President Donald Trump has given ICE ever-increasing powers. This has translated into anti-immigration raids that are deeply violent and operating outside any legal framework.

Since the beginning of 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US federal anti-immigration agency, has already killed two people in Minneapolis. First, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, on 7 January. Then 37-year-old Alex Pretti, on 24 January. Both were taking part in demonstrations against the violent raids carried out by federal agents, which have increased exponentially since Donald Trump returned to the presidency of the United States in January 2025.

From home break-ins to arbitrary street detentions, shootings, killings and deportations, ICE has in the space of just a few months become a central protagonist of American domestic affairs. Praised by the Trump administration, which has repeatedly spread false information to justify its agents' violent actions. Feared by the American public, which is mobilising to collectively resist its brutality.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is a US federal agency established in 2002 under the Homeland Security Act. It was the period following the 11 September 2001 attack in New York, which had given rise to what became known as the "war on terror" under the Bush administration — marked by military interventionism in contexts such as Afghanistan and by heavy investment in the United States' domestic security apparatus.

ICE's mandate from the outset has been to enforce immigration laws, counter crime and combat terrorism. It has done so through three specific bodies: the Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), responsible for the arrest, detention and expulsion of unauthorised immigrants or individuals who violate immigration laws; the Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which combats transnational crime with a focus on human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering and cybercrime; and finally the Office of the Chief Counsel (OCC), which handles deportation proceedings and customs matters.

ICE agents operate primarily within the United States, with some units deployed in foreign countries as well. Border activities have instead been delegated to a kind of sister agency, US Customs and Border Protection.

It has now been 24 years since ICE began operating on US soil. But never before in the past year has the federal agency held so much power and freedom of action.

Since taking office for a second time at the White House on 20 January 2025, President Donald Trump has turned the federal agency into a violent militia used to carry out his aggressive immigration crackdown. Where the annual budget allocated to its operations was normally around nine billion dollars, in 2025 a new multi-year funding package of approximately 75 billion dollars was approved. The agency then launched a major recruitment campaign built on sovereignist slogans and messages of national defence, which resulted in over 200,000 new applications and more than doubled the number of its agents. If at the start of 2025 there were 10,000, there are now around 22,000, with personnel drawn from the police, the military and private security. This process was further facilitated by a drastic reduction in the training period, cut from 13 to eight weeks.

ICE just used a 5-year-old boy as bait, forcing him to knock on his own door so they could arrest his father. Trump, ICE and CBP don't see these families as people, and that's exactly how they're treating them. pic.twitter.com/uNvo5KjHwH

The Trump administration's unconditional support, the budget increase, the expansion of personnel and a series of new legislative directives — granting agents powers that include, among other things, the ability to raid homes without a warrant — have amplified both ICE's authority and the violence of its actions. In the multi-ethnic neighbourhoods of cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Minneapolis, raids by ICE agents have multiplied; they arrive in SUVs bearing no agency markings, heavily armed and masked.

Testimonies and videos collected over recent months have revealed arbitrary racial profiling on the part of agents, who stop people based on the colour of their skin and their accent, tearing down house doors, smashing car windows and dragging people out, including those with disabilities. In some cases the federal agency has laid hands on children, as in the case of a 5-year-old boy used as bait to arrest his father. Reports of violence and abuse by agents have emerged from across the United States, demonstrating that they operate entirely outside any legal framework — conduct that has prompted organisations such as Amnesty International to take a stand against their modus operandi.

ICE's actions have caused several deaths and injuries over the past year. In 2025, 32 people died as a result of ICE street operations or in its detention centres. It was the deadliest year on record in over two decades of the federal agency's existence. Dozens of incidents of agents opening fire on people have also been documented, resulting in an equal number of injuries.

And 2026 has begun in the same vein. On 24 January, 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti was tackled, restrained and killed by several gunshots fired by an ICE agent during a protest against the agency's raids in a Minneapolis neighbourhood. On 7 January, another ICE agent had shot and killed 37-year-old mother of three Renee Nicole Good, who was struck after refusing to step out of her SUV and driving away. On both occasions ICE, in concert with the Trump administration, justified the killings as self-defence: in the first case it claimed Pretti was holding a weapon; in the second, that Good was about to run over the agents, invoking in both instances threats to national security and alleged links to terrorism. Videos of both incidents and information gathered about the two victims have contradicted the US authorities' version of events.

Beyond the shootings, injuries and deaths, ICE's actions over the past year have resulted in a record number of deportations. Through violent arrests and detention in ICE facilities, the Trump administration has expelled 230,000 people, mostly to Latin America — a figure already higher than the total for all four years of the Biden presidency. A further number of people have returned to their home countries voluntarily, a process of self-deportation involving around 50,000 individuals that has been driven by a coercive ICE campaign. In what amounts to an ultimatum, the agency has launched pressure campaigns to push undocumented people to leave before becoming "a target".

Faced with the violence of ICE agents, the public has not stood idly by. Demonstrations have taken place in several US cities to denounce the agents' brutal methods and the immigration crackdown being implemented by the Trump administration. But above all, new forms of collective mobilisation have emerged to resist the federal agency's raids in solidarity.

In Los Angeles, Minneapolis and the other cities targeted by ICE raids, residents have begun organising on social media — using messaging apps such as Signal — to converge wherever agents are deployed. This serves three purposes: to protest against the agents' actions, to warn potential raid targets of ongoing risks, and to bear witness to the brutality of the policing. In the course of recent blitzes, more or less spontaneous marches and road blockades have formed against the arrival of the anti-immigration SUVs. People blew orange whistles or banged drums to make as much noise as possible and spread the word about the raid in progress. Others moved through the streets with smartphones trained on agents to document their actions, both as a deterrent against further violence and to capture evidence of their abuses.

Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were both part of these civic mobilisations: the former was filming an ICE raid, the latter was taking part in a street protest.