We should really do something about that.

That really ought to change on both sides of the equation.

we were discussing a 2009 incident where a helicopter crash in Afghanistan had killed three DEA agents. Sitting in his own executive suite in the FBI offices, he told me how he’d sensed among the bureau’s leadership a certain professional jealousy in watching the reaction of the DEA after those tragic deaths.

“You know,” the agent said, “I always got the impression — not that the leadership wanted any of us individually to get hurt or killed — but that they kind of hoped the bureau would get bloodied at some point so that it would feel like the bureau had made a sacrifice for the war.”

I’ve returned to that conversation and theme watching public remarks in recent months by Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, and Greg Bovino.

So they’re not really in danger of physical violence, but not for a lack of hope and effort by their bosses who do all they can to manufacture situations where one of them will get killed. Somehow this combination makes it seem extra pathetic to be an ice agent.

This information is simultaneously shocking and also not unexpected

As much as I want ICE abolished (and would not mind worse), from reading the article and looking at the references, the logic in the claim is a bit dubious.

1A) 0 ICE has ever been killed “in the line of duty” on the American streets.

1B) The article arrives at a death rate of 1 in 95k / yr based on slightly broader (but still valid) conditions.

2. In 2024 there were 336 school shooting incidents and 276 victims wounded or killed; in 2025 there were 233 and 148 respectively (k12ssdb; I assumed all victims are students btw).

3. There were about 50 million K-12 students enrolled in public schools in 2024

4. Elementary school shooting incidents are just over 20% (incidents no victims, and not for 2024 but the entire k12ssdb reporting period)

5A) Taking the larger and more tragic number of dead+wounded from (2) divided by 50 million we get about 1 in 181k.

5B) For every three shooting victims, roughly one dies. So I would triple that to 1 in 540k or so. This is a ballpark for the elementary school death rate (what the article refers to).

6. For the article headline claim to be ordinarily true, [1B] should be greater than [5B]. It is not as 95k isnt greater than 540k or even 181k. Still, I find this unacceptably close to the ICE death rate by orders of magnitude but it’s not the most honest comparison.

7. In an alternative interpretation, the article could be using the value in [1A] for the basis of the claim instead of [1B], which would be trivial as the nonzero number of elementary school shooting deaths would always be greater than 0. But it’s not worded that way. Risk is by definition future-facing.

8. The population of ICE agents is “only” about 20k (still too many) as of very recently, which is not nearly high enough to beat the “rounding errors” or granularity of a 1 in 100k/yr death rate.

In closing remarks, fuck ICE. ACAB.