Americans Increasingly Reject Immigration Police Methods

AFP/APP

Washington: US immigration agents now remind many Americans of the Gestapo — and not just left-wing activists who have taken to the streets to protest violent raids ordered by President Donald Trump.

Avid Trump supporter and podcaster Joe Rogan, whose massive audience heard him repeat Republican talking points during the 2024 election, sparked debate this week by questioning those tactics.

“Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” Rogan asked millions of listeners. “You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people — many of which turn out to be US citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” he added.

A growing number of Americans share that concern. In every national poll, a majority condemned the actions of the immigration officer who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7.

A Quinnipiac survey found that 57 percent of voters disapprove of ICE’s methods, with 94 percent of Democratic voters and 64 percent of independents against them, while Republicans support them at 84 percent. Another poll from Economist/YouGov found that, for the first time, 46 percent of respondents support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), exceeding the 43 percent who oppose its elimination.

‘Swing voter’

“The most useful way to think about Joe Rogan is as America’s most famous swing voter,” left-wing commentator Ben Burgis posted on X this week. Rogan was not the pliant conservative megaphone White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt may have anticipated when she reaffirmed the Trump administration’s hard line and defended the ICE officer’s actions.

ICE agents “are simply trying to enforce the law and the Democratic Party has demeaned these individuals,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday. “They’ve even referred to them as Nazis and as the Gestapo, and that is absolutely leading to the violence we’re seeing in the streets,” she added.

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Beyond differences in policy or polemics, the methods used by masked and sometimes heavily armed federal agents run counter to deeply rooted principles within American political and legal culture, said Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

During chaotic raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis — all Democratic strongholds — Schwinn noted that identity checks and stops that have outraged Rogan are typically only authorized with “reasonable suspicion,” a standard used by law enforcement across the US.

‘Absolute immunity’

When ICE agents demand peaceful protesters produce their papers, or when they target people solely based on perceived ethnicity, “a lot of folks associate that with dictatorial and authoritarian regimes,” Schwinn said. “What is happening with ICE is unprecedented,” he added, citing both the scale of deployment — federal agents now number 22,000 nationwide compared with 10,000 a year ago, according to the Department of Homeland Security — and the protection they appear to enjoy from the White House.

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Senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller said all ICE officers have “federal immunity” to conduct raids, adding that “anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.” Vice President JD Vance echoed this, saying the agent who shot and killed Good in Minnesota “is protected by absolute immunity.”

Legal experts and local officials, including prosecutors, have strongly denounced those views. According to Axios, the Trump administration’s internal polling shows support for immigration enforcement is eroding, even among right-leaning voters. An anonymous senior advisor told the site Friday that the president “wants mass deportations. What he doesn’t want is what people are seeing. He doesn’t like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he’s expressed some discomfort at that.”