Is ICE the New Gestapo?
They certainly seem to think so
So, every good authoritarian regime has its secret police, right? Russia has the FSB, Belarus has the KDB, and China has the oh-so-mundane-sounding Ministry of State Security. And, this has been the case throughout history. There was the East German Stasi, Japan had the Kempeitai, and the Okhrana watched over the Russian Empire. Later, the Soviet Union had a shit ton of different secret police organizations with the Cheka, NKVD, GPU, and KGB just to name a few. Of course, the gold standard of secret police forces would have to be Nazi Germany’s Gestapo. I mean, when your name becomes shorthand for brutality and persecution, that’s a sign you’ve won the Oppression Olympics. One thing our burgeoning totalitarian state here in the U.S. is missing is our very own Gestapo. But, there are contenders, and ICE, with its recent detention of Mahmoud Khalil, has just moved into the top spot. So, let’s talk about that.
First, A Little History
Note: I will be using Wikipedia as a source for this section rather than my preferred practice of citing a more primary source because most of those primary sources, the websites of the agencies referenced are pretty much just propaganda.
ICE, aka U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is a 9/11 baby, formed under 2002’s Homeland Security Act1. A lot of people, at least the ones I’ve spoken to about this agency, are surprised to hear that. They think ICE has been around at least as long as the Border Patrol. It turns out even that agency isn’t as old as people think, having been founded in 19242. Before the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, our borders were open and unrestricted and there was no need for agencies to keep immigrants out3. I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a time when America embraced immigrants, all of them. Like to the point that the French gave us a big ol’ statue celebrating that. That began to change when people from China started coming as they here fled poverty and destitution in their homeland. While this hadn’t been a problem when it was white European folks arriving on our shores, this flood of Asians (aka non-white people) got Americans all in a tizzy, so the government passed a law to keep them out. In its early years, the Border Patrol was looking for Chinese immigrants, not Mexicans or Latin Americans. But, all things change and that includes the targets of racist bullshit.
ICE wasn’t conjured out of thin air, however. It pulled together the functions and jurisdictions of multiple other border and revenue enforcement agencies and placed them all under one roof. In doing so, it became the new Department of Homeland Security’s biggest investigative arm and has worked with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. According to their website, ICE’s mission is to “Protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety.4” Sounds good, huh? And, I do have to admit that placing all immigration enforcement in one department is probably a good idea. Really, I can’t say that the formation of ICE, or even the Department of Homeland Security, was bad or had nefarious intent. That’s not the case any longer, though. ICE is a danger to American democracy and probably should be abolished. So, what changed my thinking?
It’s the Racism
That should come as no surprise. Not that racism is what changed my mind, but that racism exists in our immigration policies/systems. I mean, shit, the whole thing started when some white dudes in California got freaked out when the ratification of the 14th Amendment made all their racist attempts to keep Asian people out of their state null and void. And, the more I dig into this topic, the more I begin to think that immigration laws are inherently racist. Think about it, a fuck ton of the immigration laws that we’ve passed throughout our history have at the very least favored people from northern and western European countries (aka “predominantly white”). Quite a few have outright banned non-white people from immigrating to the U.S. (mostly Asian folks)5. In 1965, the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act began to shift immigration from Europe to Latin America6 and things have gone downhill from there. Hell, even ICE’s creation has racist overtones. As I said earlier, ICE was created to track down terrorists who were here illegally, but only 4 out of the 19 attackers were violating immigration laws7. And, on that basis, we set up a new organization to go after brown people we thought might be terrorists (the U.S. government has a long history of ignoring domestic, aka white, terrorists). So yes, the immigration system is pretty fucking racist. But, Trump and his MAGA followers have kicked that racism into overdrive, painting immigration from Latin America as an existential threat to the country8.
But Are They the Gestapo?
Okay, so I’ve presented evidence that our immigration system is inherently racist. And, I’ve shown that ICE itself has a, let’s say, problematic origin. But, you’re probably thinking I haven’t said anything about how they might be this country’s secret police force. Well, hold onto your ass, Fred, because that’s about to change. Here are a few items that I believe bolster that claim:
Using unmarked vans to pull people off the street during the 2020 BLM protests in Portland9. As things deteriorated in that city, ICE officers began cruising the streets and picking up people away from the protests without showing any identification or even speaking to the people they were detaining. Here’s a video showing how it went down:
One person who experienced this first hand, a man named Mark Pettibone, said he was snatched off the street by men in camo tactical gear and was taken to a federal courthouse where he was held for about 90 minutes with no explanation of what crime he might have committed or any identification of his captors as law enforcement. When I heard it, I was immediately reminded of Argentinian intelligence agents “disappearing” people during that country’s Dirty War10.
