Axios Explains: Inside ICE's superpowers

Axios

14 hours ago

The images of masked, heavily armed immigration agents snatching people off the streets and taking them away in unmarked cars have shocked many Americans — and led to a simple question: Is all of this legal?
It is — at least for now.
Why it matters: Since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was created after the 9/11 attacks, its agents have operated with vastly more enforcement power, less transparency and fewer guardrails than local police.
ICE's rules were designed largely to give the agency broad leeway in helping the FBI identify and arrest domestic terror suspects.
Now the Trump administration is using that power to go after unauthorized immigrants — potentially millions of them — with a frequency and aggressiveness that has sent ripples through communities nationwide.
Zoom in: Under Trump, critics say, ICE has become the closest thing the U.S. has to a secret police force.
ICE agents aren't required to wear body cameras, can cover their faces, don't have to provide badge numbers or identify themselves, can arrive in unmarked cars and don't need a warrant from a judge to detain someone.
Like those with other federal enforcement agencies, they can ignore rules that govern local police departments, particularly those local agencies with histories of abuse or that operate under court-imposed restrictions on racial profiling.
In some cases, ICE agents can even arrest U.S. citizens — but they aren't supposed toplace them in immigration detention units. Even so, a few U.S. citizens have been detained in recent ICE raids because of agents' mistakes or negligence.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin has defended ICE agents' tactics and the covering of their faces, saying in a statement that they're "facing a 500% increase in assaults against them while carrying out enforcement operations."
She blamed Democrats for "violent rhetoric" against ICE agents.
Critics say there's no evidence of a 500% increase in assaults on ICE agents, and that agents still should follow the law.
"The tactics are causing fear in our communities," Vanessa Cárdenas of the advocacy group America's Voice told Axios.
Zoom out: ICE was formed in 2003. It was placed under the control of the new Department of Homeland Security and replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which had been under the Justice Department.
To protect national security after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, lawmakers gave ICE a unique combination of civil and criminal authorities.
ICE initially didn't have the reputation of INS (known as " La Migra" to Latinos), but that changed under President Obama, when ICE expanded its operations to help carry out one of the largest deportations of unauthorized immigrants in decades.
Immigrant rights groups began an "Abolish ICE" movement in 2018 — during President Trump's first term — as activists tried to bring attention to the agency's secretive tactics, which went unnoticed by most Americans.
What can ICE do
ICE is tasked with enforcing the nation's immigration laws anywhere within the nation's interior (the Border Patrol's jurisdiction is 100 miles into the interior, from any land or maritime border).
ICE agents can arrest anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally. They can arrest U.S. citizens only if they see them "breaking laws."
To conduct raids or operations targeting suspects, ICE agents only need an "administrative warrant" — a warrant signed by a supervisor, not a judge, Rebekah Wolf, director of the American Immigration Council's Immigration Justice Campaign, tells Axios.
ICE agents can conceal their identities and refuse any request to disclose their personal information.
This has led to conflicts between people ICE agents have encountered, as well as allegations by Trump's administration that protesters have tried to dox agents involved in raids.
Wolf said officers in other agencies are required to identify themselves and provide badge numbers to prevent impersonators. ICE has no such requirement, and there have been reports of ICE impersonators harassing people, creating more chaos and uncertainty in some communities.
ICE doesn't have to collect evidence for cases and has few parameters around its use of force.
Because it's such a young agency, it hasn't faced many lawsuits and court challenges to its use-of-force policies, unlike other federal agencies such as the FBI, the Forest Service or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
That's resulted in few directives aimed at limiting ICE agents' tactics.
ICE units can conduct pre-dawn raids, unannounced entries (with judicial or administrative warrants), and surveillance without many of the public accountability rules that serve as checks on local authorities.
What ICE can't do
ICE agents can't enter a private home unless they have a judicial warrant.
They still must adhere to the Constitution regarding the search and seizure limits protecting U.S. citizens.
Although ICE isn't supposed to place U.S. citizens in immigration detention, Cárdenas says its agents have been detaining U.S.-born Latinos and dismissing their proof of citizenship as fake before eventually letting them go.
This has led to allegations of racial profiling.
ICE did not immediately respond for comment on these episodes.
ICE also can't force a local law enforcement agency to join an operation, but police are obligated to keep order if protesters surround and ICE operation.
The accountability question
Allegations of abuse by ICE agents rarely are investigated because they typically involve immigrants who are removed from the U.S., Wolf said.
Any internal investigations are conducted by the DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or the department's inspector general.
Joseph V. Cuffari, DHS's inspector general, was appointed by Trump during the president's first term and was not among the IGs Trump fired after taking office this year.
Public accountability is limited for ICE agents — there are no regular civilian review boards and typically no body camera footage to use as evidence.
What we're watching: Some immigration advocates and Democrats in Congress want to reduce ICE's powers. U.S. Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation to prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks.