A Jewish Telegraphic Agency report the other day, headlined “Minnesota Rabbi Among Dozens Arrested in Faith Leaders’ Anti-ICE Protest,” put into sharp focus the incongruity of the current demonstrations calling for the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, known as ICE.
As the story went on to explain, “[a]t least one local rabbi was arrested… in Minneapolis as hundreds of faith leaders from around the country gathered to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the Twin Cities. Rabbi Emma Kipley-Ogman, the Jewish and Interfaith chaplain at Macalester College in St. Paul, was briefly detained by police alongside leaders of other faiths while staging a protest at the airport.”
But we wonder about the role of “faith leaders” here. After all, the protests are being mounted against enforcement of a duly enacted “federal law” protecting the integrity of our borders – one of the core responsibilities of any government. Furthermore, the protests are coming in the midst of a surge of enforcement actions involving, in 2025 alone, hundreds of thousands of confrontations. Yet the data show that fatalities and injuries remain at an infinitesimally low level.
Indeed, it must be noted that what is in play is a massive volume of high-stress, high-stakes interactions, often involving individuals with criminal records or those desperate to evade capture.
Nor can the dangerous environment in which ICE agents operate be ignored. Reports from the Department of Homeland Security indicate a staggering 1,300% increase in assaults against ICE officers in the last year. Perhaps thought should be given to the probability that the rhetoric that seeks to delegitimize them actually fuels the attacks.
So, while depicting ICE as some sort of system of cruelty that has to be abolished is way off the mark, targeting individual agents as rogue actors in it won’t do either. In today’s charged political atmosphere, witch hunts would be highly likely. As we have unfortunately learned in the recent past, policing is an inherently difficult, complicated and split-second profession.
Thus, great care must be taken not to subject agents to endless litigation and career-ending investigations for every controversial encounter – especially when the data demonstrate that as a group they are generally acting with restraint. Surely, if agents are afraid to enforce the law because they fear political persecution, the laws passed by Congress will become mere suggestions.
In sum, improving ICE is doubtless a valid subject for discussion. But abolishing it or scapegoating its agents is not.