The uproar over ICE

The uproar over ICE

A huge news story at the moment is how ICE is being deployed in the US - that's their federal agency that's being deployed in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown - particularly after the shooting of Minnesota woman Renee Good, which has sparked widespread protests. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we'll look at:

• what ICE actually is

• why its work has been so controversial

• and what happened in Minnesota…

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Listen to Claire Kimball and Andrew Williams cover this topic in this Squiz Shortcut podcast episode, or check it out on YouTube - and hit subscribe while you’re at it.

Listen/watch time: 15 minutes

Squiz the Shortcut

Umm what is ICE...
ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was established in 2003 as part of a big reorganisation of the US Government under President George W Bush in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. It saw 22 agencies become part of a big/new Department of Homeland Security.

So what exactly is ICE tasked with doing?
While Customs and Border Protection looks after the borders of the US, ICE's role is to protect the interior - states like Colorado or Illinois, for example, that don't share a border with another country. Though at the moment, reports say those lines are pretty blurred, with a lot of crossover between the 2. Wherever it operates, its main job is to remove any undocumented immigrants that the government thinks are a threat to national security.

How many deportations has it carried out?
The peak came under President Barack Obama. Between 2009 and 2015, his administration deported 2.5 million people. Towards the end of Obama’s term, deportations focused primarily on people who had been convicted of a crime. That didn't stop immigration groups criticising him - they called him the Deporter-in-Chief.

What changed under Trump?
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to raise the number of deportations and hire thousands more ICE officers. Unlike Obama, his focus was on all undocumented immigrants - so, anyone living in the US illegally, whether they'd been convicted of a crime or not. Trump didn't actually end up deporting more people than Obama in his first term, but he put ICE on another level in terms of what he thought its remit should be.

What happened under President Biden?
Biden went back to the Obama approach of prioritising those with criminal histories. But when Trump won the presidency back, he instructed ICE to target undocumented immigrants in what are called ‘sanctuary cities’.

You know what I’m going to ask next…
What are ‘sanctuary cities’? There's no official definition, but they're places that are usually political strongholds for Democrats - think New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago - that have rules limiting the power of federal agencies like ICE to target undocumented immigrants. That's made them a big target for Trump, as ICE raids cause trouble for his political opponents.

So it's become very political...
Yep... All of this has led to the agency being a lightning rod for controversy in the US - with a popular call amongst progressives to abolish ICE altogether. And that leads us to what happened last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Take me through it.
A bit of background first… In December last year, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge, sending around 2,000 extra federal agents to Minnesota's Twin Cities to conduct raids on undocumented immigrants. The Twin Cities were targeted because of their sanctuary status and because Tim Walz - who ran as vice president on Kamala Harris's ticket - is governor there. And that’s where a shooting took place that has taken the controversy over ICE to another level entirely.

Tell me about the shooting...
During a raid last week, an ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37yo mother of 3 and a US citizen. Videos show 2 ICE agents approaching Good as she's in her vehicle, and then as she attempts to drive off, one of them fires at least 2 shots. An FBI investigation is underway, but what actually happened is still unclear.

What do Trump’s people say?
Officials claim that Good hit one of the ICE officers with her car, and he was acting in self-defence. The Trump administration is arguing that Good was a “domestic terrorist” who was obstructing federal officers and using her car as a "deadly weapon".

What do the videos show?
Outlets like the Associated Press and Washington Post found they couldn't fully determine if the agent had been hit by the car or not. The New York Times found that the agent had "likely" not been hit, as one angle appears to show him stepping to the side - but no one's sure.

What do Democrats say?
That Good was an innocent woman. Reports differ on exactly why she was there - some say she may have been monitoring ICE's activity, while family members say she was "no activist". Democrat Chuck Schumer has accused the Trump administration of lying to the American people about the self-defence claim. And Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the officer was "a federal agent recklessly using power that ended up in somebody dying".

What's the fallout been?
Good's death has led to over 1,000 protests across the country. But the Trump administration is far from backing down - it's planning to send even more ICE agents to Minneapolis and St Paul. There's also been the resignation of 6 federal prosecutors in Minnesota this week, including Joseph Thompson, who was second in command at the US attorney's office.

Why did they resign?
The Justice Department pushed for a criminal investigation into Renee Good's widow, Becca - and it has refused to investigate whether the shooting itself was lawful.

Why is Thompson so notable?
He had been leading a massive fraud investigation into Minnesota's social services programs on Governor Walz’s watch, which is one of the reasons the Trump administration said it launched the immigration crackdown there in the first place... So now the prosecutor leading that work has quit, and it's all very messy.

Where does this leave things?
This storm isn't showing any sign of dying down. The political battle over ICE, the FBI investigation, and the protests continue. And both sides are holding firm to very different versions of what happened in Minneapolis.

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Onto our Recommendations

Reading: A piece from PBS which explains why it's been so difficult to know exactly what happened from the video footage of the incident, and how things have changed since the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Floyd's killing also sparked huge protests across the US and the world, and it happened not far away from where Good was shot.

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