When the Badge Becomes a Bludgeon

“When a long train of abuses and usurpations…” Thomas Jefferson wrote, warning that tyranny doesn’t arrive all at once. It creeps. It disguises itself in uniforms. It insists it’s just following policy.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the streets of Los Angeles, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents prowl neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles, where families are torn apart in pre-dawn raids, and where the use of force—originally reserved for imminent threats—has become standard operating procedure for a bureaucracy gone feral.

Let’s be clear: ICE is not the military. Its agents are bound by the Department of Homeland Security’s own guidelines: force must be necessary, proportional, and a last resort. Yet reports continue to surface of nonviolent immigrants tackled in front of their children, of agents breaking down doors without warrants, and of detainees abused for asking questions—or worse, for not speaking English.

This isn’t law enforcement. It’s intimidation masquerading as public safety. And it’s being done with our tax dollars, in our communities, and in our name.

The DHS Use of Force Policy Directive 044-04, last updated in 2018, makes a show of professionalism: it emphasizes necessity, proportionality, and de-escalation. Deadly force is only to be used in defense of life. Agents are required to attempt de-escalation whenever feasible. But as we’ve seen time and again, policy without accountability is just a press release with a badge.

Abuse of force by ICE agents doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader culture of impunity that has metastasized within the Department of Homeland Security since its hurried creation in 2002. And like all things built in haste, it was poorly supervised and politically manipulated. Over the years, ICE has morphed from a supposedly surgical immigration enforcement agency into a paramilitary wing of the federal government with little oversight and a rapidly eroding moral compass.

What happens when ICE agents violate their own rules? Officially, victims are encouraged to file complaints with ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility or the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. These are the bureaucratic equivalent of complaint boxes in the homes of abusive stepfathers.

Additionally, the department was recently gutted by (gasp!) the Trump administration (see Axios article dated March 21, 2025). Then there’s the somehow not reassuring note on the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties web site…

Investigations, if they occur, are often slow, opaque, and rarely result in meaningful consequences.

Legal recourse exists—but barely. Victims can attempt to sue under Bivens (a narrow and weakening Supreme Court doctrine) or the Federal Tort Claims Act, but these cases are difficult, expensive, and often dismissed under sovereign immunity. And let’s be honest: how many undocumented immigrants feel safe walking into a courthouse to take on the federal government?

This is no accident. It is by design.

ICE relies on fear. Fear to deter. Fear to divide. Fear to silence. And in cities like Los Angeles—diverse, multilingual, and fiercely immigrant—this strategy tears at the very fabric of civic trust. It undermines police-community cooperation. It discourages victims of crime from coming forward. It spreads confusion over jurisdictional lines between local law enforcement and federal agents, especially when ICE attempts to co-opt sheriffs and police departments through detainers and joint task forces.

And it invites tragedy.

We’ve seen the videos: agents chasing down unarmed men in residential neighborhoods, children screaming as their parents are dragged away, individuals who pose no threat being roughed up in parking lots. The justifications always sound the same: standard procedure, officer safety, “known to the agency.” But watch long enough, and it starts to look less like immigration enforcement and more like performative brutality—a show of force for its own sake.

What’s worse is the bipartisan cowardice. Democrats denounce ICE abuses on the campaign trail and then quietly reauthorize their budgets once elected. Republicans cloak the agency in patriotic fervor, shielding it from criticism by branding any oversight as anti-law enforcement. Meanwhile, the public gets gaslit into believing that any critique of ICE is tantamount to open borders.

That’s nonsense. You can believe in borders and still demand accountability. You can support legal immigration and still oppose cruelty. You can respect law enforcement and still condemn abuse of power.

We are long past the point of trusting ICE to police itself. If Congress won’t rein in its agents, and the courts won’t defend the Constitution from behind detention fences, then the burden falls on us—the public, the press, and the organized communities—to force change.

That starts with public pressure. Every city that declares itself a “sanctuary” must go further. Cut all ties with ICE, deny access to local databases, and refuse participation in joint operations. We cannot claim to be protecting immigrant families while quietly funneling data and support to the very agency targeting them.

Second, we need legal transparency. Congress must mandate public reporting on ICE’s use-of-force incidents, internal investigations, and settlements paid with taxpayer dollars. Responding to the enormous backlog of FOIA requests might be a place to start. No agency wielding this much power should operate in the dark.

Third, victims of abuse must be heard and compensated. Congress should establish an independent body to review ICE misconduct claims, with funding for immigrant legal aid and protection from deportation during active investigations. Fear cannot be both the weapon and the defense.

Fourth, we must strip away the shield of impunity. Repeal or reform the doctrines of qualified immunity and sovereign immunity that allow federal agents to violate rights without consequence. Accountability is not anti-law enforcement. It’s the only way law enforcement earns trust.

Finally, we need to rethink the mission itself. Abolishing ICE doesn’t mean chaos; it means redistributing its essential functions to agencies that operate with checks and balances, while ending the parts that were never about safety—only about spectacle.

This isn’t just a policy debate. It’s a moral referendum. The federal government should never be in the business of terrorizing children, detaining survivors, or brutalizing the vulnerable under the banner of patriotism.

Because a government that lets its agents break the law to enforce the law isn’t enforcing anything. It’s ruling by fear.

And the only antidote to fear is action.