United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has entered the University of Chicago. On October 14, an international student was detained by ICE personnel on campus grounds before eventually being released. A few days later, a friend of the Thinker witnessed and recorded two masked ICE personnel shove a man into the back of a black SUV at gunpoint on campus. UChicago’s administration has recommended that all international students carry proof of legal residence. In the wake of these events, a critical reflection on ICE’s goal and methods is required. I will argue that ICE’s goal is necessary and good, but its current methods are unprofessional and will cause a political backlash that will increase illegal immigration over time.
ICE’s goal to deport illegal immigrants is worth pursuing. Every country needs a system for admitting new members. Without such a system, a country is unable to set immigration policy. It’s unable, for example, to prioritize family reunification over high skilled immigrants or set employment and civic requirements. Without an admittance system, the citizenry cannot determine its culture and composition. Immigration into a country is no different than immigration into smaller organizations like a college or company. Imagine if UChicago allowed students who did not apply to take classes and live in dorms. That would be unfair to the students who didn’t receive a spot and would prevent the community from deciding who a UChicago student is.
However, in Chicago, ICE has been carrying out its mission in an unprofessional and seemingly illegitimate way. The problem begins with how ICE staffs its ranks. The Trump administration has ordered ICE to double its headcount. Doing so has forced them to drop the bar on applicant standards and training. Rather than selectively pursuing top talent, ICE advertises en masse through platforms like Instagram Reels. The advertisements point to a website that offers applicants a $50,000 signing bonus and does not even mention the need for prior law enforcement experience. Once applicants join, the training is fast tracked. As the director of ICE from 2013 to 2014, John Sandweg, said, “The training academy can only train so many people at once. It would take years to fully deploy these agents. This administration clearly doesn’t want to wait.” Sandweg’s statement demonstrates that the Trump administration’s pressure has left ICE no choice but to deploy a half-trained force.
The agents demonstrate their lack of training when detaining people with no rhyme or reason. In Chicago, 61% of the people arrested in June 2025 ended up receiving no criminal charge. The fact that the agency has detained about twice as many innocent people as criminals demonstrates their inexperience. Rather than deploy professionals to surgically and covertly detain illegal immigrants, the officers brazenly pull over crowds of innocent people in broad daylight for the public to see.
The damage to the agency’s reputation is exacerbated when agents wear masks and plainclothes and refuse to identify themselves. Officers wield power legitimately because they act on behalf of an organization granted the power to use force by the community they police. An officer’s uniform, badge, and face telegraph to the public their appointed position, and therefore, their legitimacy. When ICE agents hide their identity from the public they serve, they appear like an illegitimate secret police. Further, masking is unprecedented and cowardly. American agents have always revealed their faces, even when going after dangerous criminals like the Gambino crime family or the cartel boss El Chapo. If these agents are brave enough to serve unmasked, ICE agents—who go after far less dangerous criminals—should be as well. To those who argue that the agents are at high-risk of being doxed, consider that judges are still revealing their faces despite an uptick in threats towards them. We do not live in a Kafka novel—there must be a face behind the person wielding power.
The untrained, unidentified ICE agents lack accountability as well. The agents operate with federal immunity, which means they are only beholden to the DHS. The DHS, however, has defied a judge’s insistence that it clarify who makes decisions in the chain of command. Without this information, judges are limited in their ability to hold the agency accountable.
ICE’s current methods have caused many Americans to view immigration law enforcement as a part of Trump’s partisan agenda. If ICE is seen as partisan, leftist politicians will likely reverse the progress ICE makes toward reducing the population of illegal aliens in the country when they inevitably regain power.
Before Trump, immigration law enforcement had bipartisan support. The graph above from the Pew Research Center shows that illegal immigration was on a steady decline from 2005 to 2016. President Obama and Trump both made steady progress. However, Trump’s bombastic rhetoric about deporting illegals branded immigration law enforcement as partisan. When he lost power in 2020 and the political pendulum swung back, the left implemented policies that sent illegal immigration through the roof. The Biden administration gave federal officials parole authority to allow aliens without visas to enter with impunity. They also encouraged courts to issue a record number of protections from deportation orders to aliens who evaded the United States Border Patrol. The courts eventually became so lenient that aliens who successfully crossed the border undetected would often turn themselves over to be offered their protection. In just four years, Biden undid over a decades worth of progress.
If ICE does not change its behavior, they will tarnish public perception toward immigration law enforcement, which will undo any progress achieved under Trump’s second term. Removing 14 million people from the country will take far longer than four years. When the political pendulum swings back, the left are bound to implement policies that cause the number of illegal aliens in the country to skyrocket. Given that it is easier to let in a million illegal aliens than to deport them, the problem will only worsen over time. ICE should not speed-hire amateurs, empower them to detain Americans anonymously, post about their movements in cute social media clips, and refuse to hold them accountable. Rather, ICE should slowly and steadily hire the best talent and deploy them with local law enforcement to surgically and covertly remove aliens. Professionalism and patience are the only ways to bring bipartisan support to solving the problem of illegal immigration.