Investigators said an immigration official managed to physically assault his girlfriend for years. Another admitted to repeatedly sexually abusing a woman in his custody. A third is accused of taking bribes to remove detention orders on people targeted for deportation.
At least two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors have been charged with crimes since 2020, and their documented wrongdoing includes patterns of physical and sexual abuse, corruption and other abuses of authority, an Associated Press review found.
While most of the cases happened before Congress voted last year to give ICE $75 billion to hire more agents and detain more people, experts say these types of crimes could accelerate given the sheer volume of new hires and their power to use aggressive tactics to arrest and deport people.
The Trump administration has emboldened agents by claiming they have “absolute immunity” for their actions on the debt and by loosening oversight. A judge recently suggested that ICE is developing a disturbing culture of lawlessness, while experts have questioned whether job applicants are getting enough vetting and training.
“Once a person is hired, brought in, goes through the course, and they’re not the right person, it’s difficult to get rid of them, and there’s going to be a price that’s going to be paid later by everybody,” said Gil Kerlikowske, who served as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2017.
Almost every law enforcement agency struggles with bad employees, and domestic violence and substance abuse crimes are longstanding problems in the field. But ICE’s rapid growth and mission to deport millions of people is unprecedented, and the AP analysis found that the immense power officers wield over vulnerable populations can lead to abuse.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said wrongdoing is not widespread at the agency and that ICE “takes allegations of misconduct by its employees extremely seriously.” She said most of the new hires had already worked for other law enforcement agencies and their backgrounds were thoroughly vetted.
“America can be proud of the professionalism that our officers bring to work every day,” she said.
ICE misconduct could become a ‘nationwide phenomenon’
ICE announced last month that it had doubled in size to 22,000 employees in less than a year.
Kerlikowske said ICE agents are particularly “vulnerable to issues of unnecessary use of force” given that they often conduct law enforcement operations in public while dealing with protests. With the number of ICE detainees nearly doubling from last year to 70,000, the employees and contractors responsible for overseeing them also face difficult conditions that can provide more opportunities for misconduct.
The Border Patrol doubled in size to more than 20,000 agents from 2004 to 2011 — six years longer than ICE lasted. He was embarrassed by a spate of corruption, abuse and other misconduct by some of the new hires. Kerlikowske recalled cases of agents who accepted bribes to let cars carrying drugs into the U.S. or who were involved in human trafficking.
He and others say ICE is ready to see similar problems likely to be broader in scope with less oversight and accountability.
“The corruption and abuse and misconduct has largely been limited to the border and interactions with immigrants and residents of the border state. With ICE, it’s going to be a nationwide phenomenon because they attract so many people who are attracted to that mission,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.
Bier, who has helped publicize some of the recent arrests and other alleged misconduct by ICE agents, said he was surprised by the “remarkable range of different crimes and charges that we saw.”
The AP review examined public records involving cases of ICE employees and contractors who have been arrested since 2020, including at least 17 who have been convicted and six others awaiting trial. Nine have been charged in the past year, including an officer cited last month for assaulting a protester near Chicago while off-duty.
Some of the worst crimes were committed by veteran ICE employees and supervisors, rather than rookies.
While federal officials have justified ICE’s crackdown, the agents’ behavior is drawing the attention of cell-phone watchers and prosecutors in Democratic-led jurisdictions. Local agencies are looking into last month’s fatal shootings in Minneapolis of protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, as well as the New Year’s Eve killing of Keith Porter by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles.
The arrests made local headlines
Across the country, the cases have drawn unwanted headlines for ICE, which has spent millions of dollars publishing the criminal rap sheets of those it arrests as “the worst of the worst.”
Among them:
__ Cincinnati ICE Office Assistant Supervisor Samuel Saxon, a 20-year ICE veteran, has been jailed since his December arrest on charges he tried to strangle his girlfriend.
Saxon abused the woman for years, fracturing her hip and nose and causing her to bleed internally, a judge found in a ruling ordering him held pending trial. “The defendant is a volatile and violent individual,” the judge wrote of Saxon, whose attorneys did not return a message seeking comment. ICE said he is considered absent without leave.
__ “It’s ICE, guys,” an ICE employment eligibility auditor told Minnesota police in November when he was arrested in a sting while on his way to meet a person he believed to be a 17-year-old prostitute. Alexander Back, 41, pleaded not guilty to attempted enticement of a minor. ICE said Back is on administrative leave while the agency investigates.
— When officers in suburban Chicago found a man passed out in a crashed car in October, they were surprised to discover the driver was an ICE officer who had recently finished his shift at a detention center and had the government firearm in the vehicle. They arrested Guillermo Diaz-Torres for driving under the influence. He pleaded not guilty and was placed on administrative hold pending an investigation.
__ After a Florida ICE officer was pulled over for driving drunk with his two children in the car in August, he tried to talk his way out of the charges by pointing to his law enforcement and military service. When that failed, he demanded to know if one of the deputies who arrested him was Haitian and threatened to check the man’s immigration status, body camera video shows.
“I’m going to drive him after I get out of here and if he’s not legit, ooh, he’s going back to Haiti,” Scott Deiseroth warned during the arrest.
Deiseroth, who was sentenced to probation and community service, is on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. “He did something stupid. He accepted,” said his lawyer, Michael Catalano. “He’s very sorry about the whole thing.”
Several cases involve force and abuse
The AP review found a pattern of allegations involving ICE employees and contractors who mistreated vulnerable people in their care.
A former high-ranking official at an ICE contract unit in Texas was sentenced to probation on Feb. 4 after admitting to grabbing a handcuffed detainee by the throat and slamming him against a wall last year. Prosecutors downgraded the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.
In December, an ICE contractor pleaded guilty to sexually abusing an inmate at a Louisiana detention center. Prosecutors said the man had sexual encounters with a Nicaraguan national over a five-month period in 2025 while instructing other inmates to act as supervisors.
Outside of Chicago, an off-duty ICE agent was charged with felony assault for throwing a 68-year-old protester who was filming him to the ground at a gas station in December. McLaughlin said the officer acted in self-defense.
Other charges cited corruption
Another pattern that emerged in the AP analysis involved ICE officials accused of abusing their power for financial gain.
An ICE deportation officer in Houston was indicted last summer on charges that he repeatedly accepted cash bribes from bail bondsmen in exchange for removing detainees ICE placed with their clients who were targeting them for deportation.
ICE said the officer was “indefinitely suspended” in May 2024 before his arrest a year later. He pleaded not guilty to seven counts of bribery and was released from custody pending trial.
Prosecutors say a former supervisor in ICE’s New York office provided confidential information about the immigration status of people he knew and made an arrest in exchange for gifts and other payoffs. He was arrested in November 2024, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
Two Utah ICE investigators were sentenced to prison last year for a scheme in which they made hundreds of thousands of dollars by stealing synthetic drugs known as “bath salts” from government custody and selling them through government informants.
ICE officials used badges to try to avoid consequences
The misconduct often included using ICE resources and credentials to try to avoid arrest or receive favorable treatment.
In 2022, ICE Supervisor Koby Williams was arrested by police in Othello, Washington, as he went to a hotel room to meet what he believed to be a 13-year-old girl he had arranged to pay for sex.
Williams was driving his government vehicle, which was filled with cash, alcohol, pills and Viagra, and was wearing his ICE badge and loaded government firearm. The 22-year ICE veteran offered a rationale that turned out to be a lie: that he was there to “rescue” the girl in a human trafficking investigation. Williams is serving prison time for what prosecutors called a “reprehensible” abuse of power.
“With a duty to protect and serve,” they wrote, “the defendant sought to exploit and victimize.”