We've all seen the images and videos. Men, and a few women, dressed in plainclothes, ballistic vests (some emblazoned with "POLICE"), baseball caps or beanies, and balaclavas or neck gaiters covering their faces. They're typically driving unmarked vehicles, with very little – if anything – identifying them as something other than Random Person Driving A Car.
They're federal law enforcement agents working for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); either Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Federal cops, essentially, who are 100% unidentifiable as law enforcement agents/officers.
So what gives? Why are these DHS law enforcement agents so determined to remain anonymous?
In a glaring photo negative, local police departments – to minimize negative press and improve community relations – engage in more positive PR activities, such as:
- "Coffee With A Cop¹" events where residents of the areas these officers serve meet at neutral locations to have coffee and some chitchat.
- "Shop With A Cop²," where law enforcement officers are paired with underprivileged, "at-risk" children to go on shopping sprees during the Christmas holiday season.
- TikTok dance trends³ that show groups of police from different departments doing their silly dances, often challenging other departments to respond with their own videos.
PR campaigns aiming to show police officers (who can very easily be identified as law enforcement agents) going out of their way to ingratiate themselves into the areas they serve. Trying to humanize them, so we don't just see "Cop;" the goal is to get communities to equate "police" to "Human being that has a normal job."
I do want to be clear that my comparison of local/state police to ICE/CBP agents is in no way intended to be police apologism. My goal is not to paint uniformed police officers in a good, or bad, way. We may have negative opinions about these officers, but there is still a comparative level of normalcy. As opposed to dozens of plainclothes, masked individuals swarming communities like a pack of rabidjackals. Coming in hot, sans judicial warrants, refusing to identify themselves even when asked, disappearing people with no explanation, etc. The two groups are quite different. But that's the whole point.
In an interaction with these police officers, we're able to easily see (or ask for) their names, where they work, badge numbers, police cruiser ID number, etc. None of it is a secret. They don't hide their faces, leaving us to wonder who they are or if they're even a member of a law enforcement agency, in a stark difference to what we see when looking at or interacting with ICE/CBP agents.
The latter don't have fancy PR campaigns trying to make them feel relatable. Anything we see about them, aside from the videos recorded by vigilant observers, are the propaganda-laden social media posts presenting these agents as some sort of vigilante posses, sent to round up the baddies...straight out of a dystopian thriller movie.
The reality is that they don't want us to feel comfortable. They don't want us to have even the slightest illusion that the presence of ICE/CBP among us is for anything positive. It isn't about "protect and serve;" it's about "terrorize and harm."
These individuals have been selected to be agents for DHS because they are loyal to Donald Trump, not because they were the most qualified for a position that is, largely, about enforcing civil, not criminal, law. Agenda 47⁴ led the charge on recruiting people to fill as many positions within the federal government as possible, primarily with Trump sycophants. Much of this began taking place several weeks before Trump's inauguration.
In the push to hire as many agents as possible within such a short window, there was a serious disregard for proper vetting. There have been multiple investigative reports on exactly how this force of agents was created, including one that found several new hires showed up to complete their training...without ever having had a single background check or submitting fingerprints⁵.
Lax – or nonexistent – vetting processes have created a horrific situation, where many of the agents tyrannizing our cities have violent pasts.
For example, the assistant field office director of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations in Cincinnati – Samuel Saxon – has a history of "chronic, extreme allegations of domestic violence⁶." Just this December, he was arraigned on charges after he attacked his then-girlfriend by strangulation and chokehold, all of which was recorded by a neighbor. Police were called out to Saxon's home on domestic violence situations, over the course ofjust one year, 23 times. In 2018, in two separate incidents, he broke his partner's nose and her pelvis. This woman, by the way, was 18 when their relationship began...and Saxon was 40. She was also not a US citizen.
In another instance, a recruit showed up for training, and it wasn't immediately caught by staff that he'd previously had criminal charges, including armed robbery, battery, and domestic violence.
But recruitment and vetting are not the only issues. It's the training, which has been severely truncated, and focuses on arbitrary quotas. It's relaxed standards for how these agents are expected to conduct themselves. It's opening applicant age range to begin at 18, but have no age cap⁷. It's having DHS run ads that targeted current state and local law enforcement, implying that standard policing rules and restraints wouldn't apply at ICE⁸. This is just the tip of the iceberg (pun intended).
You see, when you take all of these factors, and more, into consideration, a very grim picture begins to take shape: the primary purpose of the ICE/CBP agents under Donald Trump’s administration is not to "solve" the so-called immigration crisis. It's to terrorize Americans. To scare us into submission so we'll stand aside and let them all carry out their dastardly authoritarian plans.
ICE/CBP function very differently in "red" states than they do in "blue" states. Not just the threats Trump makes when he's mad at a Democrat governor (e.g. Gavin Newsom [CA] and Tim Walz [MN]) or mayor (e.g. Brandon Johnson [Chicago] and Ted Wheeler [Portland]), but the way immigration arrests happen is very different.
