Levine | ICE is doing its job. That’s the problem.
In January, Stephen Miller, President Trump’s top advisor, told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, “You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.”
In 2025, thirty-two people died in ICE custody, the agency’s deadliest year since 2004. In January of 2026 alone, six have died in ICE detention. Nationwide, outrage at the killings of American citizens by ICE agents have driven mass protest, including at Stanford. These deaths are the horrific result of an institutional campaign that frames its targets as existential threats rather than human beings.
To understand ICE’s mandate, we have to look at the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created eleven days after the terrorist attacks that struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. Unifying the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency within one department under DHS, ICE was a small piece of America’s answer to widespread panic and fear.
In early 2003, ICE absorbed the investigative functions of the US Customs Service and the INS. As described on its website, ”Congress granted ICE a unique combination of civil and criminal authorities to better protect national security and public safety in answer to the tragic events on 9/11.” This context is important. ICE was created explicitly as a counter-terrorism tool, with a mandate to “protect national security and strengthen public safety” by consolidating enforcement power and recruiting officers as part of a larger, military-forward operation.
When officers are trained to combat terror and their foundational mission is framed as a fight against existential threats to the American nation, what happens when they are deployed against immigrant communities?
The answer is playing out in the news.
Immigrant students are being detained after routine immigration court appearances and arrested from “sensitive locations” including schools, churches, hospitals and shelters, after the Trump administration granted ICE permission to override what they call “humanitarian parole.”
Agents also broke down the door of citizen ChongLy Thao’s home, searching him without a warrant and refusing to look at his ID while looking for two sex offenders. Thao, the DHS claims, matched the description of their targets. He was naturalized in the 1990s. However, agents are permitted to use race as grounds to stop or detain suspects, allowing them to racially profile non-citizens and citizens alike with little to no consequences.
ICE’s racial profiling is not only unconstitutional, it can be deadly. Keith Porter Jr, a Black American citizen, was killed by his neighbor, an off-duty ICE officer, after allegedly firing gunshots at him. Given the DHS’ dubious track record of falsely accusing people against whom they inflict violence, it is unclear whether the killing was in response to a legitimate threat or an unnecessary jump to violence fueled by bias and aggression.
Black Americans are over three times more likely than white Americans to be killed by law enforcement, and when agents are trained to act on the basis of race and neutralize any enemy, the line between lawful enforcement and biased targeting becomes invisible.
ICE agents are not charged with local law enforcement duties, although local police may cooperate with them. While this overstepping of authority is deeply concerning from a democratic standpoint, it does not come as a complete surprise from an agency encouraged to override the law in service of fighting terror. It also comes at the expense of people’s lives, usually those who are Black, brown or perceived as foreign.
ICE’s practice of anonymity and impulsive violence illustrate how they identify threats: those they assume to be undocumented and those defending them, who should face violence. On January 7th, Renée Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Federal officials including Vice President J.D. Vance have claimed Good struck Ross and his actions were in self-defense, but body-cam footage shows Good driving away from Ross rather than towards him. The video also shows Ross calling her a “fucking bitch” immediately after shooting her. These words and actions are not a demonstration of security. They signal a person acting out of anger and resentment, trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
Seventeen days later, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by two Customs and Border Protection agents (another agency under the DHS whose role under this administration has blurred). Video recordings show Pretti filming with his phone and standing between an agent and a woman the agent had pushed. Pretti was pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground. Only after he was shot did one agent inform his colleagues that he had already disarmed Pretti. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and then-Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino accused Pretti of “brandishing” his gun and acting violently, but video evidence and eyewitness accounts prove otherwise, as admitted in the DHS review.
Good and Pretti were white American citizens. They were killed in broad daylight. Tens of thousands of non-citizens, mostly people of color, are currently held in detention centers with no connection to the outside world. 73.6% of current detainees lack criminal convictions, and many are not given due process as enshrined by the 5th Amendment.
This is not an entirely partisan issue. President Obama’s administration still holds the record for the highest number of deportations (although Trump still has three years to change that). But there was a 36.25% decline in ICE detention facility inspection last year after funding cuts from the federal government specifically targeted oversight into immigration agencies and officers. The speed at which the Trump administration deports people is outpacing accountability trackers in the thousands.
There is no oversight and therefore no accountability for ICE. The only time America permits the government to avoid accountability or internal investigation is during a time of war. We are not at war with immigrants. Still, the government is behaving as if we are because ICE was not designed to wage against foreign armies, but against people living among us.
After 9/11, Arab and Muslim communities in America became subject to a systematic dehumanization campaign. They were framed as security threats, placed under mass surveillance, experienced hate crimes and were stripped of civil liberties under the guise of national security. The language of counterterrorism transformed entire populations into suspects. This same logic now animates ICE’s view of immigrant communities as threats to be neutralized.
President Trump has called the current immigration crisis an “invasion” multiple times, allowing him to centralize power and presidential authority in the name of fighting a war against “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” As Trump capitalizes on fear and terror to gain power and act with impunity, our democratic system of laws weakens.
Moral outrage at ICE violence cannot be limited to American citizens. When someone breaks the law, regardless of their nationality, the appropriate response is not detention without oversight. It is not brutality towards dissenters. ICE is not simply malfunctioning, it is working in line with its mission to fight terror. But, as history has shown us time and time again, framing a group as a threat to be destroyed is not the security measure it pretends to be. We face more danger from armed officers on our streets than from those whom they claim to be fighting.
The general strike was a start. But ICE’s terror will not end until we make it clear that a society built on the rule of law cannot tolerate an armed agency operating beyond it. The fight against ICE is not a fight against national security. It’s a fight for it.
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