Garrett Graff writes:

Day by passing day, we are watching what amounts to a national police riot by ICE.

Social media is filled with disturbing videos of masked ICE officers — or, I should say, people suspected of being or self-identifying as ICE officers, since for the most part they’re not wearing any identifiable police insignia — manhandling people, including the comptroller of New York, US citizens, suspected aliens, and even journalists alike. In recent days, ICE has also begun resisting congressional oversight efforts — oversight that clearly and legally it needs to provide. In fact, yesterday ICE announced a new “policy” that says it doesn’t have to provide Congress access to its facilities that Congress itself wrote into law. (It goes without saying that you can’t create a “policy” that negates an actual bona fide law—and it’s worth explaining that the reason Congress created this very explicit law allowing ICE oversight is because of its past struggles in doing that exact thing! It’s not like there’s much ambiguity or “open to interpretation” here.)

ICE in just a few weeks has transformed itself into the closest thing that the US has ever had to a “secret police,” with more seemingly culturally in common with the Klan nightriders of Reconstruction than their federal agency brethren like the FBI or ATF.

What really worries me about ICE’s collective actions nationwide, though, is bigger than any single raid or social media post — what worries me is that what we’re witnessing nationwide are not the actions of an agency that believes it will ever be subject to meaningful oversight or legal authority ever again.

This is not an agency that is treating members of Congress as if it will ever be held to account by the men and women who control its budget.

This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions on the streets will be subject to meaningful review by judicial authorities — or that any of its actions will be litigated in the courts.

This is not an agency that believes that any of its actions will be subject to meaningful review by the DHS inspector general, either for policy violations or criminal use-of-force abuses, nor reviewed by US attorneys or federal prosecutors at any level.

This is not an agency leadership that believes that anyone in government — at the Justice Department, the White House, or DHS — currently cares about public perception, misconduct, or violations of civil rights and civil liberties.

And this is not an agency that believes that Democrats will ever be back in charge.

That’s what should terrify us.

ICE, in just a few short months, has lost the trust of the American people. In places like Los Angeles and other communities, ICE special agents and officers (unlike most federal agencies, ICE has both agents and officers, and there’s a subtle but important difference job-wise between them that’s outside the scope of this column) are getting some tough lessons from crowds and bystanders about how in a democracy policing authority stems from the permission of citizens. [Continue reading…]