The federal agency whose masked officers have been seen smashing windows, detaining lawmakers, and arresting nonviolent undocumented immigrants in public spaces is on the verge of becoming the most heavily funded law enforcement body in the United States.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has already expanded its reach dramatically during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Under legislation signed into law last week, that expansion is set to accelerate both in scale and visibility cementing immigration enforcement as a defining feature of everyday American life.
A new reality on American streets
Footage of ICE agents operating on horseback and in armored vehicles at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles has circulated widely, symbolizing not only a show of militarized federal power but also the limits of local authority in resisting it. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was blunt when she confronted the scene.
“They need to leave and they need to leave right now,” she told reporters.
Federal officials were unmoved. Border Patrol leaders and Trump administration officials have made clear that cities like Los Angeles will not dictate immigration enforcement.
“Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon,” El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told Fox News, responding directly to Bass’s remarks.
For many Americans, the sight of a national police force operating openly inside cities—largely independent of local control marks a dramatic shift.
A flood of federal money
At the center of that shift is funding. According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the pro-immigrant American Immigration Council, ICE is on track to become the most well-funded federal law enforcement agency in US history.
The new law allocates $75 billion to ICE through 2029. That money will fund the hiring of up to 10,000 new agents and the construction of detention facilities capable of holding more than 100,000 additional people.
When averaged over the next four years, Reichlin-Melnick said, the funding effectively more than doubles ICE’s annual budget making it larger than the combined budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons.
Immigration enforcement as daily spectacle
With that level of funding and authority, ICE’s presence will become increasingly unavoidable.
“Most people in the United States are going to experience immigration enforcement for the first time in their lives,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.
Bier predicts enforcement actions that are not discreet but deliberately visible.
“US citizens being interrogated on the streets about their citizenship; ICE agents breaking down doors in apartment buildings; National Guard troops blocking traffic,” he said. “At your workplace, your home, your neighborhood, your park very visibly, and intentionally so.”
The spectacle, Bier argues, is the strategy. Highly public raids are designed to intimidate immigrant communities and deter future migration. He also anticipates a rush to spend the newly approved funds before the next presidential election.
A shift away from violent offenders
ICE’s operational priorities have already changed. Arrests surged in June to more than 34,000, according to data compiled by Syracuse University researcher Austin Kocher. Detentions climbed past 50,000.
At the same time, the profile of those detained has shifted. Early in Trump’s term, most detainees had criminal convictions. Now, Kocher estimates that roughly one-third of detainees have committed only civil immigration violations.
Most arrests are now occurring inside the United States rather than at the border.
Rapid growth, familiar risks
Experts warn that explosive growth comes with predictable consequences. Garrett Graff, who has studied the rapid post-9/11 expansion of border and homeland security agencies, says the pattern is well known.
“When a law enforcement agency grows too rapidly, hiring standards fall, training is cut short, and supervisors lack experience,” Graff wrote in his Doomsday Scenario newsletter.
After 9/11, that dynamic contributed to corruption scandals and even cartel infiltration among border agents. Graff now warns of another risk: attracting recruits drawn specifically to aggressive, anonymous, and unaccountable enforcement tactics.
He describes the danger of a surge in applicants motivated by “rough-em-up, masked secret police tactics” rather than professional law enforcement norms.
An agency outside traditional constraints
Unlike criminal law enforcement agencies, ICE operates largely outside the traditional judicial system. Immigration violations are civil offenses, not crimes, meaning agents are not bound by the same standards governing the FBI or local police.
“You get an agency primarily oriented toward non-citizens, but also authorized to arrest citizens under certain circumstances,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
ICE agents have also increasingly operated in anonymity, often wearing masks. While officials say the masks protect agents from doxxing and harassment, critics argue they create the appearance of a secret police force.
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons defended the practice in June.
“I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks,” he said, “but I’m not going to let my officers and their families be put at risk.”
Targeting beyond undocumented entry
The Trump administration has signaled that enforcement will extend far beyond people who entered the US illegally. It has moved to revoke legal protections for millions of migrants, including those with Temporary Protected Status from countries such as Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
The administration is also ramping up efforts to denaturalize citizens stripping citizenship from people who immigrated legally while searching for new categories of deportable individuals.
Trump officials have gone further still. Border czar Tom Homan has warned that local and state officials themselves could face arrest if they interfere with ICE operations.
“You can protest,” Homan said, “but when you cross the line, impeding enforcement, harboring undocumented immigrants that’s a crime.”
No endpoint in sight
For Bier, the most striking feature of the administration’s approach is that it appears limitless.
“The idea that they will ever be satisfied with the number of deportations is preposterous,” he said.
With unprecedented funding, expanded authority, and a clear mandate to be seen as much as feared, ICE is poised to become a permanent and defining force in American public life, one whose reach will likely extend far beyond immigrant communities alone.
This article was first published on CNN
