Under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. That’s how it went on to become the United States’ largest federal law enforcement agency. This process has raised profound questions in both practical and ethical terms about the agency’s role as it pertains to immigration enforcement and public safety. That’s against a backdrop of increasing militarization and repression.
Donald Trump’s administration charged ICE with a mission that painted immigrants as a dangerous attack on national security. Combined with this budget-first approach, this has given the agency an astronomical budget even compared to most military forces around the globe. Consequently, it is able to conduct missions that most opponents argue are unnecessary and frequently brutal. The chilling implications of ICE’s actions have been underscored by incidents such as the killing of Renee Good, which has drawn attention to the agency’s aggressive tactics on U.S. streets.
Over the past several years, our country has passed an inflection point on immigration and national security issues. Trumpism rebranded the battle over immigration almost completely, bringing national security concerns about illegal immigrants into the much larger public safety arena. That cultural top-down pressure started after the advent of the Obama administration. It surged under Trump, who leveraged charming and duplicitous rhetoric to gin up political support for his policy agenda.
Right-wing media outlets, most notoriously Fox News, have been integral in pushing these narratives. They have fear-mongered, lied, and propagated narratives that demonize immigration as a horrific, scary, awful crisis, further scaring the shit out of the American people. In this media landscape, we develop a public discourse that views immigration punitive measures as necessary to protect our national security. Yet the reality is that these measures are frequently motivated by racial bias.
ICE’s operations have become emblematic of this alarming trend, as seen in the everyday encounters that often lead to violence. To this day, government propaganda has glamorized the imagery of these crackdowns. Department officials actively engage in and encourage these operations to the tune of framing them as heroic efforts to protect the American citizenry. This portrayal serves to both legitimize ICE’s actions and mask the very real human costs of an aggressive immigration enforcement regime.
Additionally, ICE’s administrative overreach has resulted in drastic nationwide increases in law enforcement discretion. Meanwhile, the definitions of public order infractions have expanded. This amendment opens the door to more widespread surveillance, targeting, and intervention in immigrant communities. Critics say this expansion is not merely enforcing laws. They argue it has become a mechanism for targeting and striking fear in immigrant communities.
The ramifications of this change reach beyond America’s shores. Countries from the United Kingdom to Australia are feeling the pangs of anti-immigration, anti-security sentiments. Such tactics, similar to those employed by ICE, have sparked an outpouring of concern about their threat to civil liberties and human rights. In fact, critics caution that the same strategies being employed in the U.S. could soon seep into other nations. This presents grave dangers to democratic norms and values at home and abroad.