It’s time to abolish ICE | Amy Fischer

ICE must be abolished.

That’s the conclusion we at Amnesty International have reached after documenting the chilling pattern of human rights violations across the US during immigration enforcement operations.

ICE’s record of violating human rights has been documented for more than two decades, but our latest findings show that the abuses go well beyond a series of incidents. Instead, under the Trump administration, there is a clear pattern that has reached a new and dangerous scale.

In large-scale immigration enforcement operations in Chicago, Minneapolis-St Paul, New Orleans and Washington DC, we documented federal agents repeatedly racially profiling and arbitrarily detaining people based on their perceived race. Agents also targeted workplaces and neighborhoods that they associated with Black and brown immigrant communities. I spoke with dozens of people – including Indigenous people, Black and brown US citizens, and people with legal immigration status who were also racially profiled, stopped and arbitrarily detained.

In all of the cities, people told me about federal officers using intimidation and unlawful force, including lethal force, against people they were attempting to detain, as well as community members observing or defending their neighbors. Agents broke down doors with guns drawn, smashed vehicle windows without justification and threw people to the ground. They used teargas and pepper spray against protesters and observers in public places, often impacting children and the surrounding neighborhoods. They also used facial recognition technology, drones and helicopters to unlawfully surveil people and intimidate them at the same time. As a Washington DC resident, I remember the helicopters shaking the windows of my home.

We documented abuses inside detention facilities as well. I heard harrowing stories from people who were held for prolonged periods in overcrowded and unsanitary facilities not designed for long-term detention, with minimal food, no access to healthcare, and severely restricted access to lawyers. We have concluded that these conditions constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and, in some circumstances, may amount to torture. We also documented unlawful incommunicado detention and possible acts of enforced disappearance, including cases in which families and lawyers could not locate people in ICE custody. I listened to panicked family members desperately seeking their loved ones who had been snatched by masked men in their communities, without a trace and no way to locate them.

The significance of our findings is not simply the brutality of individual incidents. It is their consistency. These violations were committed across four cities, involving different communities, operations and agents, yet they were strikingly similar. They are characteristic of the Trump administration’s cruel mass detention and deportation machine, including an immigration enforcement system in which safeguards have been weakened, oversight dismantled and accountability having become nothing more than a buzzword.

When a pattern of human rights violations is so undeniably occurring and completely embedded within an institution, for decades, and with pervasive impunity, the only solution is to start over. That’s why we are calling for ICE to be abolished.

The Trump administration’s deliberately cruel and racist practices have left entire communities across the US living in fear. Families are being torn apart. My friends are being deported. People are afraid to leave home to go to work, take their children to school or seek medical care.

The United States has an obligation to respect and protect the human rights of all of us. Immigration enforcement does not exempt any government from that responsibility. Yet the Trump administration has turned the country’s immigration enforcement system into a monster which repeatedly violates people’s rights.

ICE is not an inevitable feature of the US government. It was created in the aftermath of 9/11 to turn immigration into a national security issue, and has been problematic since.

However, the scale and horror that we have witnessed since January 2025, fueled by billions of new dollars and persistent impunity, has reached new levels. It has become clear that no amount of defunding, training or disciplinary measures will be enough. The extent and scale of the abuses and failures we documented lead to only one possible road to justice: ICE must be abolished.

But we can’t stop there. A future without ICE is not the end of the work. It’s a threshold step toward building an immigration system that complies with international human rights law and standards, centers family unity and compassion, and does not rely on cruelty and fear.

In fact, across the four cities we investigated, communities have refused to accept cruelty and fear as inevitable. People have built rapid-response networks and hotlines. They walk neighbors to school and work. They provide food, financial assistance, legal support and medical care. They document abuses. They support families who have been torn apart. They protect one another. Their solidarity shows us what communities can do when people refuse to abandon one another.

We don’t have to look farther than these communities to know that we can create a future where all of us are cared for, ICE agents don’t have free rein to terrorize our communities, where government power is subject to accountability, and where every person can enjoy their human rights.

It is past time to build an immigration system grounded in human rights and human dignity. It starts by abolishing ICE.