Politics 101: A Condensed History of ICE
Jesse Welty | March 3, 2026
Fragile Freedom faith action by the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago (ABCMC) at Broadview, Illinois US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility on Nov. 21, 2025. (Wikimedia Commons/Paul Goyette)
With the incessant onslaught of federal immigration agents against U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike across the country in recent years, each massacre-filled headline begs the question: How did we get here?
A Brief Background
In 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was established as a service meant to unify and manage border patrol, as well as provide legal enforcement of immigration processes after decades of debate over immigration law and naturalization (the legal process by which an immigrant receives citizenship status). The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 then gave documented legal structure to immigration law in the United States almost two decades later. While it has now been amended many times over, at its core the INA was meant to dictate all that concerns immigrant rights and regulations in the U.S.. This includes legal entry processes, immigrant quotas, stay requirements, the issuance of visas, and the removal and detention of unlawful entrants.
44 years later in 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) reformed the INA to strengthen border enforcement and further criminalize human migration. Tougher penalties were imposed for illegal entry, residency and smuggling. There were also greater limitations put on immigrants seeking employment or benefits. One key component of this 1996 reform in regards to ICE, however, was Section 287(g). This section authorized a program that would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to act as legal immigration enforcement.
Consolidation Of Immigration Law
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC and the Pentagon in 2001, the U.S. Congress developed the Homeland Security Act to protect the country against terrorist efforts. Passed in November of 2002, some of the primary missions of this act are listed as follows:
(A) Prevent terrorist attacks within the United States.
(B) Reduce the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism.
(C) Minimize the damage, and assist in the recovery, from terrorist attacks that do occur within the United States.
(G) Monitor connections between illegal drug trafficking and terrorism, coordinate efforts to sever such connections, and otherwise contribute to efforts to interdict illegal drug trafficking.
The INS was ostensibly dissolved under the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under this act, however its functions were unified, and transferred over along with the INA with the purpose of bringing these national security efforts under one sole executive department. This consolidation split immigration efforts into a few different key agencies under the DHS including, but not limited to, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It also created a more direct, legal parallel between immigration and terrorism.
ICE Structure
Currently, ICE is the principal agency under the DHS overseeing immigrant law enforcement and investigations inside the U.S. border. There are three main sub-departments that help serve this purpose: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Office of the Principle Legal Advisor (OPLA).
Homeland Security Investigrations (HSI): The HSI’s mission is to investigate and interrupt illegal activity and movement. They are mainly focused on cross-border criminal activity including human or drug smuggling and trafficking, however also cover internal violations such as workplace/employment crime and cyber-crime.
Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO): The ERO handles the enforcement of internal immigration policy such as the detention and removal of undocumented or illegally present persons. This body is currently the most contested as they are the on-ground presence most directly conducting unwarranted violence.
Office of the Principle Legal Advisor (OPLA): OPLA serves as the legal body for the DHS when it comes to immigration conflict. This faction includes hundreds to thousands of attorneys whose purpose is to represent the government in immigration court, and give legal advice on investigative, removal and detention operations.
Why Does This Matter?
Ten years ago, the base budget set aside for ICE was valued at less than $10 billion. Today, ICE can receive $75 billion in allocations with a single bill. Especially with the executive order Trump signed in January of last year that gave ICE a major increase in authority and significance, they have quickly become the chief tool of the current administration’s racist onslaught against immigrants and non-white citizens.
If these branches of government stem from a federal campaign ostensibly intended to protect American citizens against foreign criminal threat, why then is legal citizenship status put on the back burner when these agents make the decision to draw a gun? Why a manufactured ‘illegal’ label ascribed to a human being would warrant public execution in the first place, as well as the fact that law enforcement instinctually and purposefully inflicts harm shows that the protection and safety of the American people is not a right the current administration truly seeks to defend.
Legal processes and the purported “right way to do things,” are simply not of interest to Trump’s administration or its subscribers, either. If they truly were of interest, we would see detained individuals given the ability to meet with attorneys. Instead, ICE agents complain that allowing clients in detention to see their lawyers would simply be “too much chaos.” Instead they are told to forcibly enter homes without a judicial warrant. Instead they shoot American citizens on public streets, kill uninvolved school-teachers in illegal car chases, restrain and suffocate detainees to death, and allow hundreds to supposedly ‘disappear’ without explanation.
It is confusing, to say the least, to see supposed law enforcement agencies committing these atrocities as though they existed outside of the law. Understanding the systemized violence against immigrants and how these agencies came to be, offers at least a slight platform to better speak, and fight, against it.