In "red" states, most immigration arrests happen in prisons/jails. But in "blue" states, it's an entirely different story. 70% of arrests take place out in the open, in the community⁹. This is why almost every video of ICE/CBP brutality comes from "blue" cities like Minneapolis, Minnesota or Los Angeles, California.
Accident? Coincidence? No. Absolutely not. This is a very deliberate campaign of terror.
Despite the fear-mongering claims of only arresting the "criminal" element, the vast majority of those arrested and/or detained by ICE/CBP have never committed a serious crime¹⁰; in some cases, the targeted individuals haven't even committed misdemeanors. It's no coincidence, then, that 2025 was the deadliest year immigration enforcement has had in decades¹¹.
Tuberculosis. Stroke. Respiratory failure. In some cases, suicide. "This is a result of the deteriorating conditions inside of ICE detention," per Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network.
Though it's difficult to get accurate numbers, as much of this comes from DHS records, as of October 2025 at least 170 US citizens have been arrested and detained by ICE/CBP¹².
Again: none of this is accidental. The terror isn't a bug, it's a feature. Or, dare I say, the whole fucking point. If Trump's and DHS's main goals were truly about the arrest and deportation of actual criminals, we'd be watching a very different scene play out. Frankly, a much more boring scene.
If we're being honest with ourselves, the US immigration system has been in need of overhaul for quite some time. I'm not going to theorize why these issues have gone unchanged, unfixed, through multiple presidential administrations - Democrat and Republican alike. It's far too complex an issue to summarize in one or two paragraphs.
But for Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the jagged pieces of the fractured immigration system have served as the foundation upon which they've constructed their warped, gratuitously violent, populist nightmare.
Truly, I'm not sure which is scarier: their goal to terrorize cities and states they see as being led by/filled with political dissidents, or the fact that the terrorism is working, and we're all frightened, almost to the point of being paralyzed with fear.
Almost.
We aren't throwing in the towel just yet. I don't think Trump and his buddies were expecting righteous fury to accompany the fear. In fact, there have been several nationwide protests and demonstrations in the last year.
Over the summer, the first round of the "No Kings" protests saw about 6 million people across the country¹³. The second wave, in October, 7 million people showed up and showed out in over 2,700 cities and towns¹⁴, becoming – if not the biggest, it was certainly one of the biggest – single-day protests in US history.
Though official counts aren't in, massive, nationwide protests¹⁵ took place on January 10th, 2026 over the murder of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7th. Over 1,000 US cities and towns. There was even a vigil held outside the US embassy in Berlin¹⁶.
Just by refusing to stand by and let these terroristic actions control our lives, we're throwing a wrench in Trump's plans. He and the rest of his administration and oligarch buddies want us running scared. That's their goal: to keep Americans too terrified to fight back or challenge him, and too scared to speak up and say, "This is not okay!"
It isn't just threats anymore. They're kidnapping and disappearing us. They're brutalizing and, in some cases, killing us. They're lying in the face of overwhelming evidence that shows us the facts; gaslighting us and trying to force the justice system to bend to their will to be further weaponized against us.
They want to crush any and all dissent, but it must be big and it must be public so it has the desired effect: terrorizing us into silent acquiescence.
We are being put to the test right now, every day, in cities across America, where a state-sponsored group of anonymous assholes are violently terrorizing our communities. Our people – family, friends, neighbors. Our homes. Our schools and churches and libraries.
Novelist Salman Rushdie once wrote, "How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared." How will you defeat terrorism today?
.
¹ https://coffeewithacop.com/
² https://shopwithacopatx.org/
³ https://youtu.be/iKu4KwGQ1BI?si=ETu4Ml5C1B8lzmLU
⁴ https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/30/trump-administration-patriotic-americans-federal-workforce-00376752
⁵ https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/new-ice-recruits-showed-training-full-vetting-rcna238739
⁶ https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/01/12/in-wake-of-minnesota-shooting-questions-persist-about-violent-ice-agents-in-ohio/#:~:text=But%20a%20New%20York%20Times,and%20Removal%20Operations%20Cincinnati%20Suboffice.
⁷ https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/durbin-presses-noem-on-lax-ice-hiring-standards-inflammatory-recruitment-messaging
⁸ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/30/trump-local-police-immigration
⁹ https://local12.com/news/nation-world/heres-how-ice-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-arrests-differ-between-red-and-blue-states-cincinnati-sanctuary-policies-local-enforcement-laws-president-united-american-immigration-officials-bill-reconciliation-budget-detentions-administration
¹⁰ https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/26/more-than-90-percent-of-ice-detainees-have-never-been-convicted-of-violent-crimes/
¹¹ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/04/ice-2025-deaths-timeline
¹² https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will
¹³ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/no-kings-how-many-protesters-attended
¹⁴ https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/seven-million-people-unite-at-peaceful-no-kings-protests-to-defend-our-first-amendment-rights
¹⁵ https://www.npr.org/2026/01/10/nx-s1-5673229/ice-protests-minneapolis-portland-renee-good
