ICE Is Not an Aberration — It Is an American Tradition
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security. It is a relatively young agency, created in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Under President Donald Trump, ICE expanded into a paramilitary operation that has abused immigrants and non-immigrants alike and has been involved in fatal encounters, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Those shootings, along with numerous documented incidents of intimidation and terror, have led some observers to compare ICE to the Gestapo—the secret police of Nazi Germany that terrorized, abused, and murdered targeted groups with the full backing of the state.
While there are surface-level similarities between ICE and the Gestapo, that comparison ultimately obscures more than it reveals. It suggests that ICE represents something foreign to American values, an outside corruption rather than a homegrown institution. That framing is comforting, but it is wrong. Especially when we remember that Nazi officials themselves studied Jim Crow America when designing their system of persecution.
What ICE is doing is not new. It is not imported authoritarianism. It is the continuation of a long American tradition of state-assisted terror.
State Terror After the Civil War
To understand ICE, one must understand America after the Civil War—a war fought over the institution of slavery. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the ascension of Andrew Johnson to the presidency, the fragile hope for a more equitable nation quickly collapsed. Johnson issued more than 13,000 pardons and amnesty proclamations to former Confederates, including a sweeping Christmas Day pardon in 1868 that absolved all insurrectionists, Confederate President Jefferson Davis included.
Those pardons were not acts of reconciliation; they were acts of restoration. They restored power to the very people who had waged war to preserve human bondage.
Many of those pardoned Confederates went on to form or join the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. Among them was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the Klan’s first Grand Wizard.
The KKK terrorized, intimidated, and murdered Black Americans to suppress civil rights and restore white supremacy in the South. These masked men functioned much like the slave patrols of antebellum America—where modern American policing has its roots—operating outside meaningful judicial oversight while controlling nearly every aspect of Black life. They were supported by Southern lawmakers and granted effective immunity to kidnap, abuse, and kill Black Americans.
Although the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 helped suppress the Klan’s first incarnation, its defeat was temporary. As Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow became the law of the land, the Klan reemerged, joined by other racial terror organizations that again flourished in American society. Many of the men hiding behind those hoods were police officers, judges, prosecutors, and business leaders, people determined to enforce a racial caste system at any cost.
This history matters because it reveals a pattern: when white supremacy is threatened, the American state does not retreat, it reorganizes.
ICE as a Modern Instrument of State Terror
ICE operates in ways that closely resemble the Klan: masked agents carrying out the will of the state while shielded by broad legal protections and limited accountability. In a bitter historical irony, it is the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 that the Trump administration has attempted to invoke against protesters.
Under Trump, ICE became heavily funded and heavily armed, with a mission that functionally centered on terrorizing targeted communities. The agency lowered hiring standards and expanded recruitment, prioritizing individuals willing to use force against those labeled as threats. The predictable result has been an institution marked by cruelty, indifference to human suffering, and a casual disregard for the lives it disrupts or destroys.
Whatever the personal motivations of individual agents, the institution itself is what matters. In practice, ICE enforces policies that preserve racial hierarchy, criminalize migration, and define entire communities as enemies of the state. This is not a bug of the system; it is the system working as designed.
When Standing Against White Supremacy Becomes a Death Sentence
Much of the public outrage surrounding the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti stems from the fact that they were white Americans. Yet American history is filled with examples of white people who were killed because they opposed white supremacy. John Brown: one of the most consequential figures in American history, was executed by the state for attempting to arm enslaved people in an effort to end slavery.
William Lewis Moore, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo were all white martyrs of the civil rights movement. More recently, anti-racist activist Heather Heyer was murdered while protesting neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Good and Pretti were publicly described by federal officials during the Trump administration as “domestic terrorists.” Anyone, regardless of race or gender, who challenges white supremacy is treated as an enemy of the state and framed as deserving punishment.
History teaches us that whiteness does not protect those who refuse to obey it.
Black Americans and the Reality of American Fascism
This kind of terror is not foreign to America. Black Americans are the only group that has lived continuously under American state repression and therefore understands firsthand what it means to be targeted, surveilled, kidnapped, jailed, and killed by government authorities.
Too often, the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement are met with little or no outrage outside the Black community. When a Black person is killed by police, officials and media outlets immediately search for justifications. They disparage the victim’s character. They claim fear.
