ICE: Federal Law Enforcement Criminals
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has terrorized local communities across the United States since its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), started operations in 2003. This agency of bourgeois law enforcement’s crimes against humanity have been so heinous and well-documented that even constituent parts of the bourgeois establishment have stood in opposition to its continued abuses for a considerable amount of time.
A Contemporary of the Patriot Act and the War on Terror
ICE is formally called the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With their current budget at $8 billion, their stated purpose is to enforce federal laws concerning immigration and customs, including illegal imports such as narcotics, laundered money, and sex exploitation materials. At the time of this writing, ICE has more than 20,000 agents in more than 400 offices in the United States and elsewhere. Although agencies and legislation predating ICE performed many of its current functions, the period succeeding the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon marked the beginning of a more centralized approach to immigration control. Its authority comes principally from the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and later amendments enacted from the 1980s onward. The history of ICE is therefore best understood as the history of U.S. immigration enforcement gradually moving from a relatively centralized immigration bureaucracy into a large national-security and law-enforcement system involving federal, state, and local governments.
President George Walker (George W.) Bush signed the Homeland Security Act on November 25, 2002. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of which ICE is a constituent part, began operations on March 1, 2003. The United States federal government immigration machinery is divided into three parts: the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles immigration benefits, citizenship, green cards, asylum applications and petitions; Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), which handles borders, ports of entry, border patrol and customs inspection; and ICE, which handles interior immigration enforcement, detention/removal and major criminal investigations. ICE is therefore not the only federal government agency which handles immigration-related matters, but is rather an aliquot part of immigration and customs law enforcement infrastructure whose operations are internal relative to the services focused on enforcing international boundaries, and coercive relative to documentation and application related services.
Under the George W. Bush administration, ICE would perform massive workplace raids and detainment procedures often including hundreds of people at a time. ICE’s early activity involved arresting individuals who already had final removal orders, seeking out persons who had likely probable cause for arrest and detainment, and issuing deportation flights. The Barack Obama administration would de-emphasize mass workplace arrests in favor of prioritizing individuals perceived to be criminal and national-security hazards. The first Donald Trump administration would follow the Bush model, the Joseph Biden administration would follow the Obama model, and the second Trump administration would follow the Bush model, creating a firm line of demarcation between Republican and Democrat regarding this matter. As an organization also involved in customs, ICE would also engage in investigations concerning money laundering, export violations, commercial fraud, and international criminal organizations. Given the corrupt state of the US federal government, it is easy to imagine the potential for fraudulent behavior on ICE’s part with the combined immigration and customs law enforcement powers.
What ICE Actually Does
Although the corporate media mainly focuses on the enforcement and removal aspect of ICE to sensationalize violence for the purpose of profiting from domestic bloodshed, that is not the only purpose allocated to ICE by the federal government. As a core constituent of the DHS, ICE has a deep and highly involved organizational infrastructure that provides it with wide immigration and customs related powers. The coercive law enforcement powers of ICE depend on a comprehensive intelligence apparatus which allows them to collect migrant-related data and direct violent action against individuals they determine to be in violation of federal law as it relates to immigration and customs. There are officially four departments within the ICE organizational structure: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which is the intelligence apparatus involved in criminal investigations related to immigration and customs; Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), which is the coercive apparatus which is involved in the physical arrest, detainment, and deportation procedures; Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), which ensures legal reconciliation and compliance within the overall ICE structure; and Management and Administration (M&A), the supervisory directorate which orchestrates the operation of the other three departments to ensure their mutual cooperation. Only the ERO and HSI will be discussed.
The ICE that you actually witness on corporate media committing unwarranted acts of violence against innocent people within United States borders are under the directive control of the ERO. This section of ICE agents concerns itself with immigration arrests, detention, removal proceedings, deportation logistics, fugitive operations and coordination with jails. It includes the armed federal police that physically enforce federal government authority within its specifically defined role. They’re involved in the 287(g) related federal-state cooperation procedures that allow state governments to perform immigration and customs related law enforcement operations on their behalf. What separates ICE from a simple police force, however, is its intelligence apparatus.
The HIS deals with criminal investigations involving trafficking, smuggling, narcotics, money laundering, customs violations, child exploitation, export controls, cybercrime and other transnational offenses. They’re the ones who decide which migrants in the US are involved in affairs sufficiently sordid to justify coercive measures seeking their detainment and/or removal from the country. They also investigate private employers and property managers to verify the presence of undocumented or otherwise illegal individuals so that probable cause for arrest can be procured. Although agents associated with the ELO are the ones who define the typical mental image of ICE, the agency would be much less effective at violating human rights in America were it not for HIS.
How ICE Impacts Humanity
Although many of its proponents’ claims are exaggerated, ICE has performed some good for humanity. Very few people would fault ICE for capturing foreigners involved in narcotics, human trafficking, or child predation. There is, however, fault in attempting to justify the entire operation of ICE on account of this alone. As is common practice in America, these actual, real-life problems have been used as a justification for far more broadly encompassing control measures on people living in the country while certain non-foreign individuals outside ICE’s authority are allowed to continue those exact same involvements.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has identified numerous violations committed by ICE in the name of law enforcement. Human rights abuses including but not limited to racial profiling, breaches of due process, excessive use of force, and operation in sensitive locations such as schools, courthouses, and places of religious worship have been committed by ICE. Many in ICE custody are denied medical care for chronic conditions. Its facilities provide squalid, crowded living conditions where detainees are often subjected to physical and sexual abuse by protective staff. Prolonged and improper use of restraints and solitary confinement are leveled against vulnerable detainees, often those who suffer from mental illness. Numerous deaths have been reported in ICE detainment camps which have been investigated by separate government entities.
Let’s not mince words here. ICE has been directly responsible for innocent bloodshed across the country. It’s been heavily documented, and news of it has been widely broadcast by the corporate news media. Perfectly decent hard-working people have been forcibly removed from their communities and places of employment for the sake of domestic peacekeeping. Families have been torn apart, lives have been destroyed, and the American taxpayer has been the one to cover the bill. This is nothing but a heinous affront to the working class of the world. The lie that ICE is needed to keep local communities safe from violent crime and illegal narcotics has been costly to the entire human race. This relic of post-9/11 hysteria and government duplicity needs to be abolished. The call to action is this: within the confines of the law, demoralize ICE agents wherever you find them, protest any legislation which involves state or local cooperation with ICE of any description, and provide any vulnerable members of the community with the necessary support to avoid violent ICE reprisal. This is the work that any decent member of society should do to combat ICE and fetter the constant oppression of the common laborer by the capitalist establishment.
