Police killings decline during Trump deportation surge operations
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A year after critics warned that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive would lead to bloodshed in America’s largest sanctuary cities, new data from a leading progressive police reform group shows that police-involved homicides are actually declining — the first drop in five years.
Lawmakers and activists from Los Angeles to New York predicted that Trump’s largely tilted focus on sanctuary urban communities would lead to more violence against innocent residents; This came to a head recently with the shooting of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
However, data from the progressive advocacy project Mapping Police Violence, an offshoot of the Harlem-based Campaign Zero police reform group, found that police-involved homicides actually decreased during that time period.
In the 2025 police brutality report, 1,314 police-involved homicides mark the first decline in five years.
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A man waves a U.S. flag near people protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement near the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 9, 2026. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2024, the number was 1,382, reportedly a record number. In 2023, 1,362 people died, rightfully or unjustly, at the hands of the police.
“If they were so violent, why did police kill 68 fewer people in 2025 than in 2024? Certainly, that’s not what I expected to happen,” columnist David Mastio wrote. Kansas City Star.
“These facts complicate the political narrative that Trump has employed ‘violent and sometimes deadly tactics by federal immigration officers in communities across the country.’
Mastio also noted that recent complaints from the left about an increase in police-involved violence since the death of George Floyd in the Twin Cities left out the detail that any increase would occur under a Democratic administration in Washington.
Amid increased enforcement of immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, Sen. Alex Padilla he told PBS He said the situation was “a crisis of Trump’s own making” and expressed concern about the repercussions of any violence.
Padilla, D-Calif., is known to have tried to get close to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem when she burst into a news conference during the surge; The senator denied this claim after being briefly detained by security.
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President Donald Trump (left) and a police car are on the right. (Mandel Ngan/Getty Images)
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement at the height of the surge in Minneapolis that people were “racially profiled, harassed, terrorized and attacked. Schools were quarantined.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, “Minneapolis did not want this operation, but we are paying the price for it.”
St. St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her expressed concerns that violence against innocent people will actually increase as DHS focuses on the metro area.
“Our residents are afraid, and as local officials, we have a responsibility to take action. Today, we stand side by side with Minneapolis and the attorney general to fight back,” Her said.
In his column, Mastio stated that the latest figures came from “an unimpeachable police source” who “will not present” reliable data to his ideological opponents.
DHS, meanwhile, has routinely touted data showing that violence against law enforcement is on the rise.
DHS Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin recently told Fox News Digital that there has been a four-digit percent increase in threats against ICE and federal immigration officers.
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“As our ICE law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, terrorists and gang members from American neighborhoods, they face an 8,000% increase in death threats against them and a more than 1,300% increase in attacks against them,” McLaughlin said.
“Make no mistake, there is threatening rhetoric and this unprecedented violence against our law enforcement is being incited by refugee politicians by repeatedly denigrating and demonizing law enforcement.”
