The purpose of I.C.E. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is to enforce federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration. ICE was created in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the September 11 attacks with the purpose of consolidating several law enforcement functions previously spread across different agencies.
ICE has two main operational divisions:
- Enforcement and Removal Operations in which ICE has full legal authority to identify, arrest, detain, and remove individuals who have violated our immigration laws. The agency focuses on locating and deporting people who are in the U.S. unlawfully, especially those who pose public safety or national security threats.
- Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) where it investigates transnational crimes such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, cybercrime, child exploitation, money laundering, intellectual property theft, and terrorism-related offenses and works closely with other U.S. and international law enforcement agencies.
ICE’s mission is to protect the U.S. from cross-border crime and unlawful immigration that threaten national security and public safety. But the Left, including many members of congress and state governors have chosen to demonize and denigrate the organization by referring to its employees as fascist, Nazi-like, secret police.
But this abasement is nothing new – this “altered reality” comes right out of the democrat playbook – if you villainize and vilify those you disagree with enough you can gain control of the narrative. And one of the saddest but best examples of this that I can think of occurred in 1998, when the Democrat Party with the help of a complicit media captured the narrative and defined Monica Lewinsky as a “homewrecker,” and the temptress who “seduced” the president. The leftist culture, i.e., late-night comedians, tabloids, and the legacy media treated her as a punchline while the real the perp, Bill Clinton, was simply referred to “reckless” and “weak-willed”- but never predatory.
At the time, Bill Clinton was the most powerful man in the world, and Monica Lewinsky was an unsophisticated a 22-year-old intern. But as a result of democrat positioning and media collaboration the public saw it as a consensual affair between two adults, minimizing the massive power imbalance that painted Monica as the villain and the most powerful man on earth as the victim.
To deflect responsibility and protect Clinton, the democrats and the media framed Lewinsky as the instigator. Lewinsky herself has spoken about how brutal the coverage was—she was mocked relentlessly, called names, and had little agency in telling her own story, all while Clinton enjoyed high approval ratings.
Today, the same Democrat Party that vilified Ms. Lewinsky is now maligning I.C.E. for doing its constitutional duty by calling them fascists and Nazis with tacit approval from the legacy media, begging the question. Does this distortion and misrepresentation trickle ‘top-down’ from the Democrat elite like Gavin Newsome, J.B. Pritzker and Chris Van Hollen or does it rise ‘bottom-up’ from Antifa, BLM, and the rioters who attack ICE personnel and Tesla dealerships?