The Rot Goes Deeper Than ICE

The renewed calls to abolish ICE are an understandable reaction to an intolerable reality. ICE has become dangerous and unaccountable by design under the second Trump administration, with its deportation quotas, dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants and extrajudicial pronouncements that agents have "absolute immunity." The assault on Minneapolis has demonstrated what can happen when that toxic mix of incentives is unleashed on a community. ICE has operated more like an invading army than a force for public safety.

But the rot goes deeper at the Department of Homeland Security, the behemoth that controls ICE, Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) and myriad other federal agencies, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the Secret Service. Since its founding in 2002, a combination of organizational flaws and mission creep has allowed D.H.S. to evolve into the out-of-control domestic security apparatus we have today, one that views the very people it is supposed to protect as threats, not humans.