By Erica De Bruin
As the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have intensified over the past year, politicians and journalists alike have begun referring to ICE as a “paramilitary force.”
Rep. John Mannion, a New York Democrat, called ICE “a personal paramilitary unit of the president.” Journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a book about how American police forces have been militarized, has argued that President Donald Trump was using the force “the way an authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, to carry out his own personal grudges, to inflict pain and violence, and discomfort on people that he sees as his political enemies.” And New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie characterized ICE as a “virtual secret police” and “paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule.”
All this raises a couple of questions: What are paramilitaries? And is ICE one?
Defining paramilitaries
As a government professor who studies policing and state security forces, I believe it’s clear that ICE meets many but not all of the most salient definitions. It’s worth exploring what those are and how the administration’s use of ICE compares with the ways paramilitaries have been deployed in other countries.
The term paramilitary is commonly used in two ways. The first refers to highly militarized police forces, which are an official part of a nation’s security forces. They typically have access to military-grade weaponry and equipment, are highly centralized with a hierarchical command structure, and deploy in large formed units to carry out domestic policing.
These “paramilitary police,” such as the French Gendarmerie, India’s Central Reserve Police Force or Russia’s Internal Troops, are modeled on regular military forces.
The second definition denotes less formal and often more partisan armed groups that operate outside of the state’s regular security sector. Sometimes these groups, as with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, emerge out of community self-defense efforts; in other cases, they are established by the government or receive government support, even though they lack official status. Political scientists also call these groups “pro-government militias” in order to convey both their political orientation in support of the government and less formal status as an irregular force.
AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan
They typically receive less training than regular state forces, if any. How well equipped they are can vary a great deal. Leaders may turn to these informal or unofficial paramilitaries because they are less expensive than regular forces, or because they can help them evade accountability for violent repression.
Many informal paramilitaries are engaged in regime maintenance, meaning they preserve the power of current rulers through repression of political opponents and the broader public. They may share partisan affiliations or ethnic ties with prominent political leaders or the incumbent political party and work in tandem to carry out political goals.
In Haiti, President François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s Tonton Macouts provided a prime example of this second type of paramilitary. After Duvalier survived a coup attempt in 1970, he established the Tonton Macouts as a paramilitary counterweight to the regular military. Initially a ragtag, undisciplined but highly loyal force, it became the central instrument through which the Duvalier regime carried out political repression, surveilling, harassing, detaining, torturing and killing ordinary Haitians.
Is ICE a paramilitary?
The recent references to ICE in the U.S. as a “paramilitary force” are using the term in both senses, viewing the agency as both a militarized police force and tool for repression.
There is no question that ICE fits the definition of a paramilitary police force. It is a police force under the control of the federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, and it is heavily militarized, having adopted the weaponry, organization, operational patterns and cultural markers of the regular military. Some other federal forces, such as Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP, also fit this definition.
The data I have collected on state security forces show that approximately 30% of countries have paramilitary police forces at the federal or national level, while more than 80% have smaller militarized units akin to SWAT teams within otherwise civilian police.
The United States is nearly alone among established democracies in creating a new paramilitary police force in recent decades. Indeed, the creation of ICE in the U.S. following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is one of just four instances I’ve found since 1960 where a democratic country created a new paramilitary police force, the others being Honduras, Brazil and Nigeria.
AP Photo/John Locher
ICE and CBP also have some, though not all, of the characteristics of a paramilitary in the second sense of the term, referring to forces as repressive political agents. These forces are not informal; they are official agents of the state. However, their officers are less professional, receive less oversight and are operating in more overtly political ways than is typical of both regular military forces and local police in the United States.
The lack of professionalism predates the current administration. In 2014, for instance, CBP’s head of internal affairs described the lowering of standards for post-9/11 expansion as leading to the recruitment of thousands of officers “potentially unfit to carry a badge and gun.”
This problem has only been exacerbated by the rapid expansion undertaken by the Trump administration. ICE has added approximately 12,000 new recruits – more than doubling its size in less than a year – while substantially cutting the length of the training they receive.
ICE and CBP are not subject to the same constitutional restrictions that apply to other law enforcement agencies, such as the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure; both have gained exemptions from oversight intended to hold officers accountable for excessive force. CBP regulations, for instance, allow it to search and seize people’s property without a warrant or the “probable cause” requirement imposed on other forces within 100 miles, or about 161 kilometers, of the border.
In terms of partisan affiliations, Trump has cultivated immigration security forces as political allies, an effort that appears to have been successful. In 2016, the union that represents ICE officers endorsed Trump’s campaign with support from more than 95% of its voting members. Today, ICE recruitment efforts increasingly rely on far-right messaging to appeal to political supporters.
