Why ICE Is Under Attack and What’s Really Happening
/ICE UNDER ATTACK
How federal law enforcement became a political target while enforcing the law
By The Editorial Team
⸻
ICE is operating in the most hostile environment federal law enforcement has faced in decades. The danger confronting agents today is no longer theoretical.
This is not a debate about immigration policy. It is about what happens when enforcement itself becomes the target when the legitimacy of law enforcement erodes and the public is conditioned to see the application of law as optional, selective, or political.
That conditioning did not emerge overnight.
Under former President Barack Obama, the United States deported millions of illegal immigrants more than under President Donald Trump without sustained media outrage or a national narrative portraying federal agents as villains for doing their jobs. Enforcement was treated as routine. There were no coordinated efforts to obstruct operations and no widespread campaigns to personally target agents. The contrast matters because it highlights how selectively outrage is applied today.
Under former President Joe Biden, enforcement narrowed sharply. Interior enforcement was reduced, sanctuary jurisdictions expanded, and federal messaging signaled restraint. The result was the entry of millions of unvetted illegal immigrants into the country conditions that made renewed enforcement inevitable regardless of political preference.
When President Donald Trump reasserted enforcement, the law itself did not change. Enforcement did. Border pressure declined. Interior enforcement increased. Trafficking networks faced greater disruption. Fentanyl-related overdose deaths declined from recent highs. Yet enforcement became politicized, and ICE agents became the focal point of sustained media and political scrutiny.
It is not possible to separate hostility toward ICE from hostility toward President Trump himself. In the current climate, enforcement carried out under his administration is often judged before facts are known or actions are contextualized. For many critics, the objection is not how the law is enforced, but that it is enforced at all. That reality shapes perception regardless of professionalism.
This is the environment ICE operates in now.
Agents are enforcing federal law in a climate where perception can matter as much as legality, and where a single encounter recorded and circulated without context can shape public opinion far beyond the facts. This is not only a narrative problem. It is an operational one. Escalation, hesitation, or misinterpretation can carry real consequences for officer safety and public order.
The operational effects are visible. ICE operations are obstructed. Roads are blocked. Vehicles are surrounded. Arrests are interfered with. Agents are filmed, followed, and provoked often not to document facts, but to manufacture optics. When this occurs during active operations, it is not protest. It is interference with federal law enforcement.
It is also inaccurate to describe many of these incidents as protests. What agents are encountering are organized disruptions. The individuals involved are not attempting to engage enforcement through lawful dissent; they are attempting to interfere, provoke confrontation, and generate footage. In many jurisdictions, these actions follow consistent patterns coordination, rapid mobilization, and disciplined messaging associated with activist networks that organize, fund, and deploy participants for disruption. In some cases, individuals are compensated directly or indirectly through activist infrastructure. Their function is agitation, not protest.
As United States Border Czar Tom Homan has explained, ICE prefers to take custody of individuals inside local jails, where arrests are controlled and safer for officers and the public. When sanctuary jurisdictions deny federal access to jails, agents are forced to locate individuals later in neighborhoods and public spaces the most volatile enforcement environment possible. That same visibility is then used to criticize ICE when operations become more dangerous and more public.
This contradiction sits at the center of the current conflict.
When individuals block operations, interfere with arrests, or impede federal agents, the law requires ICE to act. Agents operate knowing that a split-second decision can carry consequences far beyond the immediate encounter, and that both error and hesitation carry risk.
Many of those now interfering with ICE operations formed expectations in jurisdictions where enforcement was limited and consequences were rare. That misunderstanding of federal authority increases volatility during encounters.
Part of that volatility stems from long-standing enforcement gaps at the local level. In many cities, police departments operate under chiefs who ultimately answer to mayors and political leadership. Sheriffs, even when independently elected, still function within political ecosystems that discourage cooperation with federal enforcement. Over time, this teaches people what they can get away with. When federal agents enter those same spaces with clear authority and full institutional backing, behavior changes quickly. Accountability returns, and conduct adjusts.
Because ICE agents are increasingly targeted as individuals, protective measures once considered unnecessary have become standard. Face coverings are one of them not to intimidate, but to reduce the risk of doxxing, harassment, and threats to officers’ families.
That protection comes with cost.
