“I love ICE, I’ve called ICE on people before,” was one of the first statements that greeted me as I came back to campus this winter semester. Frankly, it paralyzed me in the moment and leaves me stunned every time I think about it.
The fact that it was said at OU—a campus that is championed for its advocacy for diversity—and that it was said with a smile a day after the killing of Renee Good. It was said so openly in a room full of individuals who look, speak and bleed the same as the thousands brutalized by the agency is more than concerning.
It makes me sick to my stomach.
Since then, I’ve needed to understand how one comes to endorse ICE.
Founded in 2003 as a response to 9/11, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security. It’s charged with enforcement and removal operations, investigating and detaining “those who present a danger to our national security, are a threat to public safety, or who otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration system.”
By 2004, of the 13,100 Arab Americans put into deportation proceedings by DHS — in a domestic front of the “war on terror” — only 11 were determined to have “links to terrorism.” Even after that, DHS said they were “not sure” if they had criminal convictions.
If someone supports ICE because it is fulfilling its mission, the argument falls short; they remain as ineffective as they were 20 years ago. Of the more than 68,000 currently detained by the agency, only 26.4% have criminal convictions, 26.2% with pending criminal charges. According to their own records, of the 71,405 deported last year, only 17,157 were convicted criminals.
Again, the idea that ICE is deporting violent criminals falls by its own weight. The agency is deporting a majority of workers and their families. It has deported innocent U.S.-born children, including a deaf child. It is no coincidence that these detentions are taking place in community spaces like schools, churches and gathering spaces. As disingenuous as it is, if one wants to categorize people who migrate “illegally” as criminals, the argument of legality results in a contradiction.
Legality is something ICE — and I guess, by that matter, its most patriotic supporters — seem to care little about. With 4,400 rulings of illegal detentions without due process, the agency still disregards and blocks investigations like the killing of Alex Pretti.
This agency keeps its detention centers with diminishing inspections, its agents with minimal training and mismanagement of tax payer money. If this is what people are proud of, I would like them to own up to it.
If someone supports ICE just because it’s Trump’s passion project, just because it follows a contradictory sense of lawfulness or simply because, as recent events reflect, it enables them to brutalize people who look different, then I would like them to own up to it.
In the era of post-truth, when the person standing in front of me can deny these and other facts — like government officials do — it is imperative that, if civil discourse cannot be founded in evidence, we at least return to sincerity. Why does the Department of Homeland Security and its supporters hide behind far-right dog whistles like the “America for Americans” slogan?
If you support the killing of three Americans at the hands of “patriots” working for an agency claiming to protect national interests, if you support the violation of human rights by law enforcement that behaves the same in Michigan and Palestine, if you find yourself supporting systems that mask hate as legality, I would like you to own up to it.
