NEW YORK CITY — In a New York Times opinion piece, contributing opinion writer Ben Rhodes argues that while Immigration and Customs Enforcement is correctly identified by many Americans as a dangerous organization imposing an intolerable reality, ICE is ultimately a symptom of a deeper structural malignancy within the federal government.
Rhodes contends that the institutional overhaul carried out in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, most notably the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the transfer of immigration enforcement into it, laid the groundwork for a sprawling domestic security state that has now reached a crisis point.
The remedy, according to Rhodes, is to “end immigration enforcement at the D.H.S. and return it to the Department of Justice so that it is embedded in the rule of law.” For Rhodes, abolishing ICE alone is insufficient, arguing that meaningful reform requires “fundamentally [overhauling] D.H.S. and [ending] the securitization of American life.”
Tracing the origins of the current landscape, Rhodes describes the expansion of government power as the product of “an obsession with security” following Sept. 11, reinforced by politicians “determined not to appear weak” and Supreme Court rulings that strengthened presidential authority. This dynamic, Rhodes argues, obliterated the delicate balance between security and liberty.
In an effort “to do something,” lawmakers “created the alphabet soup of agencies that became D.H.S.” Rhodes writes, adding that “they took the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol away from the Justice Department and put them under the umbrella of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.”
Without a clearly defined role and operating with limited judicial constraints, Rhodes argues, it quickly became apparent that this “mega-counterterrorism wing of the government was going to be defined by other issues … shifting its priorities to suit whichever president or political challenge was predominant: from terrorism to hurricane response, to cybersecurity, to counternarcotics, to border security and immigration enforcement.”
Noting that “the department’s one constant has been the DNA inherited from the war on terror,” Rhodes traces the lineage of ICE’s current practices to the invasions and prolonged wars “in places like Afghanistan and Iraq,” which “morphed quickly into lengthy counterinsurgency campaigns with elements of mass surveillance, intelligence fusion centers, military patrols and targeted operations against threats — real or perceived.”
Rhodes writes that “that mind-set embedded itself at home,” as the D.H.S. “helped build the plumbing of a domestic security state, with its own fusion centers and expanding missions.” Together with the Pentagon, Rhodes explains, the D.H.S. played a central role in distributing “the huge surplus of military equipment” produced for the war on terror to local police departments and numerous federal agencies.
As a result, Rhodes argues, “armored vehicles, drones, body armor and assault weapons once used to fight insurgencies abroad” have become common sights in American cities and readily available to prospective agents of repression, including in the streets of Minneapolis.
Drawing direct parallels between domestic policing and military operations, Rhodes writes that Minneapolis “has resembled a counterinsurgency campaign more than a law enforcement operation.” In his view, while the administration bears responsibility for ordering the present wave of repression, it has only been able to do so because of the expansive infrastructure created by the D.H.S.
Though Rhodes acknowledges that the current moment appears bleak, he argues that the antidote to creeping authoritarianism lies in articulating a positive vision for political reform and institutional reorganization, one that challenges the supposed “inevitability” of the Trump administration’s policies.
By “returning the functions of ICE and Citizenship and Immigration Services to the Justice Department,” Rhodes writes, “we can once again embed immigration enforcement and naturalization in the part of the government responsible for both enforcing and adhering to the law.”
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