Both ICE and CBP have been deployed against political opponents in nonimmigration contexts, including Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, in 2020. They have also gathered data, according to political scientist Elizabeth F. Cohen, to “surveil citizens’ political beliefs and activities – including protest actions they have taken on issues as far afield as gun control – in addition to immigrants’ rights.”
In these ways, ICE and CBP do bear some resemblance to the informal paramilitaries used in many countries to carry out political repression along partisan and ethnic lines, even though they are official agents of the state.
Why this matters
An extensive body of research shows that more militarized forms of policing are associated with higher rates of police violence and rights violations, without reducing crime or improving officer safety.
Studies have also found that more militarized police forces are harder to reform than less-militarized law enforcement agencies. The use of such forces can also create tensions with both the regular military and civilian police, as currently appears to be happening with ICE in Minneapolis.
The ways in which federal immigration forces in the United States resemble informal paramilitaries in other countries – operating with less effective oversight, less competent recruits and increasingly entrenched partisan identity – make all these issues more intractable. Which is why, I believe, many commentators have surfaced the term paramilitary and are using it as a warning.
Erica De Bruin is Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College.
Deirdre says
They will lose.
FYI ICE has been seen in the area, don’t let them bully you, we’re strong together, there’s more of us than there are of them. Vote, protest, boycott, call/email your Reps, donate, sign petitions, stay informed, help your neighbors, and never give up. Don’t let them terrorize you, because that’s the point.
If anyone still thinks this is still about illegal immigrants it’s time to wake up, they’re coming for us all.
If you burn before you tan, if you wear a red hat, if you have a cross around your neck, and you only watch one new station, you’re in danger too. Immigrants and people of color are just the start.
Generations of people have fought and died for this country, so that this would never happen, to defend the constitution, to defend the lives of ALL the people that live in America.
Greg says
All I can reply is laugh my ass off
Deirdre says
Let me rephrase, people that fit that description will suffer too, they will lose democracy too, they may never be targeted per se, but when these crackdowns come they’re not checking for voter registration, they don’t care. The point is to control the whole population.
Everyone will be under their thumbs, and if I’m wrong I would love to laugh along with you, and hear you say I told you so. I pray I’m wrong, but if you look at history, if you look at what ice is doing in American cities now, you’ll know my concerns are not extreme. If you don’t think so, go visit Minneapolis.
Kola says
Easy to curb ICE. Follow the instructions to seek becoming a citizen. Civics 101 was taught in High School.
Deirdre says
Many, many immigrants have, and they’re being deported anyway. Over 1,200 people are missing from alligator Alcatraz, their records have been erased, their families don’t know where they are or if they’re alive or dead.
This is not about immigration! Illegal immigrants have been deported all along, but we didn’t need to build concentration camps and give untrained angry racists military weapons to turn American cities into occupation zones.
When was the last time hundreds of American citizens were blasted with tear gas in their face just for saying something? Maybe that civics class says something about free speech too.
THIS IS NOT JUST ABOUT IMMIGRANTS!
Skibum says
First they came for the immigrants, and U.S. citizens in cities all across American said something… because we know the rest of this poem.
King yemma says
Funny thing is Obama during his time deported more than 3 million illegal immigrants that’s more than what trump has done but back then nobody impeded or stopped federal agents from doing there jobs but because it’s not someone on there side that is doing it people are now upset that is hypocritical and the main stream media is partially to blame by producing propaganda and lies
Skibum says
Funny thing is, that during all the years I was in law enforcement after graduating from the L.A. Sheriff’s Academy as a rookie and working the streets for years in both CA and WA states, then promoting to Sgt. and later to Lt. where I had occasions to oversee joint operations with other agencies that included federal officers from Border Patrol as well as Customs and Immigration agents, it was a completely different universe dealing with federal authorities as opposed to the debacle that is happening with them today.
Funny thing is, that border patrol officers wearing their olive green uniforms with badges and ID name tags regularly came to county jails to pick up people who were arrested with border patrol detainers. They did their jobs professionally, without having to hide their identities with masks or wearing camouflage type BDUs like they were ready for battle against the worst terrorists on the planet.
Funny thing is, that it is and always has been the job of local law enforcement to go out into the streets of cities and counties all across America, dealing with the REAL “worst of the worst” criminals, as opposed to federal law enforcement who’s jobs entail coming afterward to handle those who need to be detained and looked at further to determine if they are in this country illegally, and be deported after going through due process and having deportation orders signed by an immigration judge.