Undocumented people are being arrested by ICE seemingly for the crime of just being “brown”. Multiple reports show that immigrants with no criminal history or current accusations are being detained. Meanwhile, the usa.gov website Understand the deportation process says, “The U.S. may detain and deport noncitizens who: Participate in criminal acts, Are a threat to public safety,
Violate their visa11.” But, there are numerous incidents of people being held who don’t meet this criteria. Yesterday (March 13th), the Houston Chronicle reported that a 10-year-old female brain cancer patient, who is a U.S. citizen, was deported along with her family (4 siblings, also citizens) because her parents were undocumented12. The parents were told the kids could stay here in government custody or they could go to Mexico with their parents. That’s the kind of “choice” I’d expect from someone with a swastika on their arm, not an American flag.
Also coming to light yesterday is the case of Canadian businesswoman Jasmine Mooney, who was arrested at the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego when she tried to reapply for a new Trade NAFTA (TN) work visa (her previous one had been revoked)13. Mooney’s family is saying that she is being detained unnecessarily in inhumane conditions: being transported in chains (Mooney has no criminal record and has been accused of no crime), sleeping on concrete floors with no blanket, being held in a cell with 30 other women, etc. Detaining people on shaky grounds in wretched conditions seems to be ICE’s jam14. And, you know else did that shit.
Lastly, there’s the case I mentioned in the intro: the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil15. Khalil is a permanent resident of the United States with a green card and everything. He’s also married to an American citizen. Yet, last Saturday night, ICE agents showed up at his door, saying they had orders to revoke his student visa. But, as I noted above, Khalil doesn’t have a student visa, he has a green card. Khalil called his attorney immediately and when they informed the agents of that, the officers basically said, “Well, we’re revoking his green card then.” They took Khalil into custody, while threatening to arrest his pregnant wife also, and left. It took his attorney and his wife more than 24 hours to track down his whereabouts in the massive immigration detention system. Now, when they arrested him, Khalil had not been convicted of a crime, nor had he even been charged with one. So, why did they arrest him? Because he had been an active participant in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University (which he was attending at the time). Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted the following on X: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported” and linked to coverage of Khalil’s arrest. In case you don’t see the implication here, U.S. government law enforcement officials have arrested and detained a permanent resident of this country for exercising his right to freedom of speech. And, that is some straight-up fascist bullshit.
Jack-booted Thugs Without the Jack Boots
Okay, I’m guessing that at least some of you are pushing back on this. I understand completely. I’ve thrown a lot at you in this piece and it’s all pretty shitty. No one, myself included, wants to hear that their home, the country they love, is falling into fascism. We especially don’t want to hear that law enforcement, one of the institutions we’ve been told is here to “protect and serve”, is actively assisting in that fall. But the fact is that ICE, hell, the Department of Homeland Security for that matter, is operating as a secret police force in all but name. They are jack-booted thugs without the jackboots and I think it’s only a matter of time before they go full Gestapo. The question then will be what do we as Americans do: accept it or fight back? I’m hoping for the latter, but I’m not holding my breath until it happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://www.ice.gov/mission
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/09/30/how-u-s-immigration-laws-and-rules-have-changed-through-history/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3407978/#:~:text=Although%20the%20amendments%20may%20have,270%2C000%20visas%20(in%201980).
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg72930/html/CHRG-112hhrg72930.htm#:~:text=On%20that%20day%20in%20September,opportunity%20to%20prevent%20the%20attacks.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-a-national-emergency-at-the-southern-border/
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-use-unmarked-vehicles-to-grab-protesters-in-portland
https://www.britannica.com/event/Dirty-War
https://www.usa.gov/deportation-process
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/immigration/article/girl-deported-cancer-treatement-mexico-20219510.php
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jasmine-mooney-eagles-detained-ice-b2714606.html
https://bpr.studentorg.berkeley.edu/2020/10/22/ice-illuminates-americas-backslide-into-fascism/
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/10/mahmoud-khalil-palestine-columbia-immigration-deport/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3O6R0Y6PXc30PNoL2NHbQjCLRNsLEEj1eSMEvrBtQ2ISDi2hCGe6tDsh4_aem_jkbgHmMGMduVIl-pFQm83A