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UNFETTERED AND UNACCOUNTABLE: HOW TRUMP IS BUILDING A VIOLENT,
SHADOWY FEDERAL POLICE FORCE  
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J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam
October 18, 2025
ProPublica
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_ The administration gutted guardrails and offices meant to rein in
abusive actions. Some families say they have no idea where their loved
ones were jailed after immigration raid. _

Federal law enforcement agents led by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement prepare to conduct an arrest in Georgia in February.,
Carlos Barria/Reuters/Redux

 

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through
Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the
city’s emergency response system.

Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of
the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and
force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain
clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to
confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of
the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were
seeing as kidnappings.

“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked
from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van.
It doesn’t say ICE.”

One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go
around without license plates?”

And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”

During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and
the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything
they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban
the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing
complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go
nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled.
There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for
alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to
reliably learn their identities.

Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the
reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do
to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa
Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids
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even more violent arrests in Chicago
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“It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It
worked _there_, so now let me send them _there_,’” Amezcua said.

[People sitting in a large room chanting. One person is holding up a
sign that says “they came peacefully you detained them with
violence.”]

Santa Ana residents chant about ICE raids during a City Council
meeting in June. Credit:Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County
Register/Getty Images

Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s
concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers
operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as
the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from
the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become
an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The
transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain
sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights
guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups
and state governments
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stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx
overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or
out of the country.

And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and
former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents
across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the
administration labels a threat.

One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that
what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the
official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered
investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court
hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing
and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the
country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel.
Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the
streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country,
to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and
human rights abuse.”

The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in
history right now and it’s frightening.”

Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting
conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on
high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of
DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been
withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure
under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices
within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable
for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers,
investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the
public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was
referred to the Justice Department.

The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was
to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed
civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed
deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers.
And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided
an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for
Congress and the public.

The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year
2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical
treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former
staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.

The administration has gutted
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of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a
29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the
right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil
rights enforcement.

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its
annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big
Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four
years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz,
the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has
offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.

“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you
have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official.
“This is very scary.”

Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’
ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s
adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”

“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once
they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping
them from using it against citizens.”

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs,
refuted descriptions of ICE as a secret police force. She called such
comparisons the kind of “smears and demonization” that led to the
recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas
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in which a gunman targeted an ICE transport van and shot three
detained migrants, two of them fatally, before killing himself.

In a written response to ProPublica, McLaughlin dismissed the current
and former national security officials and scholars interviewed by
ProPublica as “far-left champagne socialists” who haven’t seen
ICE enforcement up close.

“If they had,” she wrote, “they would know when our heroic law
enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify
themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect
themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs” and
other criminals.

McLaughlin said the recruiting blitz is not compromising standards.
She wrote that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is ready
for 11,000 new hires by the beginning of next year and that training
has been streamlined and boosted by technology. “Our workforce never
stops learning,” McLaughlin wrote.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson also praised ICE conduct and
accused Democrats of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”

“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal
illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost
professionalism,” Jackson said. “Anyone pointing the finger at law
enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the
bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that
lead to violence.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump pick who fired
nearly the entire civil rights oversight staff, said the move was in
response to CRCL functioning “as internal adversaries that slow down
operations,” according to a DHS spokesperson.

Trump also eliminated the department’s Office of the Citizenship and
Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with flagging
inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of the
apprehended immigrants are held. The office was resurrected after a
lawsuit and court order, though it’s sparsely staffed.

The hobbling of the office comes as the White House embarks on an
aggressive expansion of detention sites with an eye toward repurposing
old jails or building new ones with names that telegraph harsh
conditions: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built
by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the
“Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.

“It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody
anticipated a year ago,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at
Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism. “We
might’ve thought that we were going to see a slide, but I don’t
think anybody anticipated how quickly it would transpire, and now
people at all levels are scrambling to figure out how to push back.”

[First image: People wait in line while an agent in a black mask and
hat leans against a wall. Second image: Masked agents restrain the
arms of a man wearing glasses and a blue shirt. Third image: Two
masked agents wearing hats detain a woman, seen from behind.]

Scenes from the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building’s U.S. Immigration
Court in New York City, where federal agents working for ICE detain
immigrants and asylum-seekers reporting for court
proceedings Credit:Charly Triballeau, Michael M. Santiago and Dominic
Gwinn/Middle East Images via AFP/Getty Images

“Authoritarian Playbook”

Frantz and other scholars who study anti-democratic political systems
in other countries said there are numerous examples in which ICE’s
activities appear cut from an authoritarian playbook. Among them was
the detention of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk
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who was apprehended after co-writing an op-ed for the campus paper
that criticized the school’s response to the war in Gaza. ICE held
her incommunicado for 24 hours and then shuffled her through three
states before jailing her in Louisiana.