Funny thing is, that local and state law enforcement has always had idiot suspects try to intimidate and/or threaten us with violence or death threats against us personally and even our families, but we have always been able to fulfill our oaths and responsibilities without covering our faces with masks or being anonymous by removing all indications of ID or even what agency we represented.
Funny thing is, both local and state law enforcement do their jobs in accordance with individual state’s and federal laws as well as established case law and the legal constraints outlined within the Bill of Rights, without ignoring and violating court orders or acting like 3rd world, dictator led brutal military forces.
Funny thing is, all of the undocumented immigrants who have been investigated or picked up and held for federal officials in the past, and all of those who have been legally deported by not only the prior Obama administration but all other presidents, were accomplished without having thousands of masked, unidentified, poorly trained, undisciplined bozos in unmarked cars surging into American cities and neighborhoods, yanking suspected undocumented immigrants including U.S. citizens out of their cars because they “look like” they might be immigrants, shooting people in the head with pepperball guns, staking out schools, Home Depots and even federal immigration courts where they are pouncing on immigrants who are following the law and appearing for their scheduled immigration hearings, stopping suspected undocumented immigrants who are driving for no other reason than the driver’s dark skin color, only to find they are off-duty police officers who are U.S. citizens, or killing U.S. citizens in the streets who are protesting the brutality of federal agents while engaged in the constitutionally protected right to peacefully protest.
Funny thing is, nobody including local and state law enforcement had to even worry about trying to impede or stop federal immigration enforcement to the extent that we are seeing today, only because it was largely done without trampling all over people’s rights and suspected undocumented immigrants were given their constitutionally required DUE PROCESS rights, whether or not they were citizens of the U.S.
If you support the convicted felon in the WH’s current immigration surge of thousands of masked federal agents into American cities, and the unconstitutional, brutal tactics and treatment of both U.S. citizens and immigrants alike that we are seeing play out on national TV nearly every day, that doesn’t make you a “patriot”, just a pitiful maga sheeple like many others who show the rest of us you lack compassion, you lack a moral compass, and that the unethical behavior of these federal agents would even be tolerated by you against your own family and friends because anything the convicted felon prez orders, you are apparently OK with… and that, my friend, only proves you to be as despicable an individual as him. I feel sorry for you.
Smitty says
Funny thing is. I agree. But really it’s not funny that the current administration has to go to such un American tactics in order to look as if they were doing the right thing when there were already tactics in place to accomplish the job without trampling on the rights of everyone. Under our constitution everyone within the borders of the United States is entitled to the same rights regardless.
Speak up America. don’t let 250 years of freedom be the end of us.
Pierre Tristam says
Smitty? The Smitty?
Smitty says
Some people who know me would say yes. However there are many of us Smitty’s I’m proud to be one of them.
King yemma says
My perspective is based on evidence and facts while your’s seems to be based on emotions and feelings witch is strange people keep using the words like natzis and fascist but if you seen live streams from places like minisota or origon then you would see the left deploying those very tactics wether it be through violence or them trying to silence someone through means of horns or music who have differing opinions and there using apps to get in the way of federal agents that is a crime by the way there tailing doxing ice agents strange you don’t see the right do that
kennan says
I have always been one to firmly base my opinions on facts, and facts alone. know your history! For if you don’t…. You will repeat it. We are good at repeating history. NAZIS and FASCISTS are very appropriate terms when it comes to this adminastration.
Deirdre says
Julia Elizabeth
ICE was created in 2003 after 9/11, so they were a legitimate organization for 22 years that were not political and didn’t work for anyone other than the American people.
The people that have been hired as ICE agents under Trump are often criminals, massive numbers of white supremacists, almost entirely right wing extremists, and until a year ago did not attack American citizens, that’s the difference.
This is Trump’s own paramilitary force, no matter what you call them, they’re here to control the population for a fascist takeover.
That’s why people are freaking out, prior to Trump, ICE did not kill people, teargas thousands at a time, build concentration camps, and try to end American citizens right to free speech.
Sherry says
@king. . . whatever. . . Please keep up! We’ve already pointed out over and over again that FOX BS posts comparing President Obama’s deportation practices to trump’s violent “murdering” ones, is just that. . . complete BS. Please do complete research and post “credible FACTS only” beyond FOX!
King yemma says
I don’t watch fox or any main stream media there biased on both sides pushing there own narratives and agendas I watch live streams of the protests
BillC says
Funny thing is that ICE is supposed to be arresting the “worst of the worst” but they have become the murderers, terrorists, assault and battery thugs, masked kidnappers, armed home invaders, worse than violent gang members because they have “absolute immunity”- the pinnacle of worst of the worst.