Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, should be defunded and halted. Its officers have been seen not following the law, putting citizens in danger, and posing a threat to Americans and their constitutional rights.
The officers of ICE aren’t following the laws that apply to them. They should not be treated like they have full immunity, nor should they have the ability to defy the constitutional rights of a person without repercussions.
As seen on multiple platforms, on Jan. 6, 2026, civilian Renée Nicole Macklin Good was fatally shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to abcnews.go.com, ICE officers were performing an enforcement operation when the vehicle was stopped by the snow on the ground. Then, as seen on CBS Evening News, Good let about four cars pass as she waved them on, including the unmarked ICE Nissan. From the Nissan Titan, two agents exited and approached Good, telling her to “get out of the car.” Good put her car in reverse and the agent, who came from the driver’s side of the Nissan, positioned his left hand on the bottom of the Honda’s driver-side front window. His other hand was positioned on the door handle.
At that moment, Good backed up a few feet with her wheels facing left. Another agent walking behind the Honda moved with the right side of the car until he stood to the front-left of the vehicle. Good began to move forward with her wheels facing away from the agent approximately one second before he fired the first gunshot. The agent standing to the front-left of her Honda unholstered his gun and fired at Good through the front window. While Good attempted to continue moving forward, a second shot was fired at her, then a third.
According to mprnews.org, a news organization in the Upper Midwest with over 1,000 honors to date, Good’s autopsy showed that the fatal shot entered the left side of her head and exited out the right. Given that information, it’s clear that the agent was standing, positioned away from the front windshield, and was not warranted to make that shot. This also means that the fatal shot was not defensive, but rather an act of violence.
Good was 37 when she died. According to ohiohouse.gov, State Rep. Terrence Upchurch (D-Cleveland) said, “She was a loving mother, caring neighbor, and compassionate human being. Her unwarranted loss was an example of institutional violence that continues to permeate communities across the country.” This statement couldn’t be more accurate. Families across the country fear for their lives, whether they are documented or not. Innocent children are being torn from parents that are just trying to protect and care for them.
According to theguardian.com, a global news organization that aims to deliver investigative journalism, “giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account,” eight people have been fatally killed by ICE in 2026 alone. Along with Good, they were Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, who died Jan. 5 at age 46; Geraldo Lunas Campos, who died Jan. 3 at 55; Víctor Manuel Díaz, who died Jan. 14 at 36; Parady La, who died Jan. 9 at 46; Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz, who died Jan. 6 at 68; Heber Sánchez Domínguez, who died Jan. 14 at 34; and Alex Pretti, who died Jan. 24 at age 37. Five were confirmed American citizens and only one was a confirmed illegal immigrant. The other two were not confirmed to have entered legally. Many of them did not take any action that would require an immediate counter-defense of two or more gunshots from an ICE agent.
Due process is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. It protects people against arbitrary government decisions and ensures fairness in legal matters. Both citizens and non-citizens in the U.S. have the right to due process — a chance to defend their rights and to have a fair hearing, as defined by rescue.org.
In the Constitution, the 14th Amendment says, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
On March 15, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was detained and deported to a detention center in El Salvador. This was despite the court ruling that should have prevented it, violating his constitutional rights, according to apnews.com. This situation has occurred again since that date, showing that the federal administration and ICE are not concerned about the Constitution. They don’t act like the law applies to them, and they have no incentive to not do the same to people in places such as Idaho or Washington.
According to theguardian.com, ICE has been “arresting or detaining people who are participating in peaceful protests, using pepper spray or similar non-lethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools, as well as stopping or detaining drivers without reasonable cause.” This went against the preliminary injunction of Judge Katherine Menendez that, otherwise, would have prevented ICE from using such tactics against peaceful protesters.
The First Amendment of the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The actions of ICE contradict this, as the agents are using non-lethal and lethal forces against peaceful protestors, further proving that they are not concerned with the Constitution and how it applies to them. This should not continue.
According to languages.oup.com, or Oxford Languages, the definition of kidnapping is “the action of abducting someone and holding them captive.” The way ICE is handling deportations of people on U.S. soil is, by the same logic, kidnapping, as the agents have abducted people off of streets and out of their homes, holding them within detention centers with, oftentimes, no due process and in bad conditions. According to forumtogether.org, conditions in ICE detention facilities continuously raise concerns about understaffing, provision of health services, and the absence of COVID-19 precautions. In June 2019, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was holding more than 15,000 detainees in crowded cells, much more than the Border Patrol’s capacity of 4,000.