A masked agent begins each encounter with reduced public trust and a narrower margin for error. Language, tone, and judgment carry heightened weight. In this environment, anything that can be framed as profiling becomes combustible. Accent-based questioning or anything perceived that way can undo months of enforcement progress in seconds. Millions of Americans have accents, including citizens and naturalized citizens. When clips appear discriminatory, context disappears and support erodes.
Media framing amplifies that risk.
In one recent incident, anti-ICE activists entered a church after believing an ICE agent or a family member attended services there. Attending a house of worship is not a crime. Entering a house of worship to disrupt services, confront individuals, or interfere with religious proceedings without consent is. Church members stated plainly that the line was crossed. Yet Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor now working independently, reframed the disruption as justified based on the activists’ feelings, effectively dismissing the underlying illegality.
When unlawful behavior is treated as activism, it signals that laws may be ignored when the target is ICE. That signal increases hostility and operational risk.
There is also a broader reality ICE must recognize internally. Scrutiny is not about weakening enforcement; it is about preserving it. ICE is doing a hard and necessary job, but the margin for error has narrowed to almost nothing. Tactics that appear rushed, indiscriminate, or poorly articulated such as physically grabbing individuals without clear explanation, or questioning that can be framed as accent-based carry risks far beyond the moment. In this environment, the next mistake will not be judged on intent, but on optics.
That scrutiny exists because lives depend on it both the public’s and the officers’. Public support still matters. When support erodes, elections change. When elections change, leadership changes. And when leadership changes, the will to enforce the law can disappear. Maintaining legitimacy is therefore not separate from enforcement; it is central to its survival.
ICE is hiring aggressively, bringing in both retired law-enforcement officers and new agents without prior policing experience. Both groups bring value. Neither should be viewed as a liability. However, the current environment requires honest assessment. Retired officers may carry muscle memory from an era with fewer cameras and greater discretion. Tactics that once drew little attention can now compromise operations when stripped of context. Experience remains an asset, but adaptation is essential.
For newer agents, training is even more critical not only in law and procedure, but in restraint, situational awareness, and judgment. Authority and professionalism are no longer separable skills. Discipline protects the mission and reduces risk.
Enforcement is producing measurable results. Border pressure has eased from prior peaks. Interior enforcement and removals have increased. Trafficking networks face greater disruption. Fentanyl-driven overdose deaths have declined from recent highs.
As those results emerge, opposition increasingly shifts from policy debate to optics. Footage, tone, masks, and isolated decisions are used to undermine legitimacy. That is the operational landscape ICE now navigates.
The consequences of failed enforcement are not abstract.
In February 2024, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was murdered while jogging on the University of Georgia campus by an individual who had entered the United States illegally.
In June 2024, Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl from Houston, was abducted, raped, and murdered by two men who had entered the country illegally.
Preserving enforcement does not require abandoning restraint. It requires recognizing that the environment has changed and that professionalism, discipline, and judgment now determine whether enforcement can be sustained at all.
ICE is not the enemy.
Lawlessness is.
And the future of enforcement and the safety of the communities it exists to protect will depend on whether authority is exercised with clarity and legitimacy while there is still time to preserve both.
⸻
Final Note
And to the police chiefs and sheriffs who are publicly distancing themselves from ICE, or openly criticizing federal enforcement tactics: criticism is not only acceptable it is necessary. Leadership demands it.
But if you are going to be critical, be honest and complete. Start by being critical of the sanctuary policies in your own cities and counties. Start by telling your mayors, councils, and political leadership to allow ICE access to local jails. Most of the volatility, public confrontations, and dangerous street-level arrests being criticized would be avoided entirely if federal agents were permitted to take custody of individuals in controlled, secure jail environments.
Instead of directing criticism outward while ignoring the policies at home that created these conditions, ask harder questions of your own leadership. Ask why cooperation is blocked. Ask why politics is prioritized over safety. Ask why federal agents are forced into neighborhoods, sidewalks, and parking lots instead of secure facilities.
That is where real leadership shows itself.
Because this moment reveals something fundamental: whether a chief or sheriff has the spine to confront political pressure, or whether the badge has been reduced to an empty suit worn not for service, but for access, alignment, and survival inside political systems that avoid accountability.
If you want to judge ICE, start by judging your own house first.