That is what was done to 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by an Ohio police officer while playing in a park. That is what was done to John Crawford III, killed while shopping in Walmart. That is what was done to Walter Scott and Philando Castile, who were killed during separate traffic stops. That is what was done to Breonna Taylor, killed in her own home. That is what was done to Eric Garner and George Floyd, whose lives were taken in public view.
These were not accidents. They were killings carried out by agents of the state, and they were treated as acceptable collateral damage.
A Nation Without Accountability
There is rarely accountability for those who kill other Americans in service of white supremacy. History makes this plain. Slaveholders were not punished. Confederates were not meaningfully punished. Lynchers during Jim Crow were not punished. Police officers who brutalize and kill Black Americans are rarely punished.
Kyle Rittenhouse was celebrated in right-wing media and political circles after being found not guilty in the fatal shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. By contrast, Dylann Roof, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering nine Black parishioners during Bible study was reportedly provided food by police following his arrest, a detail that underscored the stark disparities in how violence is treated depending on who commits it and who suffers from it.
Even participants in the January 6th Insurrection were later granted leniency, pardons, or political protection by the same man who incited the attack.
Calls to “reform” ICE misunderstand the moment entirely. Reform assumes the institution is broken. ICE is not broken; it is functioning exactly as intended. Abolition does not mean chaos; it means refusing to maintain an institution built to terrorize, dehumanize, and destroy. ICE must be abolished, and agents who have committed crimes must be prosecuted. You cannot reform hate. You must eliminate it.
And still, history tells us not to expect justice. America has never lacked evidence of its cruelty—only the will to confront it. The question is not whether ICE reflects American values. The question is how much longer this country will continue to pretend otherwise.
Publisher’s Note
Professor Brandon J. Sutton teaches U.S. History at the Community College of Baltimore County. Professor Sutton graduated from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science and holds a Master of Divinity degree from Liberty University.
This essay reflects the author’s analysis, historical interpretation, and moral judgment based on publicly available reporting, historical scholarship, and patterns of state violence in the United States. Descriptions of institutions, policies, and events are offered in the context of political critique and protected opinion.
Citation: Figure 1. Ice = KKK, by Andrea Arroyo, 2026, https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ice-kkk/. Copyright 2026 by Andrea Arroyo.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security. It is a relatively young agency, created in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Under President Donald Trump, ICE expanded into a paramilitary operation that has abused immigrants and non-immigrants alike and has been involved in fatal encounters, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Those shootings, along with numerous documented incidents of intimidation and terror, have led some observers to compare ICE to the Gestapo—the secret police of Nazi Germany that terrorized, abused, and murdered targeted groups with the full backing of the state.
While there are surface-level similarities between ICE and the Gestapo, that comparison ultimately obscures more than it reveals. It suggests that ICE represents something foreign to American values, an outside corruption rather than a homegrown institution. That framing is comforting, but it is wrong. Especially when we remember that Nazi officials themselves studied Jim Crow America when designing their system of persecution.
What ICE is doing is not new. It is not imported authoritarianism. It is the continuation of a long American tradition of state-assisted terror.
State Terror After the Civil War
To understand ICE, one must understand America after the Civil War—a war fought over the institution of slavery. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the ascension of Andrew Johnson to the presidency, the fragile hope for a more equitable nation quickly collapsed. Johnson issued more than 13,000 pardons and amnesty proclamations to former Confederates, including a sweeping Christmas Day pardon in 1868 that absolved all insurrectionists, Confederate President Jefferson Davis included.
Those pardons were not acts of reconciliation; they were acts of restoration. They restored power to the very people who had waged war to preserve human bondage.
Many of those pardoned Confederates went on to form or join the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. Among them was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the Klan’s first Grand Wizard.
The KKK terrorized, intimidated, and murdered Black Americans to suppress civil rights and restore white supremacy in the South. These masked men functioned much like the slave patrols of antebellum America—where modern American policing has its roots—operating outside meaningful judicial oversight while controlling nearly every aspect of Black life. They were supported by Southern lawmakers and granted effective immunity to kidnap, abuse, and kill Black Americans.
Although the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 helped suppress the Klan’s first incarnation, its defeat was temporary. As Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow became the law of the land, the Klan reemerged, joined by other racial terror organizations that again flourished in American society. Many of the men hiding behind those hoods were police officers, judges, prosecutors, and business leaders, people determined to enforce a racial caste system at any cost.
