Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino in Minneapolis, at a gas station in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, U.S., January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
Members of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are telling the media that they have serious problems with what is being done across the country to Americans and immigrants.
“I’m embarrassed,” one former ICE agent told TIME. The agent has had more than 25 years of experience. “The majority of my colleagues feel the same way. It’s an insult to us, because we did it the right way to see what they’re doing now.”
Chaotic scenes unfolded on the streets of Minneapolis overnight, where ICE agents shot another protester, though this one in the leg. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the man was fleeing the scene of a traffic stop.
Last Wednesday, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn), on Wednesday night, urged residents to deescalate with the agents. "They're pulling over people indiscriminately, including U.S. citizens, and demanding to see their papers and at grocery stores, at bus stops, even at our schools," Walz said. "They're breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street, just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans."
One ICE veteran agrees that the agent who killed Good, Jonathan Ross, made the wrong call.
One agent with 20 years of service told TIME “If you fear for your life and you're in imminent danger, policy says you could fire at that vehicle if there's no other recourse. If someone is able to make the argument that she was trying to hit him, he feared for his life, and all he could do was shoot…then sure, he can justify it that way. But I think when you look at it a little bit more, it's … very problematic for him,” the agent said.
Critics of Ross say that he easily moved to walk in front of Good's car. She cut her wheel to the right to try and go around him and he could have moved out of the way if he truly was afraid for his life.
Both agents questioned why Ross was assigned to Minneapolis to begin with because he had such a serious injury involving a driver that dragged him.
“That, to me, has red flags all over it,” the former ICE agent said. “So when this person took off, I'm sure that prior incident came to mind, because he's an experienced officer. And then he just reacted, in my opinion, not in the correct way."
The current agent complained that Homeland Security could never have trained the plethora of new agents in time to do the job.
“You can't train someone to do all the basic law enforcement stuff, let alone the law. Immigration law used to be a five or six-month course at the academy. How do you know that people are here legally unless you know the law? You use Google?” the ICE agent still on duty told TIME.
A rushed training can mean a "domino effect" as long-time agents quickly retire to avoid such dangerous assignments. The new hires are then working with those who have little to no legal and enforcement training.
“The biggest concern is jeopardizing your pension. And then, of course, violating the law. If you're ordered and you know that you're violating the law and you say no, then you stand a chance of being terminated. And then you jeopardize your pension,” the former agent said.
They added that many times officers end up working 16-hour shifts six to seven days a week.
“For most of us, it's not worth it," the agent confessed.
A recent YouGov poll that was taken prior to Good's shooting showed "more people now support abolishing the agency than oppose it." It's the first time this has been seen in the polling.
The agent still working with ICE told voters that this was their own fault for voting for Trump.
"Where was all this energy when the election was happening? Everyone knew this was what the administration was going to do,” the agent said.
They think that violence is continuing, in large part, because there is a larger fear about losing their jobs in a struggling economy
“You're putting people in a position where they have to quit and try to find work in a really bad job market. So they justify themselves, and they say, hey, it's legal, and as long as I'm not violating rights or doing something immoral or illegal, I'm going to do it because this is what the American voters voted for," the agent closed.
