Who Is ICE?

The faceless ICE agent has quickly become symbolic of Donald Trump’s fascist Project 2025 agenda. Ominously, in the last few weeks, the Trump Administration has ramped up its recruitment drive to flood Immigration and Customs Enforcement with 10,000 more officers—a number made possible by Congress, which approved $75 billion in new funding for ICE this past summer, making it the largest law enforcement branch in the country by far. And unlike other federal workers, ICE agents are still working through the ongoing government shutdown.

But who are these guys really? To answer that question, consider this: Trump has a goal of deporting one million people a year. One million. And he wants it done in a way that’s as performatively violent as possible. That takes not only big numbers, but a certain type of person—namely, thousands of unvetted, undertrained zealots with an authoritarian fetish, using the badge as a tool to push existing far-right agendas.

Let me be clear up front: I’m both a border hawk and a strong proponent of immigration, I believe there should be a secure border, and we should encourage as much legal immigration as we can. Do we need an agency that protects Americans by capturing and expelling violent, dangerous criminals who also happen to be undocumented immigrants? Absolutely. And I have nothing but respect for the agents who are doing their jobs in a professional manner with deference to the law. But anyone who’s been paying even a little bit of attention this year knows that’s only a fraction of what’s really going on in 2025.

As we’ve all seen, masked ICE agents, often in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles, are roving the country lawlessly, nabbing decent people—frequently without warrants—from courtrooms, churches, hospitals, and shopping center parking lots. They’re roughing up people who protest their behavior (or who just happen to be in their vicinity), and their “arrest first, ask questions later” approach not only openly violates the Constitution, it means innocent American citizens are getting caught up in their brutality too. And when they do get called out, by the media or concerned citizens, some have outright lied in a ham-fisted attempt to cover up their blatant violations of civil rights.

Trump has always focused on quantity over quality, so it’s no surprise that the administration is filling out the ICE ranks not with competent professionals but with unqualified and potentially dangerous individuals. And that means millions of Americans are under some level of threat because of our own federal government and its growing secret police force...