This history matters because it reveals a pattern: when white supremacy is threatened, the American state does not retreat, it reorganizes.
ICE as a Modern Instrument of State Terror
ICE operates in ways that closely resemble the Klan: masked agents carrying out the will of the state while shielded by broad legal protections and limited accountability. In a bitter historical irony, it is the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 that the Trump administration has attempted to invoke against protesters.
Under Trump, ICE became heavily funded and heavily armed, with a mission that functionally centered on terrorizing targeted communities. The agency lowered hiring standards and expanded recruitment, prioritizing individuals willing to use force against those labeled as threats. The predictable result has been an institution marked by cruelty, indifference to human suffering, and a casual disregard for the lives it disrupts or destroys.
Whatever the personal motivations of individual agents, the institution itself is what matters. In practice, ICE enforces policies that preserve racial hierarchy, criminalize migration, and define entire communities as enemies of the state. This is not a bug of the system; it is the system working as designed.
When Standing Against White Supremacy Becomes a Death Sentence
Much of the public outrage surrounding the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti stems from the fact that they were white Americans. Yet American history is filled with examples of white people who were killed because they opposed white supremacy. John Brown: one of the most consequential figures in American history, was executed by the state for attempting to arm enslaved people in an effort to end slavery.
William Lewis Moore, Rev. Bruce Klunder, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo were all white martyrs of the civil rights movement. More recently, anti-racist activist Heather Heyer was murdered while protesting neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Good and Pretti were publicly described by federal officials during the Trump administration as “domestic terrorists.” Anyone, regardless of race or gender, who challenges white supremacy is treated as an enemy of the state and framed as deserving punishment.
History teaches us that whiteness does not protect those who refuse to obey it.
Black Americans and the Reality of American Fascism
This kind of terror is not foreign to America. Black Americans are the only group that has lived continuously under American state repression and therefore understands firsthand what it means to be targeted, surveilled, kidnapped, jailed, and killed by government authorities.
Too often, the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement are met with little or no outrage outside the Black community. When a Black person is killed by police, officials and media outlets immediately search for justifications. They disparage the victim’s character. They claim fear.
That is what was done to 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by an Ohio police officer while playing in a park. That is what was done to John Crawford III, killed while shopping in Walmart. That is what was done to Walter Scott and Philando Castile, who were killed during separate traffic stops. That is what was done to Breonna Taylor, killed in her own home. That is what was done to Eric Garner and George Floyd, whose lives were taken in public view.
These were not accidents. They were killings carried out by agents of the state, and they were treated as acceptable collateral damage.
A Nation Without Accountability
There is rarely accountability for those who kill other Americans in service of white supremacy. History makes this plain. Slaveholders were not punished. Confederates were not meaningfully punished. Lynchers during Jim Crow were not punished. Police officers who brutalize and kill Black Americans are rarely punished.
Kyle Rittenhouse was celebrated in right-wing media and political circles after being found not guilty in the fatal shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. By contrast, Dylann Roof, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering nine Black parishioners during Bible study was reportedly provided food by police following his arrest, a detail that underscored the stark disparities in how violence is treated depending on who commits it and who suffers from it.
Even participants in the January 6th Insurrection were later granted leniency, pardons, or political protection by the same man who incited the attack.
Calls to “reform” ICE misunderstand the moment entirely. Reform assumes the institution is broken. ICE is not broken; it is functioning exactly as intended. Abolition does not mean chaos; it means refusing to maintain an institution built to terrorize, dehumanize, and destroy. ICE must be abolished, and agents who have committed crimes must be prosecuted. You cannot reform hate. You must eliminate it.
And still, history tells us not to expect justice. America has never lacked evidence of its cruelty—only the will to confront it. The question is not whether ICE reflects American values. The question is how much longer this country will continue to pretend otherwise.
Publisher’s Note
Professor Brandon J. Sutton teaches U.S. History at the Community College of Baltimore County. Professor Sutton graduated from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science and holds a Master of Divinity degree from Liberty University.
This essay reflects the author’s analysis, historical interpretation, and moral judgment based on publicly available reporting, historical scholarship, and patterns of state violence in the United States. Descriptions of institutions, policies, and events are offered in the context of political critique and protected opinion.
Citation: Figure 1. Ice = KKK, by Andrea Arroyo, 2026, https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ice-kkk/. Copyright 2026 by Andrea Arroyo.
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