ICE Agents: Terror and Brutality
Was this part of their job description?
ICE agents are in the news frequently these days. We have seen pictures of them arresting people, shackling people, breaking windows to get at people, shoving people onto planes knowing they are headed to El Salvador, likely never to be heard from again, and separating husbands and wives and children and parents. Yes, I understand that people need a paycheck. But did they really sign up for a job that terrorizes and brutalizes people?
If you have not seen it, please watch this video Rachel Maddow shared on her show on 04/29/2025. It demonstrates all too clearly what ICE is doing.
I recently wrote a Backbone Report called Where’s the Outrage? about ICE agents breaking a car window, terrorizing the occupants of the car. Learning about the family in Oklahoma provides further evidence the situation is out of control.
If the rationale is that ICE agents are “just doing their job,” it would seem that their job description is as follows:
Job Title: Enforcement and Removal Officer (ICE Agent)
Agency: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Location: Nationwide but especially in Blue States/Sanctuary Cities
Position Summary:
Be part of a Trump 2.0 federal agency that is dedicated to the detention, dehumanization, and deportation of legal and illegal immigrants (and occasionally American citizens).
Key Responsibilities:
Separate families - apprehend and separate husbands and wives, children and parents.
Detain tourists at the border and keep them in detention facilities - ensure no one gets into the country if they do not have detailed plans, hotel reservations, and a ticket to leave.
Monitor solitary confinement for vulnerable detainees - including, but not limited to, LGBTQ+ individuals, the mentally ill, and protestors.
Obey all orders - no matter what they are.
Provide surveillance of courthouses, schools, hospitals, and churches - to round up designated targets or anyone else that seems appropriate to be deported.
Commit to meeting immigration deportation quotas - ensure that all quotas are met even if it requires deporting international students with visas, people with green cards, asylum seekers with temporary protected status, permanent residents, or American citizens.
Retaliate by whatever means necessary - against whistleblowers, judges, protestors, or anyone who tries to thwart the department’s objectives.
Provide cover up - lie, deny, and obfuscate as needed when questioned about questionable activities.
Qualifications:
A callous disregard for the humanity of immigrants and anyone the department chooses to target.
Ability to become violent, terrorize, break car windows, break into homes, and rough people up as needed.
Ability to ignore due process and other constitutional rights of all people targeted.
Fanciful imagination to make up evidence that someone is part of a gang and therefore deportable.
Performative skills in violence and thuggery to impress Trump and his MAGA base.
Physical ability to subdue, shackle, and shove immigrants into planes to be deported to brutal detention camps from which they are never likely to leave.
Effective mechanisms to deny responsibility, suppress empathy and compassion, and rationalize actions as doing your job for the greater good.
Obviously this is not the “real” job description for ICE agents. However, based on reports of their activities, it does provide a description of what ICE agents have been doing and their “qualifications.”
Action Steps
Call your senators and representatives to protest against the abuses of ICE agents.
Find, organize, or join protests against ICE and the brutality of their actions.
Go to the Immigration Legal Resource Center to become familiar with the resources available to support immigrant rights and the limits of the government. Donate to this organization if you are able.
Go to the Immigration Rights page of the ACLU to download a copy of Know Your Rights, explaining what to do if stopped by ICE. Become informed about these rights to help counter disinformation and spread the word that often what ICE agents do is unlawful.
Do whatever you can to protect the rights and safety of immigrants in your community.
Conclusion
Immigration is a complex, challenging, and divisive issue. Treating people as subhuman and violating their rights and their dignity is not - it is a moral issue and one that must be addressed. In fact, it was addressed during the Nuremberg Trials:
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility…— Nuremberg Principle IV1
It remains to be seen how harshly history will judge the actions of ICE agents and the department that employs them. In the meantime, however, their abuses, violence, and lawlessness must be stopped.
I remember learning from the prosecution of soldiers who participated in the MyLai massacre that soldiers are not required to follow blatantly immoral orders and in fact can be prosecuted. They were expected to follow their conscience and not terrorize. I would hope the same guidelines for professional behavior would apply to law enforcement agents. I hope they will be prosecuted at some point. How do they live with themselves?
Horrifying...