Some might argue that ICE agents are helping by getting undocumented people out of the United States. However, this is false, and their tactics are cruel. According to bbc.com, ICE was originally created as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The organization shouldn’t be utilized for problems that can be handled with less violence, hurt, and stir. For instance, the altercations with Pretti and Good both could have been deescalated by the agents. They are trained to deescalate, as the Justice Department has claimed before. In videos at CBS News, agents have been seen, on a multitude of occasions, needlessly escalating situations, such as the protest that led to Pretti’s death.
According to ilrc.org, a national nonprofit that works with immigrants, community organizations, legal professionals, and policy makers, on Sept. 9, the Supreme Court, “…overturned an order that had blocked ICE from committing egregious racial profiling.” And according to migrationpolicy.org, former President Obama’s administration deported a little over 5 million people in his four years. President Trump’s administration, as previously stated, has already deported 2.5 million people just in his first year of this term.
At the rate that suspected illegal immigrants are being detained and deported, and the way that they are doing so, it’s essentially impossible to continue without substantial mistakes. Data from ICE shows that between Jan. 20 and July 28, agents made about 16,000 street arrests. Every one in five people arrested by ICE is a Hispanic with no criminal history, according to carbajal.house.gov. With that, undocumented immigrants are often referred to as “illegal aliens” or just “aliens” by people who hold strong political power. Those words appear on official government websites, as well in households across America.
On Dec. 10 dhs.gov published an article titled “Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, More than 2.5 Million Illegal Aliens Left the U.S.” In this article, Tricia McLaughlin highlights that, “The Trump Administration is shattering historic records with more than 2.5 million illegal aliens leaving the U.S. DHS has deported more than 605,000 illegal aliens and another 1.9 million have self-deported.” She then continues saying, “Illegal aliens are hearing our message to leave now. They know if they don’t, we will find them, we will arrest them, and they will never return.” This shows that the way in which many government officials describe people who were not born in America is hostile and dehumanizing. That influences others to view immigrants as of less value. They are told that they are animals, and are treating them as such.
ICE has a budget of $28.7 billion according to brennancenter.org, and is spending about $4 billion annually to fund detention centers. This results in the cost for taxpayers of $152 per person per day. According to justice.gov, there are about 600-700 immigration judges across the U.S., and about 3.9 million cases. If dispersed evenly, each judge would have roughly 6,500 cases. To handle this many cases in a reasonable time frame, a more realistic number of judges would be 2,000-3,000. If the approach was focused on targeting people with criminal records (about 27% of the detainees), the number of detainees would be approximately 1,900 — not 70,000. That includes everyone with violent and non-violent offenses, as well as people who are a flight risk and pose a threat to the U.S. The cost to hold them would be about $1 billion annually instead of $4 billion.
The other 51,000 non-criminal detainees could be put into a program called Alternatives to Detention (ATD), where people are monitored by telephonic reporting, body-worn GPS monitoring and SmartLINK. This could result in a taxpayer cost of $4.20 per day instead of $152. This program also leads to a higher court appearance rate, according to ice.gov. That’s 97% less cost, with the entire cost at $78 million annually. The leftover money could go towards getting more judges and support staff, investing in case management technology, and expanding legal orientation programs. This would make ICE more effective, transferring attention from 50,000 people who don’t pose a threat, to the 1.3 million detainees who have final removal orders. It would also allow more time for tracking down people with violent criminal charges.
Although ICE has a purpose and a motive, the way its agents are currently acting does not reflect accordingly. They are posing a threat to Americans and their constitutional rights. The government agents aren’t following the law, and are putting citizens in harm’s way. Immigrants and those suspected of migrating illegally are treated unlike humans but more as foreign enemies by ICE and their supporters.
Over time, ICE will make its way through the states, and it will get to Lewiston, Idaho. Recent events have shown that agents will detain high schoolers. They will take action against students because of how they look, what language they speak, what work they do, or even where they happen to be.
Nobody is illegal on stolen land. No matter the skin color, nationality or race of a person, everyone still bleeds red.
