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A Customs and Border Patrol agent observed a protest in Los Angeles in June.<\/span>Wally Skalij\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the second<\/span> time in a little over a week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers reportedly shot someone in Los Angeles, California. This time, it was a US citizen who ICE officers shot from behind while he was driving a car, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was telling them, \u2018Excuse me. Can you guys please, you know, please wrap this up.\u2019 And immediately, the masked agent pulls out a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The victim was a 25-year-old named Carlos Jimenez, who is a father of three. He was shot after getting out of his car to tell ICE agents, who had pulled over a vehicle, that children would soon be gathering in that spot for the school bus, his lawyer, Cynthia Santiago, told the newspaper. The agents\u2019 cars had blocked a southern lane on the road and jutted into a second lane, according to the LA Times<\/em>. \u201cHe was telling them, \u2018Excuse me. Can you guys please, you know, please wrap this up.\u2019 And immediately, the masked agent pulls out a gun and exchanges some words,\u201d Santiago told the newspaper.<\/p>\n The lawyers allege that Jimenez then got in his car, reversed because he was afraid, and was shot in the back of his right shoulder, where a bullet remains lodged. \u201cUse of deadly force is to be used as a last resort,\u201d Santiago said. \u201cComing out to communities with guns drawn is the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE, for its part, has offered a more sinister characterization of the events. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), told the LA Times<\/em> that Jimenez \u201cattempted to run officers over by reversing directly at them without stopping\u201d and that the shots were \u201cdefensive.\u201d Jimenez was charged in federal court with assault on an officer and released on bond Friday.<\/p>\n In the ICE agent\u2019s criminal complaint, filed in federal court on Friday, he claims Jimenez \u201cengaged in a verbal altercation with the officers\u201d and that the complaining officer then told Jimenez to leave and grabbed his pepper spray. As this unfolded, the complaint claims, Jimenez pulled his car forward and to the left, and then apparently turned and \u201crapidly accelerated in reverse.\u201d One of the officers at the scene apparently \u201cfeared that the [Jimenez\u2019s car] would hit [the officer]\u201d and the car they had previously pulled over. <\/p>\n There does not yet appear to be any publicly available video of the incident. Jimenez\u2019s condition was not immediately clear. <\/p>\n There have been other recent reports of immigration officers shootings. Between August and October, ICE officers reportedly shot into four cars\u2014one in LA <\/a>less than two weeks ago; two in Chicago<\/a>, including one that was fatal<\/a>; and one in San Bernardino<\/a>. <\/p>\n McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, told the LA Times <\/em>that the latest incident is \u201canother example of the threats our ICE officers are facing day in and day out as they risk their lives to enforce the law and arrest criminals.\u201d <\/p>\n But what it more likely indicates is even more proof that, as my colleague Noah Lanard wrote<\/a> last week, ICE seems to pose a far greater danger to civilians than the other way around\u2014contrary to the agency\u2019s claims that they require the National Guard\u2019s protection.<\/p>\n As he wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n A\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>\u00a0review shows that there is little evidence that ICE agents face such severe and widespread danger compared with other law enforcement agencies that they need military personnel to come to their aid or to break from centuries of public accountability by\u00a0hiding behind masks<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has provided almost no information to back up its statements about rising assaults, which makes its claims hard to assess. But details about ICE officers who\u2019ve died on the job are readily available on the agency\u2019s website.<\/p>\n Those records show that none of ICE\u2019s agents have ever been killed by an immigrant in the agency\u2019s more than two-decade history. Instead, the leading cause of death by far among ICE officers is COVID-19. <\/strong>According to ICE\u2019s data, the second leading cause of death is cancer linked to 9\/11. (The pandemic and cancers connected to the September 11 terrorist attacks account for 75 percent of the deaths in ICE\u2019s history.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n\n
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