The Media’s Selective Outrage about DHS/ICE
ICE Shootings, Record Deportations, and Ignored American Victims Under Obama
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In the heated immigration debates of early 2026, as protests erupt over ICE operations and fatal shootings under the second Trump administration, the mainstream press has turned up the volume to maximum. Stories of agent-involved violence, citizen detentions, and “unprecedented” crackdowns dominate headlines, with calls for accountability and even cries to abolish ICE echoing from left-leaning outlets and former officials. Yet this narrative conveniently forgets a stark historical parallel: similar patterns of deadly force and aggressive enforcement occurred under Barack Obama. On a larger scale and received far less scrutiny at the time.
The core claim circulating in social media and conservative circles isn’t fabrication; it’s selective amnesia. ICE agents did shoot people during Obama’s presidency, resulting in injuries and deaths. The agency also deported more individuals than under any other modern administration, including Trump’s first term. And American citizens were killed by undocumented immigrants during those years, tragedies that rarely became national scandals. The real difference? Not the facts on the ground, but the media’s willingness to spotlight them. It is all depending on who is sitting in the White House.
ICE’s Deadly Force: The Obama-Era Record That Faded into the Background
A comprehensive 2024 investigation documented 59 shootings by ICE officers from 2015 to 2021. These incidents spanned 26 states and two U.S. territories, leading to 23 deaths and at least 24 injuries (including a couple of self-inflicted wounds by agents).
This period began in the final two years of Obama’s administration (2015–January 2017), so a large portion of those shootings occurred under his watch. The report notes cases from that era where people got injured or killed.
One example from July 2016 in Laurel, Mississippi: An ICE agent shot Gabino Ramos Hernandez in the arm during a traffic stop, causing permanent nerve damage. Another in June 2016 in Chula Vista, California, involved a fatal shooting during an operation.
These weren’t isolated; the broader pattern included individuals shot in public spaces, with injuries and deaths occurring. But during Obama’s years, these events rarely made national news cycles. No viral outrage campaigns, no widespread “abolish ICE” momentum (that surged under Trump), no constant punditry on federal actions. The coverage was muted, often confined to local reports or immigrant-rights groups. Contrast that with today’s wall-to-wall condemnation of similar tactics: shootings framed as reckless or abusive, protests amplified, and former President Obama himself weighing in to decry recent incidents as threats to “core values.”
The disparity in attention reveals a clear double standard: When the actions happened under a progressive president’s tenure, they were downplayed or ignored. When tied to Trump, they become proof of excess, even though similar things occurred before without the same media frenzy.
Deportations: Obama’s “Deporter-in-Chief” Title the Media Buried
The hypocrisy extends to sheer volume. Obama oversaw more formal deportations (removals ordered by immigration courts, often from the interior) than any president in recent history: over 3 million from 2009 to 2016, with a peak of more than 409,000 in fiscal year 2012 alone. That’s an average of nearly 1,000 per day in his first term, including interior enforcement that separated families and targeted long-term residents.
Trump’s first term saw around 932,000 deportations—less than a third of Obama’s total. Even accounting for Title 42 expulsions during the pandemic, Obama’s raw numbers on removals dwarfed them. Advocates called Obama the “Deporter-in-Chief” for good reason; his policies emphasized enforcement priorities that led to widespread community disruption.
Yet during those years, media outrage was restrained. No relentless front-page series on the human cost, no celebrity-led campaigns, no framing as a humanitarian crisis on the scale seen today. Obama received credit for “smart” priorities (focusing on criminals), while the volume and methods faded from view. Fast-forward to Trump’s current push—claiming hundreds of thousands removed in his first year back, including self-deportations and the press treats it as a shocking escalation, ignoring that Obama set higher benchmarks without similar fanfare.
The Victims the Media Ignores: American Citizens Killed by Undocumented Immigrants
Adding to this lopsided coverage is the media’s apparent reluctance to dwell on the other side of the equation: violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants against American citizens. While enforcement actions under Trump draw nonstop scrutiny, the human toll of unchecked illegal immigration. Particularly murders often gets minimized, contextualized as rare exceptions, or framed as politically charged anecdotes rather than a pattern warranting sustained outrage.
Reliable national data on murders specifically committed by undocumented immigrants is limited because no federal agency tracks immigration status in homicide cases comprehensively. However in Texas, the only state that systematically records immigration status in criminal records, offers the clearest picture. From 2013 to 2022, undocumented immigrants were convicted of 172 homicides in Texas alone. Given Texas’s share of the national undocumented population (roughly 10–15%), a rough national extrapolation suggests hundreds of such murders over a similar timeframe. Each one a preventable tragedy for innocent American families.
High-profile cases during and after Obama’s presidency illustrate the point: the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by an undocumented immigrant with multiple prior deportations, the 2019 murder of Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa, or later cases like the 2024 killing of Laken Riley in Georgia by a Venezuelan migrant who entered illegally. These incidents sparked temporary attention but were quickly downplayed in broader narratives, often accompanied by reminders that overall crime rates among undocumented immigrants are lower than among native-born Americans.
While aggregate crime statistics show lower conviction rates for undocumented immigrants in many categories, that statistical reality does not erase the absolute harm done to victims and their families. Each murder is a devastating loss, yet these stories rarely become symbols of systemic failure the way ICE shootings do under Republican administrations. Media outlets tend to emphasize debunking “myths” of migrant crime waves rather than humanizing the American victims and demanding answers about why repeat offenders or individuals with criminal histories were not removed earlier.
And where are the massive, viral GoFundMe campaigns for families who lost loved ones to crimes committed by undocumented immigrants? There are occasional crowdfunding efforts. Some have raised modest sums for families in high-profile cases, but they seldom attract the millions that flow to victims of police or ICE actions. Those campaigns often explode because of widespread media amplification, celebrity endorsements, and social-media outrage. In contrast, families grieving American victims of immigrant-perpetrated violence rarely see the same level of public mobilization or sustained attention. The disparity leaves grieving families without the financial and emotional support that visibility could provide.
Manufactured Outrage and the Cost of Inconsistency
This selective memory isn’t accidental; it’s a symptom of politicized journalism. By amplifying controversies only when they target ideological opponents, the media manufactures division rather than demanding consistent reform. ICE’s issues like: poor medical care in detention, fragmented oversight, aggressive tactics deserve scrutiny every time, not just when politically expedient. Likewise, preventable crimes by individuals who should have been deported earlier deserve national attention and outrage, regardless of who is president.
True accountability would mean transparent policies, rigorous enforcement of immigration laws to prevent repeat offenders from remaining in the country, and honest reckoning with the human toll on all sides, American citizens and immigrants alike, across administrations. Until the press applies the same lens regardless of party, the outrage rings hollow. And it’s more about scoring points than saving lives or fixing a broken system.
The actions didn’t start in 2025. They didn’t end in 2017. They just get noticed differently.
What do you think? Does the media’s coverage reflect genuine concern, or partisan convenience? Drop your thoughts below, and subscribe for more breakdowns that cut through the noise.
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