ICE agents told by relatives they will 'answer in hell' as families fracture over politics
Federal immigration agents are being told they will "answer in hell" by their own families as the political divide over border security grows increasingly personal.
Immigration agents are being vilified and disowned by relatives who spoke to Vanity Fair about their reactions.
The fractures come as the Department of Homeland Security continues its mass deportation push under the Trump administration.
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"You’ll answer in hell for some of the atrocities you commit daily," one family member, Jake, wrote in an email to his brother, an ICE agent for nearly a decade. Vanity Fair assigned pseudonyms to those interviewed.
Months earlier, he left a voicemail for his brother expressing anger over his vote for President Donald Trump and its consequences and even deleted his contact.
"At times, I feel like I need to be the one to rise above and put this stuff aside and maintain these relationships," he said. "But I’ll maybe have just seen something in the news that kind of triggers you again where you’re like, ‘I can’t separate this.’"
Jake said he felt compelled to confront his ICE agent brother after the death of Alex Pretti during an altercation with federal agents in Minneapolis in January.
Animosity toward federal agents has intensified after the Trump administration deployed additional agents to the city to arrest illegal immigrants under Operation Metro Surge.
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Two Americans were killed during the deployment, and protests erupted nationwide. Both deaths remain under investigation, but federal authorities said agents acted within legal boundaries.
Carla, a Maryland resident, said that after her uncle became an ICE agent, her family decided he would no longer be invited to Thanksgiving that year.
"We are very opinionated," she said. "We stand strong on how we feel. And I would say, since 2020, it’s been very well known that we feel that we’re flipping into a decline [toward] fascism very quickly."
In a separate example, Kim described her uncle as "friendly and outgoing" but noted that everything has changed in the past year. He is an ICE officer, and she questioned "how somebody can make a living off of doing these horrible things to other people."
"Even if he claims, you know, ‘We have all of the legitimate paperwork. We have all of the evidence that these people I am deporting are seriously dangerous criminals,' it’s like there’s a disconnect," Kim added.
In January, DHS reported that ICE agents have faced an 8,000% increase in death threats against them and a 1,300% increase in assaults.