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Who Works For ICE? [1]
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Date: 2025-03-21
I do not work in the justice system, or in corrections, or in immigration, so I’m talking all the way out of school here. But accounts offered by people who have been detained and deported by ICE in recent weeks have caused a question that I’ve had for some time to resurface in my cortex:
Who works for ICE?
Not who as in John Q. Smith at 2315 South Pine Street in Tacoma who, but who — as in what kind of person — works for ICE (or for the GEO Group, or others in the immigration detention industry)?
When ICE detainees describe their experiences, some common themes emerge. Being kept in constantly cold spaces. Bright lights on 24/7. Sleeping on concrete (or maybe a thin mat) under a Mylar blanket. Little or no communication with the outside world. No knowledge of where they’re being taken, or when (or if) or where they’ll be released. Barely adequate food (Dog help you if you have any special needs), and inadequate/poor medical care.
Those conditions aren’t accidental. They’re are designed to punish (regardless of whether or not one is guilty). They’re not simply punitive, but physically and psychologically harmful. To cause sleep deprivation, to weaken immune systems, to create psychological trauma, confusion, disorientation, and despair. They’re meant to break people, mentally and spiritually.
Even if I try to entertain the idea that those detained might actually be dangerous and that keeping them sequestered away from society is necessary for our safety (which seems like a real stretch for someone who overstays a student visa or crosses our border seeking asylum), I still struggle to see the necessity of mistreating them and violating their human rights. If someone must be detained, it’s entirely possible to do that and still ensure that they have decent food, are allowed to sleep, receive medical care, and are allowed contact with family and timely access to legal representation.
But that’s not what’s happening. The abusive conditions found in these detention centers are a choice. They’re by design.
Which brings me back to my central question: Who works for ICE? What kind of person chooses to work in such a system? I’m trying to imagine reading an ICE help-wanted ad:
“Must be available evenings and some weekends, be willing to pull their terrified children from their arms and lock them in a cold room and subject them to endless days or weeks of sleep deprivation and psychological trauma. Punctuality, neatness, and excellent customer service skills preferred.”
I honestly have no idea what’s on the job application, but let’s assume that you’re looking for work and find a job at one of these places, and somehow have no idea what’s going on in there. (Maybe you live in a cave or something). How far into Day One training does a person have to get before they start to realize that people are being abused? “Remember — when someone with blue lips asks you for a blanket, be sure to tell them no.” Who learns of all the horrible treatment that other humans are subjected to there and says “Yup! I want to do that to someone too!”
Maybe there are some cogs in the machine who are removed from the daily awfulness and just work in an office somewhere down the hall. Maybe — maybe — they really don’t know (there’s that cave again).
Still, these places don’t run themselves. There are real people in there turning down the thermostats, denying the blankets, keeping the lights on. They must understand what they’re doing. Have they just found some way to rationalize it, somehow convincing themselves that they’re just doing a job to earn a paycheck? Or do they see themselves as some kind of vigilant sentinel doing the hard but necessary work to protect America and fight crime? “In order to keep my community safe, I need to freeze this woman half to death and make sure she can’t sleep, because that’s public safety!”
If someone was found to be doing these same things to their spouse or their kids, most people would call that neglect if not outright abuse. Some might even say that criminal charges are warranted.
The part I find most difficult to understand is the kind of situational ethics and psychological compartmentalization that it must take to willingly do this to people. Maybe some of these ICE people are loner hermits with nobody in their lives, but I imagine that many of them are not. What does it take for someone to spend their days abusing people like this and then to go home and hug their spouse and play with their kids, somehow oblivious to the reality that the people they’re getting paid to abuse are also someone’s spouses, children, or parents? If my neighbor works for ICE, I wouldn’t want my kids to play in their yard no matter how friendly they are at the mailbox. I’m not sure I’d feel like it’s safe to be around them at all, knowing how they would treat me if I ever showed up in one of their facilities for some reason. If anything, it starts to seem like they might be on the wrong side of the bars.
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