Front Burner

What exactly is ICE?

A look at how ICE operates and Trump’s immigration agenda fits into America’s history of mass deportations.
In this July 8, 2019, file photo, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer looks on during an operation in Escondido, Calif. Advocacy groups and unions are pressuring Marriott, MGM and others not to house migrants who have been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. But the U.S. government says it sometimes needs bed space, and if hotels don’t help it might have to split up families. (Gregory Bull/The Associated Press)

For months now, agents working for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been carrying out raids, arresting people on the street, at work and at immigration courthouses. Often they are wearing plain clothes and masks.

As U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown intensifies, so have the instances of arrests and detentions by ICE, sometimes without warrants or due process. Despite mass protests and pushback from opposition politicians and immigrants rights groups, the Trump administration has vowed the arrests will continue as they aim for one million deportations a year.

But how, exactly, does ICE operate? How did the agency come to be and how does it compare to immigration enforcement in America's past? To help us dive deep into ICE's history and put it all into context, we're joined by Adam Goodman, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and the author of The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants.

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