Immigration and Customs Enforcement is facing fresh scrutiny after newly obtained internal records revealed 148 open allegations involving possible agent misconduct and criminal wrongdoing — including accusations of sexual assault, bribery, domestic violence and drug smuggling.
The records, obtained by Newsweek through a Freedom of Information Act request, provide a rare glimpse inside ICE’s internal disciplinary system at a time when the agency is rapidly expanding its ranks and playing a central role in President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
The allegations span fiscal years 2023, 2024 and 2025, meaning they cover periods under both President Joe Biden and Trump.
According to the records, ICE had 18 open cases dating to 2023, 69 from 2024 and another 61 from 2025.
The documents do not identify the employees involved, and they do not show whether the accusations were substantiated, dismissed or ultimately resulted in punishment.
Still, the sheer number of unresolved investigations is raising questions about whether ICE is keeping pace with misconduct complaints as the agency undergoes a dramatic expansion.
John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under President Barack Obama, said the most striking part of the records was not necessarily the nature of the allegations, but how many investigations remained open.
“What strikes me as interesting is the number of open investigations,” Sandweg told Newsweek.
He said the figures raise questions about whether ICE is moving cases toward resolution quickly enough.
ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility typically investigates allegations of employee misconduct, criminal behavior and violations of agency rules.
The Department of Homeland Security defended the agency’s internal procedures.
“We take allegations regarding misconduct seriously and cherish the public’s trust,” a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek. “We work tirelessly to uphold the rule of law and hold ourselves accountable.”
But the internal records reveal a wide range of serious accusations.
Of the 148 cases, 44 were categorized by ICE as criminal or criminal non-federal matters. Another 104 involved non-criminal misconduct, administrative issues or other recorded information.
The allegations included 10 DUI or DWI investigations, six cases involving alleged misuse of government vehicles, five bribery-related investigations, three domestic violence cases and two allegations involving sexual assault of adults.
There were also two drug-smuggling investigations and two sexual harassment cases.
Some of the most common complaints involved alleged misuse of government equipment and authority.
ICE recorded 15 cases involving alleged misuse of government computers, phones or email systems, along with 12 conflict-of-interest or misuse-of-position allegations and 12 hostile-work-environment complaints.
The records also contain 10 incidents involving the intentional discharge of an ICE service weapon.
Five of those shootings were classified as resulting in death or serious injury.
Three intentional discharges caused no injury or property damage, one caused property damage and another resulted in a minor injury.
Sandweg said complaints involving workplace conduct and misuse of government resources are not unusual in large law-enforcement agencies.
But he warned that problems can grow when agencies rapidly increase hiring.
“History has shown us that when you build up these agencies quickly, and you put your focus not on ensuring the quality of your workforce, but rather how quickly you can get more agents out there making arrests, you’re going to get a massive increase in misconduct-related allegations,” he told Newsweek.
That warning comes as ICE undergoes a major expansion.
The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this year that ICE increased its force of officers and agents from roughly 10,000 to about 22,000 in less than a year.
At the same time, immigration arrests have surged under Trump’s mass-deportation push.
ICE reportedly arrested roughly 50,000 people in August alone as enforcement operations intensified across the country.
The expansion has placed the agency under an increasingly bright spotlight, particularly after a string of controversial encounters involving federal immigration officers.
Lawmakers and civil-rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about excessive force, racial profiling and whether officers are being held accountable when operations turn violent.
Several fatal shootings involving immigration agents have fueled those concerns, including the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Ruben Ray Martinez in South Padre Island, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.
The deaths of Good and Pretti occurred in January 2026 and are not included in the ICE dataset obtained by Newsweek.
Democrats seized on the newly revealed misconduct figures as evidence that Congress and the Trump administration should be demanding greater oversight.
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was “very disturbed” by the allegations.
“The professionalism of our law enforcement should be of the utmost priority for the Federal government — and for Congress,” Thompson told Newsweek.
He accused the Republican-controlled Congress of failing to conduct meaningful oversight of ICE and charged that the administration has been unwilling to adequately punish agents accused of serious wrongdoing.
Rhode Island Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner went even further, accusing the Trump administration of allowing a culture in which immigration agents believe they will not face consequences for excessive force.
“The most alarming aspect of the data is the complete lack of discipline for excessive use of force at ICE during the Trump administration’s violent deportation surges,” Magaziner told Newsweek.
He argued that Americans have seen repeated videos of confrontations involving ICE agents that would trigger swift investigations at many other law-enforcement agencies.
Newsweek also contacted Republican congressional leaders Rep. Andrew Garbarino and Sen. Rand Paul for comment.
One important limitation remains: the records cannot cleanly separate cases opened under Biden from those opened under Trump.
ICE organized the data by fiscal year rather than by exact incident date.
Fiscal year 2025, for example, ran from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2025. Biden remained president until Jan. 20, 2025, meaning nearly four months of that fiscal year occurred under his administration.
Newsweek said it asked DHS and ICE how many allegations were ultimately substantiated, how many employees were disciplined or prosecuted, how many cases remain unresolved and what might explain the apparent increase.
The agencies did not directly answer those questions.
For now, the records leave ICE confronting an uncomfortable question as its size and power continue to grow: whether the systems designed to police the agency itself are keeping up.
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