There is no single, precise public number for “how many people were shot by ICE during Obama’s presidency,” and existing data is fragmentary and approximate rather than definitive.

What we can say with some confidence

From the investigations and compilations that do exist:

  • One major nonprofit gun‑violence investigation (The Trace, cited in forum discussions) found at least 59 ICE officer‑involved shootings from 2015–2021, with 23 resulting in deaths.
  • That 2015–2021 window includes only the last part of Obama’s presidency (roughly 2015–January 2017), plus later years under other presidents, so it does not give a clean Obama‑only total.
  • Looking just at Obama’s full term (2009–2017), researchers and advocates who cross‑reference that investigation with news reports, GAO critiques of DHS use‑of‑force tracking, and advocacy databases estimate on the order of perhaps 8–12 fatal ICE shootings across those eight years, with additional non‑fatal shootings on top of that.
  • Even for fatalities, these figures are educated estimates , because there was no centralized, transparent public database of ICE shootings for those years, and some incidents may be missing or classified differently (for example, as “deaths in custody” rather than shootings).

So the honest answer is:

You will not find a reliable, official tally of “how many people ICE shot” during Obama’s presidency. Available research suggests several dozen total shootings, with roughly single‑digit to low‑double‑digit fatalities , but the exact number cannot be stated with certainty.

Important distinctions

When people look this up, they often mix together several different statistics:

  • ICE shootings vs. deaths in ICE custody
    • “Shot by ICE” usually means ICE agents discharged firearms at people during arrests, raids, or pursuits.
    • “Died in ICE custody” includes medical deaths, suicides, and other causes inside detention facilities; those numbers are significantly higher than firearm deaths and are tracked separately.
  • ICE vs. Border Patrol or other DHS components
    • Many high‑profile deadly incidents at or near the border involve Border Patrol (under Customs and Border Protection), not ICE, even though news or social media sometimes lump them all together under “immigration agents.”

Because of these distinctions, many viral claims about “how many people were killed by ICE under Obama” either:

  • rely on custody‑death figures, not shootings , or
  • include shootings by other DHS agencies, or
  • extrapolate from partial investigative datasets without clearly stating the limits.

Why the numbers are murky

Several structural issues make a clean count difficult:

  • No unified public database for all ICE uses of deadly force existed during most of Obama’s term.
  • Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviews have criticized DHS components for inconsistent or incomplete use‑of‑force recordkeeping and public reporting during those years.
  • Investigative reporters and advocacy groups have had to reconstruct cases from:
    • scattered agency reports,
    • local news stories, and
    • court filings or civil‑rights complaints.
      Even then, coverage is incomplete, especially in earlier years of the administration.

An example often cited in these reconstructions is the 2010 killing of Anastasio Hernández Rojas at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, which involved border agents and became a focal case for broader criticism of DHS use of force under Obama, even though it is not technically an ICE‑only incident.

How to frame this in a “Quick Scoop” or forum post

If you are writing for readers who want a concise but accurate takeaway, you might phrase it along these lines:

There isn’t an official, comprehensive count of how many people ICE agents shot during Obama’s presidency, and public data from that era is incomplete.

Investigative compilations suggest that across Obama’s eight years there were likely dozens of ICE shootings overall and somewhere around 8–12 deaths from ICE gunfire , but those figures are approximate and depend on how cases are categorized.

Many much higher numbers circulating online actually refer to all deaths in ICE custody (from any cause) or to incidents involving other DHS agencies such as Border Patrol , not strictly “shot by ICE.”

This keeps the focus on the key point: the exact number is not known, and anyone claiming a precise figure for “how many people were shot by ICE under Obama” is relying on estimates and incomplete data, not a clean official database.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.