“The thing that got me into the topic of ‘maybe ICE is a secret
police force’?” said Lee Morgenbesser, an Australian political
science professor who studies authoritarianism. “It was that
daylight snatching of the Tufts student.”

Morgenbesser was also struck by the high-profile instances of ICE
detaining elected officials who attempted to stand in their way. Among
them, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained
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demanding a judicial warrant from ICE, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was
forcibly removed
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a DHS press conference.

And David Sklansky, a Stanford Law School professor who researches
policing and democracy, said it appears that ICE’s agents are
allowed to operate with complete anonymity. “It’s not just that
people can’t see faces of the officers,” Sklansky said. “The
officers aren’t wearing shoulder insignia or name tags.”

U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee,
recently pointed out that use of masked law enforcement officers had
long been considered anathema to American ideals. In a blistering
ruling against the administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian
protesters, he wrote
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“To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the
despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an
armed masked secret police.” The Trump administration has said it
will appeal that ruling.

[Masked agents stand outside of a detention center surrounded by metal
fences and barbed wire.]

Federal agents stand guard outside an ICE detention facility in
Newark, N.J. The Trump administration authorized the deployment of
National Guard units at immigration facilities, escalating its use of
the military as part of the president’s immigration
crackdown. Credit:Victor J. Blue/The New York Times/Redux

Where the Fallout is Felt

The fallout is being felt in places like Hays County, Texas, not far
from Austin, where ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine children,
during a birthday celebration in the early morning of April 1.

The agency’s only disclosure about the raid in Dripping Springs
describes the operation as part of a yearlong investigation targeting
“members and associates believed to be part of the Venezuelan
transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.”

Six months later, the county’s top elected official told ProPublica
the federal government has ignored his attempts to get answers.

“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where
they took them,” said County Judge Ruben Becerra, a Democrat. “By
definition, that’s a kidnapping.”

In the raid, a Texas trooper secured a search warrant that allowed law
enforcement officers to breach the home, an Airbnb rental on a vast
stretch of land in the Hill Country. Becerra told ProPublica he
believes the suspicion of drugs at the party was a pretense to pull
people out of the house so ICE officers who lacked a warrant could
take them into custody. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not
respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has yet to produce evidence supporting claims
of gang involvement, said Karen Muñoz, a civil rights attorney
helping families track down their relatives who were jailed or
deported. While some court documents are sealed, nothing in
the public record
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the gang affiliation DHS cited as the cause for the birthday party
raid.

“There’s no evidence released at all that any person kidnapped at
that party was a member of any organized criminal group,” Muñoz
said.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, did not respond to questions about
Hays County and other raids where families and attorneys allege a lack
of transparency and due process.

[Four officers wearing tactical vests that label them as police and
ICE stand on steps in front of a door with a Christmas wreath on it.
Christmas lights are wrapped around the railing.]

ICE agents knock on the door of a residence during a multiagency
enforcement operation in Chicago in January. Credit:Christopher
Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In Plain Sight

Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to
envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant
population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local
policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from
school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino,
carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.

Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the
community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many
other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle
of traffic.”

With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are
increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby
Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.

On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a
colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”

The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los
Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately
houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of
Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share
updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the
presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.

Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and
figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward
the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit
“record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into
view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests
encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.

Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem
right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had
out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic
“police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible
insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal
authorities at all.

“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way?
There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t
seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”

Video footage
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Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they
called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the
vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.

“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was
recorded telling the officers.

Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived,
the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and
no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.

Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”

J. David McSwane 

ICE agents knock on the door of a residence during a multiagency
enforcement operation in Chicago in January. Credit:Christopher
Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In Plain Sight

Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to
envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant
population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local
policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from
school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino,
carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.

Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the
community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many
other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle
of traffic.”

With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are
increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby
Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.

On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a
colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”

The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los
Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately
houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of
Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share
updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the
presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.

Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and
figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward
the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit
“record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into
view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests
encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.

Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem
right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had
out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic
“police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible
insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal
authorities at all.

“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way?
There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t
seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”

Video footage
[[link removed]] shows
Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they
called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the
vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.

“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was
recorded telling the officers.

Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived,
the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and
no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.

Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”

_J. David McSwane writes about national issues, including everything
from health care to business to civil rights issues._

_Hannah Allam from Washington, covers national security issues, with a
focus on militant movements and counterterrorism efforts._

 

 

* Police
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* Federal
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* police violence
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* Donald Trump
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