A man getting out of his car at a red light, a police raid in the parking lot of a DIY store, a father detained in front of his children’s school… These scenes have become part of daily life in the United States. The hunt for undocumented immigrants initiated by the Trump administration is coming to light across the country.
In command: ICE, the immigration police in charge of applying the ultra-firm policy advocated by the American president. A force that periodically appears in the headlines for the violence of its interventions and sows fear among the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants present in American territory.
Videos of mistakes are multiplying on social networks. In a New York court we see the wife of a detained migrant violently thrown to the ground by an agent, in front of their two children.
Near Los Angeles, a 79-year-old car wash manager was assaulted by an ICE patrol that came to check on his employees. In the video surveillance images we see the man fall to the ground in his store, run over by a police officer.
The scene continues outside: the agent grabs the shopkeeper’s arms, before a second violently throws him to the ground. The septuagenarian, who suffered from cardiovascular problems, soon found himself face down on the ground, with a knee to his head, before being taken on board and then temporarily detained.
Broken ribs, swollen elbow, a large bruise on his right forearm, this Donald Trump voter is suing ICE, which he compares to “bounty hunters.”
“How many people have to be seriously injured or killed before we change the way these ICE agents intervene and use excessive force before asking questions?” His lawyer attacked the AFP.
New ways
Would ICE be untouchable? Created in 2003 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Immigration and Customs Enforcementt, ICE) enjoys the unconditional support of the Trump administration.
The agency, spearhead of the mass expulsion campaign promised by the American president, has seen its resources explode since the Republican billionaire’s return to power. The major budget bill passed this summer (“One Big Beautiful Bill”) tripled its budget, dedicating a record total of $170 billion to fighting illegal immigration and border security. The agency has just launched a broad campaign to recruit 10,000 “deportation agents” who will join the 20,000 already mobilized in the country.
ICE’s intervention doctrine has also been transformed to allow agents to make larger and larger arrests. “Until now it was mandatory, before arresting someone, to fill out a very specific file that had to be validated by higher ICE authorities. Nowadays it is almost discretionary. If you think that person is an illegal immigrant, you can arrest him,” explains Romuald Sciora, associate researcher at IRIS, director of the United States Political and Geostrategic Observatory, to BFMTV researcher.
Far from wanting to hide his muscular methods, ICE shows them off. Handcuffed man lying on a cart, capture of migrants compared to a Pokémon hunt: detainees are filmed in humiliating positions and exposed on social networks.
Facies verifications
This summer, a federal judge in Los Angeles wanted to limit what immigrant advocacy groups denounce as face checks by prohibiting arrests based on ethnicity or speaking Spanish. But, upon urgent request, the Supreme Court lifted these restrictions in early September. If the debate is returned to the courts to be decided on its merits, the decision by the court dominated by conservative justices was hailed as a “major victory” by the Trump administration.
ICE response areas have also expanded. Already in January, the Ministry of National Security canceled a directive that protected so-called “sensitive” places. From now on, ICE can intervene near hospitals, schools or even churches.
Heavily armed and often masked immigration police officers also hawk in the hallways of immigration courts, ready to arrest immigrants as they leave their hearing before a judge.
In a press release, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), an association that offers legal assistance to foreigners, denounced a deliberate strategy of “evading the judicial system by intimidating people (undocumented immigrants, ed.) into missing their hearings, thus exposing them to deportation proceedings.” The latter are thus “forced to choose between appearing at their hearing and running the risk of being arrested or giving up their right to be heard” before the courts, considers the ILRC.
Target of one million deportees per year
The colossal resources made available to ICE are supposed to allow it to reach Donald Trump’s goal of one million deportations a year. At the end of May, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of the president’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, set the agency a quota of 3,000 daily arrests, compared to 650 during the first five months of 2025.
To crunch the numbers, ICE casts a wide net. If the Trump administration aims to rid the United States of “the worst of the worst foreign criminals,” the statistics show a completely different reality. As of June 29, 71.7% of the 57,861 people then detained by ICE had no criminal record, reports the AP news agency.
“There are many immigrants in the United States whose status has not been regularized but who have lived here for several years, work, are married to Americans… Very often, it is these people who are the target because it is easier to arrest an immigrant who lives like an average American citizen than to pursue a criminal,” underlines researcher Romuald Sciora to BFMTV.
Examples of immigrants caught in ICE networks without incident are disseminated in the American press. In New Orleans, an Iranian woman who came to the United States nearly 50 years ago to flee persecution was arrested in late June while tending her garden.
US authorities also deported a 73-year-old Indian woman who had lived in California for 30 years. According to her lawyer, the septuagenarian spent between 60 and 70 hours detained without a bed, forced to sleep on the floor despite her health problems. In Washington state, two firefighters hired by private companies were arrested while fighting a wildfire…
“Strategy of fear”
“Detaining someone without asking questions, without informing them of their rights, taking them down, etc., could be understandable if the person is suspected of having prepared an attack or of being a murderer. But when the only crime is being illegal in the United States and paying taxes for 25 years, we still wonder if it is not a bit exaggerated. But, indeed, today it is legal,” summarizes Romuald Sciora.
Asylum seekers are also the most affected by this ultra-firm policy: some are detained while their application is being studied. On the contrary, other categories of immigrants, such as those who work in sectors considered essential (agriculture, hospitality, etc.), escape the raids.
“Which shows that we are still essentially in the theater,” says the researcher based in the United States.
The energetic operations of the immigration police gave rise to more or less violent protest movements in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago. These demonstrations served as a pretext for Donald Trump to send the national guard to Democratic lands, a measure perceived as an abuse of power by the American president and challenged in court by the affected states.
For Romuald Sciora, the use of armed force against undocumented immigrants and democratic cities “is part of the same strategy of fear.” “On the one hand, it reassures the Trumpian electoral base, convinced that its president protects the ‘authentic’ America against the urban chaos of the Democratic strongholds. On the other, it paralyzes the opposition, each day a little more paralyzed by this show of force,” he writes in a note published on the Ifri website.
In public opinion, Donald Trump’s immigration policy provokes mixed reactions. If the issue prevailed in his campaign, the latest polls “show a constant downward trend,” notes NBC News. According to a Gallup Institute study published in July, 62% of Americans disapprove of the US president’s immigration policy.
The ICE agency, in particular, divides American society: 73% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of it, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, compared to only 13% of Democrats.
Source: BFM TV
