Many people doubted something like this could occur in the U.S. That there could be a federal agency that brutalizes American citizens and tramples over basic civil rights. Yet here we are. I want to frankly discuss what ICE has done, how it violates civil liberties, and how this is affecting the people most targeted by ICE and the Trump Administration as a whole in order to inform fellow students about this situation. 

For Context: ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) is an agency designed to enforce federal immigration, border, and customs laws. ICE’s actions have earned the organization a massive amount of infamy among the American people due to the severe misconduct agents and the organization more broadly have displayed. ICE’s actions and the terror around them have affected students at BHSS. Junior Maise Robinson, who led the walkout in solidarity with students in Minneapolis, spoke on her feelings around ICE’s actions and her reasons for staging the walkout. She said she planned the walkout because “we had seen ICE agents kill a woman in Minneapolis and then seen DHS officials accuse her of being a domestic terrorist, and all of the ICE actions in Minneapolis had really been an overextension of power and had violated people’s constitutional rights and it was really appalling.” She also said that “there was a general idea that schools in Minneapolis had needed to be closed down after Renee Good was shot and students had to stay home from school because they felt unsafe,” so she wanted to stand in solidarity with students as well as protest ICE’s actions. 

Robinson also discussed her thoughts on ICE’s actions more broadly: “I think they’re abhorrent I think that it’s been a real overextension of power and that far too much funding has been poured into it and that they have been toying with peoples lives and I think the conditions of the detention centers are abhorrent” and “I think that right now what ICE is doing is really scaring, and abusing, and racially profiling a large number of people in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in other cities and I think that is inexcusable.” 

Finally, Robinson said that, while she was not worried for herself, she is worried for her classmates. She feels that this is an unsafe time and is worried about the ramifications of ICE gaining a larger presence in Bloomington.

Robinson’s worries for her fellow students is understandable as, infamously, ICE has been targeting children and teenagers. Agents arrested and detained a five year old boy and his father and there have been other reports of agents patrolling near schools in order to arrest students. Some states, including Indiana, have begun trying to allow ICE agents to directly enter schools. Indiana Senate Bill 76 requires local governments and public schools to cooperate with ICE agents, making it much harder to restrict ICE’s access to schools. 

These local examples are already horrifying enough, however ICE’s misconduct is far more widespread. The Guardian reported in their article, “2025 Was ICE’s Deadliest Year,” that 32 people had died in ICE custody in 2025. The article also notes an explanation for this from Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, a non-profit that has been tracking immigration detention deaths for years. Ghandehari said, “This is a result of the deteriorating conditions inside of ICE detention.” The conditions of these medical facilities were investigated by The American Civil Liberties Union and ProPublica and what they found was horrific. People previously detained by ICE described how they were medically neglected to the point where people with heart conditions were unable to obtain their medication. Anybody who spoke up was threatened with violence and solitary confinement. Additionally, many of the detainees were unable to contact a lawyer or their families for days on end.  Later in the Guardian article Ghandehari expressed concerns about further deterioration of facility quality stating “I’m definitely worried that in the coming years, we could see more of this as ICE is trying to expand its facilities, detain and deport more people,”.

ICE’s misconduct has gotten to the point where the United Nations’ Rights Chief Volker Türk decried the U.S government’s actions when he said he was “astounded by the now-routine abuse and denigration of migrants and refugees” in the United States. He also criticized ICE violence against protesters stating: “Those who dare to speak up or protest peacefully against heavy-handed immigration raids are vilified and threatened by officials, and on occasion subjected to arbitrary violence themselves.” 

In addition to all of this, ICE has also been targeting non-white U.S citizens for oppression. As Nicole Foy reported in her article “We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.” Over 170 U.S. citizens have been detained and brutalized by ICE. This is, in part, caused by the sweeping nature of ICE raids through any community believed to have immigrants in it and abduct anyone who the agents believe might be an immigrant. This has led to many U.S citizens of color being abducted by ICE. This issue will likely only get worse due to ICE now being brought in to replace TSA agents.

Regardless of political belief it is impossible to deny that ICE has done harm. To say otherwise would be to deny reality and the experiences of countless people. Ultimately, the actions of ICE agents have violated the human and constitutional rights of countless citizens and immigrants and have killed innocent people. This cannot and should not be normalized.