The American Gestapo: How ICE Became the Most Dangerous Agency in the U.S.

They were supposed to protect us. Now they’re rounding up our neighbors—and sometimes even citizens.

When history whispers its warnings, it is the duty of every vigilant citizen to listen. Today, the echoes are deafening.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE—was created in 2003 in the shadow of national tragedy. But two decades later, it has metastasized into a rogue force operating outside the rule of law, outside the Constitution, and outside the scrutiny of the people it purports to serve. We must say it plainly:

ICE has become the modern American Gestapo.

This is not metaphor. It is not exaggeration. It is a sober observation grounded in fact, legal precedent, and the lived experience of thousands of people across this nation.

This undated photo shows Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (Murray Osorio PLLC via AP). Garcia had been working as a sheet metal apprentice in Maryland and was arrested in an IKEA parking lot on March 12 while his 5-year-old son was in the car.

---

Targeting the Most Vulnerable Americans

ICE does not pursue the powerful. It does not target the dangerous. It stalks the most vulnerable:

• The undocumented mother fleeing domestic abuse.

• The child who grew up under DACA, now trying to live openly.

• The asylum-seeker waiting for her court date.

• The legal permanent resident whose paperwork hit a bureaucratic snag.

These people are not criminals. They are not threats. Yet ICE treats them like fugitives—raiding homes, arresting them at hospitals and schools, and separating families with industrial efficiency. The fear it spreads is not incidental. It is the very point.

---

A Constitutional Crisis in the Making

The U.S. Constitution is not optional. Yet ICE routinely operates as though it were suspended.

• The First Amendment guarantees free speech. But immigrant activists and protest organizers have been targeted after speaking out against ICE.

• The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee due process. But ICE detains people without hearings, denies them attorneys, and deports them before their cases are even reviewed.

What ICE is doing would be unlawful in any other context. It would be unthinkable in any other agency. Yet we have normalized it—simply because the people harmed are the easiest to ignore.

---

The Rise of Bureaucratic Brutality

ICE thrives in the shadows—obscured by acronyms, redacted reports, and procedural fog. It answers to no one. It ignores subpoenas. It conceals deaths in custody. And the conditions in its detention centers? Filth. Abuse. Medical neglect. Solitary confinement for children. Were these conditions imposed in another nation, we would call it human rights abuse.

Now ICE operates in a legal no-man’s-land, with jurisdiction expanding, oversight shrinking, and impunity growing. If this is not a police state in formation, what is?

---

The Time to Resist Is Now

This is not about immigration. This is about constitutional democracy. When federal agents can seize your neighbor in silence, when due process is reserved only for the lucky, when citizenship cannot protect you from exile—then the republic has already begun to rot.

ICE must be dismantled. Its functions—if any are to survive—must be entirely rebuilt under transparent, civilian oversight, with strict adherence to constitutional law.

Because when a government turns its weapons inward—when it begins to fear its own people—it is no longer protecting liberty. It is ending it.

And history is watching.

---

Subscribe to E.A. Mercer’s newsletter for more constitutional commentary, essays on justice, and dispatches from the edge of American democracy.

✉️ This post is part of the series "Democracy in Decline." Future entries will explore legal resistance, citizen organizing, and how to protect vulnerable communities under siege.

🖋 If you found this essay valuable, please consider sharing or supporting this work.

---