In the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates as a state apparatus that exercises systematic coercion over the migrant population. In the current context, marked by an increase in violence and institutional persecution —including episodes that have had lethal consequences for migrants— these practices take on an even greater severity. Death ceases to be an anomaly and becomes an accepted effect of a policy that prioritizes deterrence through fear. Arbitrary detentions, raids, and operations carried out without judicial authorization operate at the margins of constitutional guarantees, when they do not openly violate them.
This escalation of persecution responds to a logic of social control that frames migration as an “internal enemy,” facilitating its stigmatization and dehumanization. The harm falls on precarized communities, while the political benefit is concentrated among those who promote securitarian and exclusionary agendas.
The use of fear as a political tool is a well-documented feature of fascist regimes. A common characteristic is the preventive and exemplary exercise of institutional violence, aimed at imposing a vision of a “new nation.” Structures such as the SA in Nazi Germany functioned not only operationally, but also as instruments of social terror, extending fear beyond those directly targeted and normalizing political violence. In the contemporary U.S. context, Trump’s migration policy reflects a similar logic: by systematically stigmatizing and persecuting the migrant population, it seeks to consolidate an exclusionary idea of the nation that redefines who belongs and who is marginalized.
Within this framework, ICE functions as a cog in a contemporary police-state model that prioritizes force over law, reinforcing a climate of permanent insecurity. Human rights organizations have warned about these dynamics and their incompatibility with democratic standards. Reports and legal documentation allow for a rigorous analysis of this phenomenon, such as those produced by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):
https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrol-abuses
