The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created in the shadow of the so-called Global War on Terror that followed the attacks of 11 September 2001.
It became a key pillar of the architecture of repressive surveillance and militarised tactics that emerged during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
ICE itself was specifically designed to pursue „national security threats“ within the United States, granting agents sweeping discretion over who could be deemed to „pose a threat to public safety or national security“.
Since then, it has come to represent a rogue operation, its reputation clouded by harrowing stories of abuse, impunity and a near total lack of oversight.
Its close association with Palantir, a surveillance firm accused of helping generate kill lists for Israel, has also further embedded it within the US military-industrial complex.
Scalawag Magazine described Palantir‘s partnership with ICE as „one of the many links comprising the military-industrial surveillance connections between ICE and Israel Defense Forces“.
These links, it wrote, illustrate the ideological and practical ties between the two bodies, as they work to advance the militarisation of policing through the weaponisation of surveillance technology.
ICE has also participated in several exchanges with the Israeli military, and during the student protests for Gaza, it lifted names from the blacklisting website Canary Mission to identify and arrest protesters.