Primer: ICE
On January 7, during an enforcement operation in Minneapolis, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renée Good, a 37-year-old American citizen. While federal officials have described the shooting as an act of self-defense, many members of the public, citing video evidence to the contrary, have characterized the shooting as unlawful, quickly sparking widespread protests in Minneapolis and across the nation. This violent episode is only the most recent in a string of contentious confrontations between ICE agents and civilians amid Operation Metro Surge, a major interior immigration enforcement campaign under President Donald Trump’s leadership.
Created in 2003 within the then-newly established Department of Homeland Security, ICE was born from a sweeping reorganization of the federal government’s national security and immigration enforcement apparatus in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Unlike Customs and Border Patrol, which is tasked with securing the borders and ports of entry, ICE operates with the interior of the country, where it is responsible for detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants. To this end, ICE is endowed with civil and criminal enforcement powers relating to immigration, customs, trade, and national security, ostensibly to promote homeland security and public safety through compliance with immigration law. This week’s resolution begs the question of whether ICE’s mandate and recent activity warrant the agency’s abolition, substantial reform, or no change at all.
In the two decades since its creation, the expansion of ICE’s enforcement practices has been a central pillar of U.S. immigration policy, even as those practices have consistently drawn criticism for detention conditions and the treatment of migrants across administrations. Under President Barack Obama, ICE expanded interior enforcement and oversaw the growth of large-scale detention facilities, including family detention centers in which children were held in cage-like or highly restrictive conditions. During President Donald Trump’s first term, ICE became a central instrument of a “zero-tolerance” immigration strategy, dramatically broadening detention and removal and the accompanying family separations and overcrowded facilities. And although President Joe Biden formally repudiated Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, his administration continued to rely heavily on ICE’s detention and removal infrastructure.
However, it is only recently, since the beginning of President Trump’s second term and his dramatic expansion of ICE as a part of his deportation campaign, that calls for ICE’s abolition have intensified, as incident after incident has drawn severe criticism regarding the agency’s use of force, lack of accountability, and the federal government’s violation to constitutional rights such as due process.
Proponents of abolition argue that ICE’s much-maligned activity in the last year is only the latest incident in a long history of systemic abuses that cannot be solved by reform. They contend that the agency’s broad enforcement discretion and weak oversight produce violations of due process, excessive uses of force, and racialized policing, regardless of the administration in power. In this view, ICE’s core function, interior immigration enforcement through arrest, detention, and removal, is itself incompatible with democratic accountability, and its responsibilities should therefore be dismantled and redistributed to institutions with clearer mandates and stronger constraints. This view is often founded on the belief that undocumented immigrants should not be deported, and any enforcement regime designed to remove them is therefore objectionable in principle, not merely in practice.
On the other hand, opponents of abolition object on several different grounds. A more moderate camp rejects abolition but agrees that ICE’s current practices are flawed. Advocates of this position maintain that immigration enforcement is a legitimate federal responsibility, but argue that ICE has drifted far beyond its original mandate. Rather than abolishing the agency, they might call for substantial reforms, including stricter limits on use of force, expanded judicial oversight, and independent investigatory bodies.
More absolute opponents of abolition argue that ICE performs essential functions that cannot be eliminated without fundamentally undermining immigration law and national security. They claim that interior enforcement is a necessary component of border security and that immigration laws ought to be meaningfully enforced once individuals are inside the country. While they might acknowledge that misconduct should be investigated and punished, they argue that isolated incidents should not justify dismantling a critical federal agency.
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"Immigration and Customs Enforcement" by dianeherr is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.