Every Monday night when I turn on the news, I question if Rachel Maddow is giving me a history lesson or if what I’m seeing is really happening right now. How did we even get here?
In today’s deeply disturbing reality, you’re most likely an observer. We see innocent people like Renée Good and Alex Pretti killed in the streets of Minnesota. Children are ripped from their parents arms and used as bait. Immigrant families are keeping their children from attending school due to fear of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity. Stanford researcher Thomas Dee found a 22 percent jump in student absences in California school districts facing intensified immigration enforcement. Regardless of a child’s immigration status, they have a legal right to receive public education. Every child should be able to view school as a safe place, but many can’t anymore. In January 2025, President Trump revoked the 2011 policy issued by former President Obama limiting ICE enforcement in schools, churches and hospitals. Since then, we’ve seen a surge of ICE activity on K-12 grounds.
In response to the recent rise of ICE activity and abuse of power, people are taking action by organizing and participating in peaceful marches and assemblies. Unfortunately, peaceful protesters have been met with violence and lethal force.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has falsely labeled peaceful protesters as “domestic terrorists.”
“It’s incredibly difficult to peacefully protest when someone else is threatening you with a weapon or your life is in danger,” said Summit senior Campbell Thomas. “There shouldn’t be a position that you can hold in this country that exempts you from justice… You shouldn’t be able to use brute force on someone or kill them.”
On Jan. 7, Renée Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent while her wife stood and watched just a few steps away. In a press conference that was held later that evening, Noem claimed that Good, who was behind the wheel of her car, was trying to run over a law enforcement officer.
Noem called it “an act of domestic terrorism.”
Let’s make things clear. Good was no terrorist. She was a mother, a poet and a wife. The Trump administration seems to love misusing the word “terrorist” because later that month, swiftly after the killing of Alex Pretti, Noem accused Pretti of domestic terrorism and perpetuating violence.
The Trump administration defended the killing of Pretti by stating Pretti had approached officers with a gun and attacked them. Multiple videos of the altercation have shown that Pretti had never brandished his gun nor did he assault any officer. The only thing he was holding in his hands was his phone. He was then shot in the back while he was on the ground.
The Trump administration has continued to make it as easy as possible for ICE to violate human rights. ICE has invaded homes without warrants, targeted and detained people of all immigration statuses and racially profiled people, thanks to the Supreme Court allowing federal agents in Los Angeles to profile people based on their race, language, job or location. 2025 became ICE’s deadliest year in two decades, killing 32 people.
Trump has continued to spread propaganda that immigrants are these criminals and dangerous felons in our country. Isn’t that ironic coming from a man with 34 felonies?
DHS claims they’re detaining “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” such as “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members and terrorists.”
To add to their lies, they claim that “70 percent of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or charged with a crime in the U.S.”
The people being detained aren’t just illegal immigrants or “felons,” but legal immigrants, U.S. citizens, veterans and children. 52,500 out of 71,000 of people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction according to data as of Jan. 25, 2026. That means that roughly 75 percent of people detained have no criminal conviction. On top of that, many of the people convicted of crimes have only committed minor offenses, like traffic violations.
Detention by ICE doesn’t mean immediate deportation. Typically, detainees are held in a detention facility. Detainees have described their experiences in detention centers as a “living hell,” likening them to “death row.” Earlier this year, human rights organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter to ICE containing detailed accounts of violent and sexual assaults perpetrated by officers at the immigration detention site at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas.
The letter stated that officers at Fort Bliss had beat a detained teenager, Samuel, to the point where he had lost consciousness and had to be taken to a hospital in an ambulance. Why? He had switched off an overhead light in a housing unit. In response to him turning off the light, officers piled on him, body slammed him and began to beat him. The officers had blocked the security cameras’ view with their bodies.
Samuel testified that an officer “grabbed [his] testicles and firmly crushed them,” while another officer had “forced his fingers deep into [Samuel’s] ears.”
He recalls officers pulling his fingers back so far he felt like they were going to break. Even after Samuel was restrained, the officers continued punching him around his mouth. Finally, the beating stopped and an officer held Samuel against a wall.
While Samuel was fighting to remain conscious the officer laughed at him for having a chipped tooth and told him he was “like a little girl.”
This report is only one of the dozens of accounts of abuse from Fort Bliss. There’s a repeating pattern of extreme and unlawful use of force in detention sites. Three other detained immigrants at Fort Bliss also reported being slammed, stomped on or beaten when they had expressed fear of being deported to Mexico or even when they requested their medication.
Within the first 50 days of Ft. Bliss being open they racked up at least 60 violations of federal detention standards. Though each pod holds between 60 and 70 people, the meals given are sufficient for only about 50 individuals, leaving them forced to ration, skip meals or take turns eating. The food is often spoiled or partially frozen. The immigrants are housed in tent structures in the intense El Paso climate that in the summers is frequently over 100 degrees. The tents and bathrooms have been described by detainees being flooded with foul water that’s mixed with urine and feces. Individuals with serious conditions have reported going days or weeks without prescribed medications or having medical requests ignored until they collapse.
At Camp East Montana, also located in El Paso, detainee Geraldo Lucas Campos spent months detained there before he died in ICE custody. He was killed by an officer. The death was ruled as a homicide after reports that an officer choked him during an altercation.
Where is the accountability?
The poor background checks and standards for training are deeply concerning. Investigative journalist Laura Jedeed went in for an interview to become an ICE agent to probe what it was like to apply. She was hired after only a six minute interview at an ICE Career Expo in Arlington, Texas. Despite failing to complete required paperwork and participate in a background check, Jedeed received a notification a month later that she had been hired by ICE as a deportation officer.
While it’s terrifying that we don’t know who these masked and armed individuals are, it’s even more terrifying that even ICE doesn’t know who they’re hiring and putting on the streets.
The training standards and requirements to join ICE have dramatically diminished since the beginning of Trump’s second term. In the beginning of his term, ICE numbered approximately 10,000 agents. Since then, ICE has hired over 12,000 new agents, more than doubling its previous numbers.
This past August, the training for new ICE recruits was cut from 22 weeks to just eight weeks. Five weeks had been dedicated to learning Spanish; agents are now told to rely on mobile apps for translation.
If you’re appalled by these events, turn your blame to the lack of structure in the training of these agents and the lack of accountability in the administration leading them. When law enforcement lacks thoroughness and liability it leads to mistakes. These mistakes are what get people killed.
