
Federal law should clearly authorize civil lawsuits against federal officers for constitutional violations, including in immigration enforcement contexts, closing the accountability gap created by recent Supreme Court decisions.
Serious uses of force should be reviewed by independent investigative bodies with subpoena power, rather than relying solely on internal agency processes.
De-escalation standards and use-of-force rules should be written into law and aligned with best practices already required of many state and local police departments.
And when federal agents operate inside U.S. communities, local prosecutors should not be automatically sidelined when deaths occur.
What to Ask Your Member of Congress
Ask your representative to support legislation that makes federal law enforcement accountable to the same constitutional standards as local police when operating inside the United States.
Specifically:
Restore a clear legal right to sue federal officers for Fourth Amendment violations
Require independent, transparent investigations of serious uses of force by federal agents
Mandate de-escalation and use-of-force standards in federal law, not just internal policy
Ensure that state and local prosecutors are not automatically excluded when federal agents kill or seriously injure someone in their jurisdiction.
This isn’t about abolishing immigration enforcement — it’s about ensuring that constitutional rights have real enforcement, no matter which badge an officer wears.
The Stakes
The deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good are not isolated tragedies. They are warnings about what happens when federal power expands inward while constitutional accountability fails to keep pace.
If the Fourth Amendment is to mean the same thing in Minneapolis as it does anywhere else in the country, Congress must act — not with slogans, but with structural reform.