An Investigation into the 8,000% Surge
In Death Threats Against ICE Personnel
The numbers are staggering, almost incomprehensible: an 8,000 percent increase in death threats against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025. But behind these statistics lies a disturbing reality that extends far beyond mere numbers—a coordinated campaign of intimidation, violence, and terror targeting federal law enforcement officers and their families who enforce America’s immigration laws.
PJ Media: Death Threats to ICE Increase 8,000%
Doxing, assaults, phone and social media threats, and mob riots put federal immigration enforcement and their families in danger on a daily basis. Illegal aliens and leftist activists alike are proud to place ICE agents in near deadly situations, and Democrat politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom, Gov. JB Pritzker, Rep. Robert Garcia, Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Attorney General Letitia James enforce sanctuary policies and/or provide cover for illegals. All of them are both breaking the law and endangering lives.
An Oct. 30 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release exposed the mind-boggling jump in death threats. “Our ICE law enforcement is now facing an 8,000% increase in death threats against them while they risk their lives every single day to remove the worst of the worst,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
She detailed some of the threats, which extend not only to the agents themselves, but also their families: “From bounties placed on their heads for their murders, threats to their families, stalking, and doxxing online, our officers are experiencing an unprecedented level of violence and threats against them and their families. Make no mistake, sanctuary politicians are contributing to the surge in violent threats and assaults of our officers through their repeated vilification and demonization tactics, including gross comparisons to the Nazi Gestapo. This violence against law enforcement must end.”
The Magnitude of the Crisis
The Department of Homeland Security released data on October 30, 2025, revealing that ICE officers are experiencing an unprecedented level of violence and threats against them and their families, including bounties placed on their heads for their murders, threats to their families, stalking, and doxxing online. This represents not merely an uptick in hostile rhetoric, but a fundamental assault on the rule of law and the safety of those sworn to uphold it.
The escalation has been building throughout 2025. Earlier in the year, DHS recorded 79 assault events from the day after President Trump took office through June 30, representing a 690 percent increase compared to the 10 assault events recorded during the same period in 2024. By mid-July, that figure had climbed to an 830 percent increase in assaults against ICE officials. Now, as autumn 2025 draws to a close, the death threat statistic has exploded to proportions that suggest not random acts of anger, but organized efforts to terrorize federal law enforcement.
The Human Cost: Targets on Their Backs
The violence is not abstract. It is visceral, personal, and designed to maximize psychological trauma.
Eduardo Aguilar, an illegal alien from Mexico residing in Dallas, Texas, was arrested after posting on TikTok in Spanish soliciting the murder of ICE agents, calling for “10 dudes in Dallas with determination who aren’t afraid to” use violence and offering “10K for each ICE agent.” The post, made on October 9, 2025, represented an open bounty on the heads of federal officers—a chilling escalation from rhetoric to incitement of murder.
But the threats extend beyond individual officers to terrorize their families. In Texas, an ICE officer’s spouse received a threatening phone call stating: “I don’t know how you let your husband work for ICE, and you sleep at night. F*** you, f*** your family. I hope your kids get deported by accident. How do you sleep? F*** you. Did you hear what happened to the Nazis after World War II? Because it’s what’s going to happen to your family.”
Another voicemail left on an ICE employee’s phone threatened: “I hope every one of those lawless c**** you call ICE officers gets doxxed one by one.” These are not empty words—they represent a deliberate strategy to make federal law enforcement officers fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
In Washington state, James Adrian Warren posted on Facebook specifically targeting the Ferndale ICE office, calling ICE agents “Nazi’s” and “The Gestapo,” and stating he would begin observing, tailing, recording, and reporting ICE employees to “make life harder for ICE here in Whatcom County.” This represents not merely criticism of policy, but active stalking and harassment of federal officers.
The Doxxing Infrastructure: Organized Intimidation
What makes this surge in violence particularly alarming is its organized nature. This is not spontaneous anger—it is coordinated intimidation supported by infrastructure designed to facilitate harassment and violence.
Multiple organizations appear to be responsible for doxxing federal officers, including anarchist and Antifa-affiliated groups based in Portland called “Rose City Counter-Info” and “The Crustian Daily,” which have published the names, pictures, and personal addresses of ICE officers on their websites. Criminals have posted fliers in officers’ neighborhoods that include their name, address, and pictures of them and their families.
In Portland, ICE officers have been doxxed and threatened by local antifa-affiliated organizations posting their pictures and personal addresses and threatening them and their families, with one officer having an individual show up at their house and dump trash on their lawn, which included signs reading “F**k you” and naming the officer directly.
In September, three women were indicted by a federal grand jury for livestreaming their pursuit of an ICE agent to his home and then posting the victim’s home address on Instagram, shouting “neighbor is ICE,” “la migra lives here,” and “ICE lives on your street and you should know” upon arriving at the law enforcement officer’s home.
The doxxing has become so pervasive that Gregory John Curcio, 68, was arrested for allegedly doxxing an ICE attorney by posting her personal information online and urging others to “swat” her—a tactic involving false emergency calls to provoke an armed law enforcement response. Court documents allege his harassment campaign dated back to January 2024.
Even public displays have turned menacing, with a Houston Halloween display featuring effigies of ICE agents dressed in black shirts with red hats hung from homemade gallows with zip ties in their pockets, surrounded by coffins and barbed wire, creating a mock execution ground.
The Political Context: When Officials Enable Intimidation
Perhaps most troubling is the role that elected officials have played—whether through direct action or rhetorical support—in creating an environment where such violence can flourish.
