FBI Told to Stop Investigating Assault Claims Against ICE Agents, DOJ and DHS Deny Policy Change

Federal agents around the country were told last week that the FBI will stop investigating confrontations involving immigration officers, according to a report by The New York Times. If that guidance sticks, it hands responsibility for policing ICE agents to the agents' own employer.

According to the Times, FBI managers received written notice of the change Thursday. Some ICE agents were informed the same day by their FBI counterparts. The guidance reportedly told agents the bureau would no longer investigate claims that someone assaulted a Department of Homeland Security officer.

Those investigations run in both directions. They're supposed to determine whether an agent was actually attacked before using force. But the evidence gathered along the way has also been used in civil rights probes and prosecutions against agents who used excessive force, sources told the Times.

Under the reported shift, that job would likely fall to Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE itself, according to the Times and confirmed in similar reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer. HSI doesn't have jurisdiction to investigate civil rights violations. If ICE agents end up investigating ICE agents, and no one else is checking whether federal civil rights law was broken, there is a real accountability gap.

DOJ and DHS say nothing changed

The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint denial when asked about the report. "The relationship between DHS and DOJ in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy," the statement said, according to CNBC and the Inquirer. The Inquirer's version of the statement adds a line DOJ and DHS wanted on the record: "This administration has been clear, anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

The two agencies in charge of the policy issued a flat denial. The Times' report rests on unnamed people described as "briefed on the decision" or "familiar with the matter," not on a public memo the agencies have confirmed exists. No investigation, lawsuit, or congressional inquiry has been announced over this specific change as of today, July 19, 2026. What's on record is a reported internal notice on one side and an on-the-record denial on the other.

The timing is difficult to overlook. The report lands two weeks after ICE agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, in Houston on July 7, and days after an agent shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian man, in Biddeford, Maine. The Guerrero shooting was at least the seventh fatal shooting by ICE agents since January 2025, according to CNBC's reporting.

The federal assault statute is doing a lot of work here

There's a second half to this story that's easy to miss. The same federal law that's supposed to protect agents from violence, the felony statute covering anyone who "forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes" with a federal officer, has become a major prosecutorial tool against protesters and bystanders. The Inquirer reports that Trump administration officials have pushed prosecutors to bring charges under that statute as broadly as possible, arguing that any physical contact with an agent, even incidental contact during a protest, should trigger a felony charge carrying up to eight years in prison.

Assaulting a federal officer is a serious crime and Congress wrote the law broadly on purpose. The concern raised by critics, per the Inquirer's sourcing, is that if the FBI stops independently investigating these encounters, the government keeps its aggressive charging posture toward civilians while losing the outside check on whether agents themselves used excessive force. This dynamic deserves scrutiny regardless of which party is in the White House.

What outlets got right and what they left out

CNBC's writeup sticks closely to the Times reporting and includes the DOJ/DHS denial in full, which is the responsible way to handle an anonymously sourced story about a policy nobody official will confirm. Anadolu Agency's report adds little beyond a condensed version of the same facts but is useful for confirming the story traveled internationally, not just through U.S. outlets with an obvious stake in the immigration debate.

None of the sourced reporting includes an on-record account from a rank-and-file FBI agent or ICE official confirming the internal memo's exact wording. That's the hole in this story right now: everything traces back to anonymous sources on one side and a categorical denial on the other, with no public document either confirming or refuting what the actual written guidance says.

If the change is real, who investigates the next ICE shooting, and does that agency have the legal authority to bring a civil rights case if the evidence warrants one? Congress has not scheduled hearings on this specific matter as of today, and no FOIA release or leaked memo has been made public to settle the dispute between the Times' sourcing and the DOJ/DHS denial.