A secret police is a government organization that often involves extra-judicial activities. Its actions include unlawful detention of individuals, kidnapping people off the streets, punishing those who opposed the government and a lack of accountability to the public. There is only one organization that fits within the definition of secret police in the United States: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE.
The agency was officially founded in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security. In the aftermath of 9/11, agencies dealing with customs and immigration were combined. The goal was to find a more efficient way to deal with issues related to immigration enforcement.
But in the years that followed, ICE became the mechanism of the right-wing agenda for immigration. The agency under the second Trump administration has received a $75 billion increase in funding for the next five years. Huge amounts of money have been funneled to weapons, detention centers and recruitment.
The goal of this administration with ICE, along with many of its policies, has been vengeance — especially towards the enemies of the state — dictated by either the personal or political enemies of the president. Even the political staffers within the administration, who often hold antisemitic and racist views, have their own vengeance against groups who are not “Heritage Americans.”
The first target was international students who took a stand against Israeli actions in the Israel-Hamas war. ICE acted by arresting student activists, like Mahmoud Khalil, and columnists, effectively making criticism of American foreign policy illegal for foreign nationals.
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But the main target of this vengeance has been Hispanic communities throughout the country. These communities have been terrorized, with streets emptied and businesses losing customers. Fear has become the norm for many millions of Americans, with or without legal status.
This has caused U.S. citizens to disappear from their families for days without any information, taken by masked men in unmarked vehicles and kept in appalling detention centers. Conditions there involve beating, lack of medical care and overcrowding, which have resulted in the deadliest year in detentions.
Such actions are done within an agency that is shameless and lacks any public accountability. ICE agents’ faces are covered, and detention centers refuse entry to congresspeople, despite being required to by law. This secrecy has given agents the ability to act without consequence in their behavior against migrants and protestors alike.
Civil liberties and human rights don’t end with foreign nationals; rights are universal. Giving the government the ability to restrict unalienable rights for some people gives it the authority to restrict those rights for all of us.
ICE is no longer just an agency focused on enforcing immigration laws in the United States, but rather has become a tool of the White House to destabilize the nation. The actions of ICE, whether in Los Angeles or in Chicago, have disrupted the community and inflamed tensions.
This is by design — the White House pushed narratives of chaos and rioting in blue states to send in the troops and to exercise power over the opposition.
It is the authoritarian playbook to promote chaos in the streets, using the internal instability as an excuse to restore order. ICE has been used as a tool in this playbook, whether in Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles or Chicago.
The treatment of ICE agents or protests against the organization has been characterized as unlawful or rioting. This has been done with the ill intention of giving the president an excuse to use the Insurrection Act, giving him the authority to deploy the military within the United States.
Institutions once shaped into a certain culture often become very difficult to change. To allow an organization where the rot of abuse and racism is at its core to remain would be the greatest act of malpractice.
It will be like the failure of the Russian government to abolish the KGB following the fall of communism, an intact security apparatus that was more than happy to help facilitate the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin.
Just like the last four years, the organization will hide in the background, and the rot will grow, only to come out in full force in the next authoritarian administration to enforce its power over enemies of the state. Given that the Republican Party is indulging more in far-right beliefs, there is a possibility that the next Republican administration will be even worse.
For any reasonable believer in liberal democracy, there is only one solution to this violation of human rights: the abolishment of ICE, but also the prosecution of individuals who knowingly violate those rights. An institution that abuses people and a workforce that takes full enjoyment in inflicting harm has passed the point of reform; instead, it is a cancer on the American political system. The only option left is to remove this cancer before it kills our democracy.
Mateusz is a senior in LAS.
