The brutality from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that is typically unseen by the public has been front-and-center since President Donald Trump took office in 2025. Many of the agency’s tactics were born of the Border Patrol, which its leaders proclaim is a paramilitary group, and have become more common across all levels of law enforcement.
The arrogance in the Trump administration made these tactics more visible through outright incompetence and the incessant need to brag about harming nonwhite people. During Trump’s first term, he also espoused hateful rhetoric aimed at Black people by weaponizing local and state police. When President Joe Biden handed them tens of billions of dollars without any accountability measures, police were already emboldened.
Now, that same rhetoric is digging itself deep into federal agencies which have been tasked with helping ICE, building an overreaching surveillance state, and integrating themselves with local and state police even deeper. The result has been increased police brutality at the local, state, and federal levels, alongside a massive increase in funding for private prisons. All of which do nothing but help line the pockets of Trump’s newfound sycophantic billionaire friends.
Last week, ICE shot a man in New York City after unidentified agents approached his car with guns pointed at him and his daughter, who was in the back seat. In a panic, and out of fear of being targeted by criminals, the man attempted to flee. Agents responded by firing multiple rounds into his moving car, striking the father. The narrative ICE presented did not match what publicly available surveillance footage and bystander video showed.
Similarly, just days later, ICE agents struck a man with a vehicle and ran him over in Houston, Texas. ICE alleges that the man, who was not the subject of their attempt to arrest another man, stepped in front of their vehicle. Again, surveillance footage from local businesses disputes that narrative, as has been the case in every incident involving ICE harming civilians.
Agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have attempted to secure the videos before the public sees them. However, the massive and pervasive surveillance state is being used against them. While the government has its web of data and tracking systems, the private sector also has access to many similar tools and features. It is here where accountability comes into play. It’s a system so vast that the federal government doesn’t have full control of it.
This isn’t a new tactic. For example, when Laquan McDonald was murdered by Chicago police, officers secured footage from local businesses and kept the evidence from the public. Dashcam video, court-ordered to be released, later exposed the truth of what happened. The manager of the local Burger King at the time said that on the night of the shooting, five police officers gained access to the restaurant’s video surveillance equipment. By the time the Independent Police Review Authority requested to view the footage the next day, it had been erased.
Similarly, in the murder of Botham Jean, after officer Amber Guyger entered his apartment and killed him, her first phone call was to her police union, where the union boss showed up on the scene before most other investigative officers. His access to a crime scene speaks to how cops create narratives and manipulate crime scenes to protect killer cops. Immigration enforcement agents, such as Border Patrol, have used these same tactics for several decades.
While federal agents actions are more visible today due to rampant narcissism fueled by racial animus make it more visible, none of it is new. It’s easy to blame one president for all of this, but to do so you’d have to ignore the policies of former presidents Bill Clinton, who promoted the current immigration system and signed it into law; George W. Bush, who made immigration a national security issue on the heels of 9/11 and with the creation of DHS, thereby opening the door to criminalize all immigrants; Barack Obama, who created the mass deportation machine and hired Tom Homan to administer it; and Bidens’s polices, which opened the door to dismissing asylum cases at the border without due process.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle promoted and funded these laws and policies. Is Trump being more cruel? Yes. But only because both parties incrementally created a system he could weaponize. From shooting and harming people for dubious reasons and administrative warrants signed not by a judge, but by a supervisor at DHS, to creating a surveillance state and continuing to fund the private prison system, all were made possible by bipartisan legislation.
If Democrats win the midterms and secure a majority in the House and Senate, will they take measures to ensure accountability? Will they scrutinize ICE’s hiring practices and expose whether they’re hiring members of hate groups, such as the Proud Boys? Will they investigate the obvious corruption behind funding the private prison industry? Will they bother to look into Trump’s election meddling in Latin America that only promises to destabilize the region and create another mass migration event, as he did during his first term?
Or will they continue down the path of bipartisanship that led us here?
One thing is certain: the social anxiety created by all of these oppressive systems is reaching a breaking point across the political spectrum. If lawmakers on both sides of the aisle ignore it, they may not be in office for very long. There are elections in two years, and if they plan to make a career out of civil service, they might want to start listening. Otherwise, voters must continue questioning whether we live in a true democracy.
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