America’s ICE-protester idiocy

The emotional controversy surrounding ICE’s immigration crackdown is understandable. People are being detained and deported at a rate unparalleled in the modern era. Still, there is no question that President Donald Trump has a clear mandate to pursue this crackdown. Trump spent much of his 2024 presidential campaign promising to remove all illegal immigrants from the United States if he were again elected to the nation’s highest office. Moreover, considering that Trump has prioritized immigration enforcement since he first entered the GOP presidential primary race in 2015, people knew what they were voting for when they returned Trump to the Oval Office.

THE REWARDS AND RISKS IN TRUMP’S GROWING USE OF MILITARY FORCE

Too many people have decided to forget this political history. After all, every day now, we see new videos of protesters screeching profanity in the faces of ICE and CBP personnel and obstructing them in their lawful duties. Protesting is, of course, a fundamental American right. Indeed, the right to protest is so intrinsic to the American tradition that it must be prioritized even above the extraordinary offense it sometimes causes. Still, lawful protests and obstructing or assaulting federal law enforcement are very different things. One is a sacred American right, the other is a crime. It bears noting that the vast majority of arrests of activists and Democratic Party politicians for obstruction have been legitimate.

That matters because the evolving mob mentality to these protests is increasingly presenting obstruction of federal law enforcement as legitimate activity. It is only when they’re confronted by law enforcement that some of these protesters finally realize the seriousness of what they have done. There is a litany of video and other evidence to suggest that the performance art employed by these protesters is utterly self-aggrandizing. Playing to this mob mentality for partisan political reasons and presenting ICE and CBP personnel as akin to the Nazi Gestapo, far too many Democrats are failing in their responsibility to act in the national interest.

In this choice to exacerbate tensions and present law enforcement as the “enemy,” politicians are increasing the risk to law enforcement. They are also encouraging the concerning tendency of ICE and CBP officers to take steps such as wearing face masks to avoid identifying themselves. Officers fear that if they are identified, they and their families may face harassment or even violence. But if Drug Enforcement Administration agents escorting powerful drug cartel leaders can go unmasked, so should ICE personnel. Democrats have spoken a great deal about the rule of law over the past 12 months. But the party’s political culture clearly now serves the rule of the mob when it comes to immigration law.

Yet, even as the vast majority of ICE and CBP employees are dedicated professionals doing an increasingly difficult job, there are also clearly problems with how these agencies are carrying out their duties.

There is an obviously cynical hypocrisy on the political Right about this reality. Too many in MAGA who have long complained about “lawfare” against conservatives ignore these problems because they like the robust enforcement of immigration law. The key problem with what we’re too often seeing from ICE and CBP is not that the federal law enforcement agencies are pursuing those who are illegally resident in the U.S. — it’s that they are too often disregarding the interest in de-escalation.

One example here is that of the Jan. 7 shooting of Renee Good, the American citizen who was shot dead by an ICE officer as she drove toward him. While he ultimately acted lawfully, training and procedure suggest he should not have moved in front of Good’s vehicle in the first place. It is also arguable that the officer could have jumped out of the way instead of shooting her. Regardless, just as police officers are trained to de-escalate situations wherever possible, ICE and CBP trainees are taught the same thing at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. This interest in de-escalation isn’t the product of some woke belief that suspected criminals need to be treated with kid gloves. Instead, that training reflects the public interest in minimizing risk to the law enforcement officer, the public, and the criminal.

Unfortunately, too many ICE and CBP personnel are acting as if they have absolute authority to conduct stops without regard for probable cause or due politeness. There have been too many very tenuous applications of reasonable suspicion to stop members of the public and then determine their immigration status. The law requires that law enforcement must have “specific, articulable facts” to stop someone. Race and ethnicity are not grounds alone for a stop.

The Trump administration has done little to nothing to mitigate these problems in better service to the public. Instead, from the top down, its immigration enforcement leadership has rejected the supposed MAGA principle against government overreach. Although they represent a very small majority of total ICE stops, too many American citizens are being stopped and detained without just cause.

We’ve also had numerous examples of ICE and CBP personnel reacting emotionally to people who are behaving aggressively. Take the pepper ball shooting of a silently praying pastor — conservatives have rightly lamented the excessive use of force or law against Christians who publicly pray in Europe. Or the ICE officer in Colorado who took someone’s cellphone without cause and then tackled her when she demanded it back. Or the CBP officer who, clearly agitated, pushed a member of the public and then tackled them after the person then swiped the officer’s hand away. While you cannot swipe at law enforcement, the officer’s actions are a good example of unnecessary escalation.

Finally, there is clearly an absence of good leadership above and within ICE and CBP.

This is best underlined by the fact that border and immigration enforcement czar Tom Homan remains in office. Homan took seemingly corrupt receipt of a bag full of $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents before last year’s election. Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other Cabinet members have also suggested that all anti-ICE protesters are somehow acting as domestic terrorists. Absent specific evidence of domestic terrorism, however, these threats are a pure example of lawfare: a threat to use coercive government power on the sole basis of the target’s undesirable political views.

Operational leadership is also lacking. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is so obsessed with public relations stunts that the South Park TV show dedicated multiple episodes to mocking her. But the leadership example has clearly filtered down.

WHAT IRAN MILITARY OPTIONS HAS THE PENTAGON PRESENTED TO TRUMP?

Take CBP chief patrol agent Gregory Bovino, who revels in presenting himself as a sort of John Wayne figure, obsessing over his public presentation. But he also revels in not wearing body cameras and leading immigration enforcement actions that appear to employ excessive use of force. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has also wrongly prioritized his loyalty to the Trump administration over ICE operations that balance the president’s priorities and the national interest in professional law enforcement. Lyons’s removal of numerous ICE regional directors last year was plainly designed to incentivize aggressive immigration law enforcement over all other concerns, including the rule of law.

It is the nation that matters most here and always. The president has a mandate to detain and deport those who are in this country illegally. But just as federal law enforcement personnel deserve far better than being labeled as Nazis, so also do Americans deserve federal law enforcement activity that upholds the law and avoids unnecessary escalation wherever possible.