Eight years ago, I wrote an article for Slate arguing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was an out-of-control agency that had become a “sinister” and “draconian” force “harassing and detaining people who pose no threat to the United States or its citizens.” The American people, I contended, needed “an honest discussion about whether ICE can be effectively reformed or if it must be abolished and replaced by an agency that can carry out its mission in a more effective and humane way.”
Now, however, we are past the point of conversation. In the hands of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, ICE is a virtual secret police. Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed “enemies” of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force.
The result is an agency whose agents’ first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence. According to The Trace, a newsroom dedicated to reporting on gun violence, immigration agents have opened fire in 16 separate incidents since last June: “At least three people have been shot observing or documenting immigration raids, and five people have been shot while driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action.”
This week, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old resident of Minneapolis. She was sitting in her S.U.V. when agents ran up and demanded she exit the vehicle, pulling on the door in an effort to compel compliance. Soon after, three shots rang out. An analysis of video footage by The Times strongly suggests that Good had been moving away from the agent in question when he fired, killing her and causing the vehicle to crash nearby.
Since then, the Trump administration has been engaged in a relentless effort to tar Good as a dangerous militant who was using her S.U.V. to attack ICE agents, an act of “domestic terrorism,” according to the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. “This was an attack on law and order, this was an attack on the American people,” said Vice President JD Vance. Good can be seen in a different video telling her eventual killer, “I’m not mad at you dude.”
Immigration enforcement seems to have ramped up its efforts even further in the wake of Good’s death. On Thursday, during an operation in Portland, Ore., Border Patrol agents shot and wounded two people. The administration, as it did with Good, immediately accused the victims of being dangerous threats to the nation.
It is true that the country needs some form of immigration enforcement. But it doesn’t need ICE. It doesn’t need an agency whose institutional identity is wedded to wanton cruelty and the apparent hair-trigger use of lethal force. It doesn’t need an agency that has been transformed into a paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule. It doesn’t need roving bands of masked thugs shooting and killing ordinary people under the cover of law.
During the first Trump administration, left-wing activists demanded that the nation abolish ICE. They were right then, and they are right now.
What I Wrote
My column this week was on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and what it says about the nation’s problem with elite impunity.
Our history says that we struggle to hold the powerful accountable. Our history says that we would often rather look the other way than contend with what it means for presidents and other high officials to break their oaths and turn their power against the Republic. Our history says that with enough power, and if you’re the right kind of American, you can escape consequences altogether and die a citizen in good standing.
I joined my former colleague Jane Coaston on her podcast to talk about the state of the Trump administration.
On Jan. 20, I will be at the Aratani Theater in Los Angeles with my colleague Ross Douthat for a conversation about the first year of Trump’s second term, hosted by Kathleen Kingsbury, the editor of Times Opinion. If you are out there, you can buy tickets here.
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Now Reading
David Cole on Trump’s invasion of Venezuela for The New York Review of Books.
Adam Serwer on the conservative effort to revive the antebellum Constitution for The Atlantic.
Anna Law on constitutional reform for the Balkinization blog.
Elizabeth Lopatto and Sarah Jeong on war and spectacle for The Verge.
Jan-Werner Müller on the United States as Mafia state for The Guardian.
Photo of the Week
I took this photo about five years ago. It is of a beautiful, home in my neighborhood, since demolished. If I had the kind of money that would have let me buy and renovate this house, I would have done it!
Now Eating: Slow-Roasted Salmon With Salsa Verde
A very simple recipe to start the new year. I like to serve a salmon like this with fresh bread and a crisp green salad. A verdejo would be nice as well, if you indulge. Recipe comes from NYT Cooking.
Ingredients
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½ cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
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1 (1½-pound) skinless salmon fillet
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Salt and black pepper
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1 medium lemon
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1 cup packed fresh parsley leaves and tender stems
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½ cup packed fresh basil leaves
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⅓ cup packed fresh oregano leaves
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2 anchovy fillets
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1 tablespoon capers, rinsed well if salt-packed
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1 garlic clove
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¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
Directions
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil in a baking dish or rimmed sheet pan large enough to hold the salmon fillet. Pat the salmon dry, season all over with salt and pepper and place in the baking dish, turning it gently to coat lightly in the oil. Place skinned-side down and zest about ½ of the lemon evenly over the top; reserve the lemon.
Roast until the salmon is just cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes. (It’s done when the flesh is just able to flake easily. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the middle of the thickest part should register 120 degrees.)
While the salmon roasts, make the salsa verde: Place the parsley, basil and oregano in a heaped pile on a large cutting board and chop. When coarsely chopped, add the anchovies and capers to the pile and continue to chop until everything is finely chopped. Transfer to a medium bowl. Zest the rest of the lemon into the bowl, then halve the lemon crosswise and squeeze the juice into the bowl. Grate the garlic into the bowl. Add the remaining ½ cup olive oil and the red pepper. Stir well to combine. Taste and season with salt as needed. (Makes about 1 cup.)
Drizzle the salmon with salsa verde and serve directly from the baking dish, with additional salsa verde on the side.
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The post ICE Is a Virtual Secret Police appeared first on New York Times.
