ICE: The Masked Enforcers of White Nationalism
America has long painted itself as a nation of immigrants: a safe haven, a land of opportunity. But this self-flattering mythology has always existed in contradiction to a more violent, exclusionary reality. For every welcome extended to newcomers, there has been a backlash; a recurring cycle in which immigrants are blamed, criminalized, and ultimately brutalized for the country’s own internal failures. Few institutions exemplify this contradiction more than Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Born in the shadow of 9/11, ICE was created to protect the U.S. from terrorism. In practice, however, it became a vehicle for racialized paranoia and political propaganda. It has grown into a sprawling, well-funded, and largely unaccountable domestic enforcement apparatus, one whose practices increasingly resemble those of a secret police. And under Donald Trump’s newly passed “Big Beautiful Bill”, it is about to become even more powerful and dangerous.
This essay traces the evolution of ICE from its origins to its current unrestrained brutality, placing it in the broader context of American immigration history, political scapegoating, and creeping authoritarianism.
A Nation Built by Immigrants, and Against Them
The United States owes its existence to immigrants: colonists, indentured laborers, refugees, enslaved Africans, and migrant workers. From the Industrial Revolution to Silicon Valley, immigrant labor has powered the nation’s economic growth. But this reality has never stopped America from treating immigrants as a threat.
In the late 1800s, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first major federal law to ban immigration based on race. Subsequent policies like the 1924 Immigration Act established national origin quotas to favor white, Western Europeans. “Americanization” campaigns punished non-English speakers. During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, many of them U.S. citizens, were forcibly deported. After 9/11, Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians faced mass surveillance and detentions.
This pattern is cyclical: welcome when convenient, expelled when not. Immigrants are celebrated in the abstract, but demonized in practice.
ICE: Born from Fear, Designed to Punish
ICE was created in 2003 during a frantic reorganization of the federal government in the wake of 9/11. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established to consolidate domestic security efforts, and from that emerged ICE, tasked not only with enforcing immigration law but also with investigating customs violations and transnational crimes.
From the beginning, ICE’s mandate was confused and bloated. It merged functions from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the U.S. Customs Service. Two subdivisions emerged:
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI): Focused on smuggling, trafficking, and international crime.
Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO): Focused on arresting, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants.
But over time, the second mission consumed the agency’s resources and public image. ERO became ICE's most visible and notorious arm, conducting high-profile raids on workplaces, communities, and homes.
Though ICE was marketed as a counter-terrorism tool, its targets were overwhelmingly working-class immigrants from Latin America and Asia, many of whom had lived in the U.S. for years, even decades. ICE wasn’t protecting Americans from terror. It was building a new form of internal control, punishing poverty and ethnicity under the guise of law and order.
Immigrants as the New Enemy: The Politics of Fear
ICE's true power comes not from its badge or budget, but from its political utility. The Republican Party discovered that nothing rallies their base quite like a foreign menace, and undocumented immigrants have been cast as a stand-in for all societal ills: job loss, cultural change, crime, disease.
Under Trump’s first term, this fearmongering became central to his political strategy. He didn’t just defend ICE, he glorified it. He praised raids. He called immigrants "animals" and “invaders.” He sent federal agents to so-called “sanctuary cities” to provoke confrontation. Immigration was no longer a bureaucratic issue, it was a battlefield.
The right-wing media machine did the rest. Footage of handcuffed immigrants ran on loop. Talking heads warned of caravans and open borders. Any critique of ICE became framed as an attack on national security. Anyone who defended immigrants became complicit in crime. This narrative didn’t just dehumanize migrants, it sanctified the agents who brutalized them.
ICE Today: Rogue Agency, Constitutional Threat
ICE’s tactics in 2025 look less like law enforcement and more like authoritarian overreach. Recent reports from Connecticut and upstate New York have documented agents wearing masks, driving unmarked vehicles, and refusing to identify themselves. Individuals, often without criminal records, have been detained in broad daylight, without warrants or explanation. These are not arrests. They are state-sanctioned kidnappings.
Federal courts have ruled against ICE’s primary deportation programs, citing unconstitutional practices and a lack of due process. Despite this, abuses persist. Between 2012 and 2018, ICE wrongfully detained nearly 1,500 U.S. citizens. Detainees have reported sexual abuse, forced sterilizations, and prolonged solitary confinement.
The agency’s secrecy only compounds the danger. ICE operates a shadow flight network known as "ICE Air," used to deport individuals via chartered planes with little public oversight. Conditions on these flights have been likened to prisoner transport; restrained, dehydrated, and abused. In 2025, investigative reporting revealed that ICE Air plans to triple its deportation rate to 1 million people per year, under Trump’s new legislative budget expansion.
Even more chilling, ICE has begun adopting the aesthetics and tactics of secret police forces. Masked agents show up at homes, workplaces, courthouses, and even hospitals. They do not identify themselves. They do not show warrants. They simply vanish people.
Trump’s Second Term: A Green Light for Escalation
Trump’s return to power has given ICE everything it needs to become even more violent and unaccountable. His 2025 immigration bill allocated a record $76.5 billion to immigration enforcement. Of that, over $45 billion is designated for ICE alone, covering the hiring of 10,000 new agents, construction of new detention centers, and expansion of its covert operations.
This isn't law enforcement. It’s state repression; funded, legitimized, and escalated. Trump has openly declared mass deportation as a goal. ICE is his instrument. The agency will be tasked not just with removing the undocumented, but with sending a message to anyone who dares to oppose his vision of America.
And let’s be clear: what ICE does now will be a dress rehearsal for what other agencies may do later. The normalization of masked, unaccountable agents tearing people from their homes is not just a migrant issue. It’s a warning shot to all dissenters.
The Slippery Slope of Fascism
The most dangerous thing about ICE isn’t just what it does, it’s how silently it does it. Most Americans can ignore it. The victims are poor, brown, and often voiceless. But the erosion of rights doesn’t stop at the border. It creeps inward.
History teaches us that authoritarian regimes don’t begin with tanks in the streets. They begin with police raids in silence. With a knock on the door at 3 a.m. With bureaucracies that do not answer to courts. With agents whose faces are hidden.
ICE is already behaving like a paramilitary force. It is armed. It is funded. It is ideologically motivated. And it is becoming bolder by the day.
The Last Line of Defense
The rise of ICE marks a dangerous shift in American governance. It is a case study in how fear can be weaponized, how bureaucracy can enable brutality, and how quickly constitutional norms can be discarded in the name of “security.”
To stop ICE is not just to protect immigrants. It is to protect the very idea of due process, of civil liberty, of constitutional governance. The longer we allow ICE to operate unchecked, the closer we drift to a country where citizenship offers no protection, where dissent invites persecution, and where law exists only to punish the powerless.
The deportation state has been built. The question now is whether we will allow it to become permanent.