I wanted to elaborate on some points Theda Skocpol addressed in her reader email this weekend about ICE and the supercharged ICE the new Trump budget law envisions. Some of this may be obvious just seeing what we’ve all seen in recent months. But I wanted to describe some of the exact modalities we’re talking about.
First, a general point about ICE. Long before the current moment and even the controversies of the first Trump term, ICE was generally known as a place made up of people who couldn’t get jobs at the more established and reputable federal policing agencies — so, FBI, U.S. Marshals, DEA, ATF, etc. Because of this, it has a high proportion of people who are there because they want to wear a uniform, knock people around and act tough. That’s an aspect of every policing organization. But more professional organizations do their best to weed those people out on the front end and instill discipline that keeps those impulses in check. There’s much less of that at ICE. So it’s never had a good reputation within federal law enforcement.
Another fact about ICE is that you get used to dealing with a population with very few rights and protections (few de jure and even fewer de facto). That’s a context that is going to bring out the worst in people and acclimate people in the direction of abusive behavior. Because again, it’s a population with little redress. For the purposes of framing this topic it’s critical to note the problems that existed at ICE before Trump ever came on the scene.
So how exactly is ICE — which has a brief addressed to non-citizens and especially non-citizens without legal permission to be in the United States — supposed to exercise policing powers more generally or compromise state and local governments? We can see the pattern and trajectory in front of us already. The administration has already arrested or detained members of Congress, state judges, mayors, high-ranking local elected officials. A judge and a member of Congress have been charged with crimes which range from dubious to absurd. The pattern is already clear: ICE makes increasingly invasive and abusive ventures into local jurisdictions. This prompts either protests, against which ICE rapidly escalates, or non-compliance from local officials, which is interpreted as obstruction, assault or worse. Probably most of these prosecutions will fall apart at trial or before. But that’s not a problem. They’ve already had their effect.
The LA example looks to be a prototypical case. ICE orders a wildly militarized and aggressive series of raids. That triggers fairly spontaneous and overwhelmingly peaceful protests. In response, the president orders in the federalized state National Guard and then the Marines. In every case, we can see a ratcheting process in which ICE’s actions create a climate of protest or disorder or simply disagreement which prompts newly aggressive actions or assertions of power.
The additional factor is the open-ended and general nature of immigration enforcement. ICE’s brief isn’t for discrete crimes or really any crimes at all. It’s for people without permission to be in the United States or anyone who complicates or gets in the way of how it defines its mission. ICE has a broad latitude to question people about their immigration status, especially within 100 miles of an international border, a limit which includes the areas where a surprisingly large percentage of Americans live. It’s an expansive brief which creates a penumbra of chaos and tension which ICE can then (and already has) used as the pretext for more assertions of power. The federal government is thus allowed to determine what constitutes civil order and choose to impose it wherever it decides it doesn’t exist.
How this plays out in practice is yet to be seen. But we can see the preferred progression, one focused especially on blue cities and aimed at cowing civilian populations and elected officials. It will require state-level officials to be creative and proactive to defend their citizens’ sovereign rights to local self-government.