The original article cites several officials by name, but the pattern extends beyond individuals to include systemic resistance to federal immigration enforcement. Nashville’s Democratic mayor issued an executive order requiring all city departments, including its police force, to report any communications with federal agencies enforcing immigration laws, and Nashville city officials then publicly released information about communications with ICE and published the names of federal immigration law enforcement agents. While the city later scrubbed some names, the damage was done—personal information had been disseminated to potentially violent actors.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation dubbed the “No Secret Police Act,” which attempts to ban law enforcement from being able to protect their identities, even as ICE officers face a more than 1,000 percent increase in assaults and doxxing campaigns targeting federal officers and their families.
Politicians such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu have called for the unmasking of ICE agents and making their identities public, with Wu claiming people are “getting snatched off the street by secret police, who are wearing masks.” U.S. Attorney Leah Foley responded that federal agents in marked jackets and vests are masking their faces because people like Mayor Wu have created false narratives about their mission, noting that federal agents and their children are being threatened, doxxed, and assaulted.
The rhetoric has consequences. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated: “Make no mistake, sanctuary politicians are contributing to the surge in violent threats and assaults of our officers through their repeated vilification and demonization tactics, including gross comparisons to the Nazi Gestapo.”
The Broader Context: A Year of Escalating Violence
This October surge in death threats represents the culmination of a year-long pattern of escalating violence against federal immigration enforcement personnel. The trajectory is unmistakable and alarming.
The violence has taken multiple forms beyond threats. In June, DHS identified a “serial criminal” who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, where 15 ICE agents and 12 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were staying. Over the July 4 weekend, DHS reported a gunman opened fire on border patrol agents in Texas, leaving two agents hurt.
Multiple incidents of gunfire targeting federal immigration officers have occurred, with officials at the Department of Homeland Security stating that victims threatened officers, though body camera footage from a fatal shooting showed the officer who responded saying his injuries were “nothing major.”
The Legal Framework: What Constitutes a Crime?
The threats against ICE officers are not merely offensive—they are explicitly illegal. Under 18 U.S. Code § 115, anyone who threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder a United States official, judge, or federal law enforcement officer with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with their official duties, or to retaliate against them, can be charged.
Yet enforcement remains inconsistent. The Washington Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security did not provide a breakdown for the increase and the time period when announcing the 8,000 percent figure, and previously spoke of increases in assaults on ICE personnel but declined to provide the data behind those claims.
This lack of transparency has fueled skepticism among some observers. CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem noted that ICE has never offered proof of alleged increases in assaults, nor are there prosecutions to substantiate the claims, and that DHS uses the term “assault” loosely. Such questions about data transparency are legitimate and important for public accountability—yet they should not obscure the documented cases of explicit threats, bounties, and organized doxxing campaigns that are matters of public record.
The Counternarrative: Concerns About ICE Conduct
Any comprehensive examination of this issue must acknowledge the broader context of immigration enforcement in 2025. While threats against law enforcement officers are never acceptable, concerns about ICE operations and detention conditions have also escalated dramatically.
The American Immigration Council reported that in less than a year, the Trump administration increased the number of people detained in ICE facilities by almost 50 percent, with DHS currently incarcerating close to 60,000 people, and that the first year of the second Trump administration has been even deadlier than 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to high death tolls in detention facilities
The rising fatalities in detention are attributed to several factors, including acute overcrowding, abysmal detention conditions, medical neglect, soaring mental distress, and even gun violence, with three of the reported deaths being by apparent suicide. Multiple civil rights organizations, including the ACLU of Illinois, have brought lawsuits against the Trump administration alleging violations of constitutional rights of protesters and use of excessive force by ICE officers.
NPR reported that many fear ICE tactics are growing more violent, with people being tackled, pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and threatened, and at least two incidents involving gunfire. These concerns deserve serious investigation and cannot be dismissed simply because threats against officers are unacceptable.
The Fundamental Question: Where Do We Go From Here?
The 8,000 percent increase in death threats against ICE officers represents a crisis point for American society—one that reveals deep fissures in how we approach immigration enforcement, the rule of law, and fundamental questions about violence in political discourse.
Several truths can coexist simultaneously: Federal law enforcement officers deserve protection from threats, violence, and organized campaigns of intimidation. Their families should not fear for their safety because of the work these officers do. Threatening violence against law enforcement—or anyone—is both morally wrong and illegal.
At the same time, concerns about immigration enforcement tactics, detention conditions, and the treatment of migrants deserve serious scrutiny and reform where needed. The rule of law cuts both ways—it protects both those who enforce it and those subject to it.
What cannot stand is the normalization of violence, threats, and intimidation as tools of political expression. When activists post bounties on the heads of federal officers, when families receive death threats referencing Nazi atrocities, when elected officials enable doxxing campaigns that put children at risk—we have crossed a moral and legal line that threatens the foundation of civil society.
The question facing America as 2025 draws to a close is stark: Can we find a path forward that addresses legitimate concerns about immigration policy and enforcement while firmly rejecting violence and intimidation from any quarter? Or will we continue down a road where death threats increase 8,000 percent and become simply one more disturbing statistic in an increasingly volatile landscape?
The answer will define not just immigration enforcement, but the very possibility of civil discourse and the rule of law in American democracy.
This exposé is based on official Department of Homeland Security press releases, law enforcement reports, court documents, and reporting from multiple news organizations across the political spectrum. The author has attempted to present documented facts while acknowledging competing perspectives on immigration enforcement in 2025.