ICE is using their enforcement tactics against loved ones, fathers who have lived in this country for decades, mothers who brought their children to the country when they were only infants, and teenagers who have never known another home other than the United States. ICE is going after even NATIVE Americans who are going to the bus stop, the actual people who were "HERE" first and asylum seekers who have fled violence and destruction are finding detention cells to be held in, instead of a place of peace that is supposed to help others. The system in which ICE operates is predatory and heartbreaking. It is always important to remember what this system is doing to people and show the negative impact that it has on human beings.

This toolkit's purpose is to educate you (the reader) on the current state of ICE. In today's society, it is hard to grasp and learn about topics fully with understanding when every news source is saying something different. The hope is that this toolkit is able to streamline some of the news and correctly educate you about the immigration system that you are hearing about every single day. More specifically, the enforcement agency behind immigration. That agency is ICE.

The United States government will tell you that ICE exists to protect public safety by securing the border and enforcing the law. They will tell you that they are justified in every single action they take against another human being. They will tell you to shield your mind from the atrocities that your eyes see ICE commit. They will lie to you and try to convince you of a false narrative in order to receive your support to help them continue their crime. What the government will never tell you is that ICE is built on a foundation of racial terror and is operating through a system that is desinged to exclude, exploit, and imprison people of color. This toolkit is designed to be a documentation of the realities behind what ICE does. As you read through the sections and articles, you will find the legal frameworks that make ICE possible, the human beings that ICE targets, the crimes ICE commits, and what is happening across the country on the streets and within the detention centers.

Ice did not always exist. It was officially created 20 years ago in the aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. To fully understand what ICE does today, it is important to understand why it was built and who it was always meant to target. The agency did not just appear out of nowhere, it is the product of more than 250 years of deliberate racialized immigration enforcement.

In the beginning of the country's independence, for the most part, the United States did not have any federal immigration law at all. Anyone who wanted to come to the United States could enter. It was a free country that anyone around the world could come to in hopes of starting a new life...

Or at least that is what many people within the United States are taught and told at a very young age. From the very beginning, marginalized communities were discriminated against in the United States. Indigenous people and tribes were driven out of their homes, their land, and were killed, exploited, and made to suffer by the white colonizers. A genocide was committed against Indigenous people who were actually native to the land all to free up the land for the white colonizers. As it is known in the United States, the US citizens then began enslaving Africans, which cemented the foundation on how the United States would be continued to be shaped today. The US is built upon racialized frameworks designed to dehumanize and control non-white communities. The inspiration from slavery are tactics that were used then are still used today. For example, innocent people are detained by ICE and put into detention camps to do slave labor. Slavery is still prevalent in the United States and the only thing that changed from the beginning our country to now is the way that the white supremacists carry it out.

There has always been federal frameworks in place that promote exclusivity, discrimination, and racism. For example, in 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law. This was another form of racism that would then become federal law. During the California Gold Rush and building of the Transcontinental Railroad, corporations imported massive numbers Chinese people. They paid them cheaply and treated them terribly. Since this is around 20 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the big companies and racists with power had to think of other ways to still basically have some sort of "cheap labor" aka slavery. The economy then crashed in the 1870s and it was of course blamed on the Chinese people. With white americans weaponizing xenophobia, the act was passed which specifically put a 10 year ban on Chinese people moving to the United States. This act set major precedent on the federal government deciding what made people "American." It was even renewed in 1892 and was not repealed until 1943 during World War 2. This blueprint is still in place today for how people how searched, detained, thrown in detention centers, and deported. First Indigenous people were hunted and expelled, then Africans were kidnapped, hunted, expelled, and exploited, Chinese were hunted, expelled, and exploited, and the list goes on and on.

After World War I, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act was passed. This introduced the National Origins formula which establised quota systems on who can enter and gain citizenship in the country. It was highly restrictive and provided a pathway for white european immigrants, but restricted against nearly all asians, arabs, africans, and anyone else who had the desire to move to the United States for whatever reason they had, whether it be for safety, or to start anew. This act also created the U.S. border patrol apparatus that we still see today.

The racism and exploitation did stop there though. During World War II, there was a massive labor shortage in the United States, so the Bracero program was created. Essentially, this program brought hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers into the United States to work and live. The United States stayed functional because of Mexico and Mexicans. Then the war ended. Once the war ended, later in 1954, Operation W***ack was installed to expel Mexican people. The same forces that turned to Mexicans for help, then just turned on them as soon as they could and detained them, put them detention camps, and deported them. This was done by U.S. Border Patrol. Possibly over 1 million people were deported from this program. Many were citizens. Many were killed. Border Patrol did not care. It did not matter what your legal status was or why you came to the United States. All that mattered really, is that you were Mexican. This made someone a target. As a great mind says, "everything old is now new again." President Trump praises this act and it what is happening currently every single day to people who are Latino. Murder, deportion, detention centers, abuse, and harsh treatment to Mexicans continues and it is going to keep continuing as long as ICE operates the way have always been.

Next, the further criminalization of immigrants occurred. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 criminalized undocumented immigrants, expanded deportations, put restrictions on becoming a citizen, and created mandatory detention which further built the infrastructure for mass incarceration. Additionally the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, restricted habeas corpus, which made it extremely difficult for people in detention to challenge whether their detention was lawful. All in all, this means more people, who are from marginalized communities, are stuck in detention camps, being exploited and abused.

Now in the present day, ICE and CBP are targeting anyone and everyone that is non-white. They are in the workplace, homes, schools, courts, parks, and spaces that are supposed to be safe. ICE is receiving billions of dollars in funding, even being the most funded "law" enforcement agency in U.S. history. The history proves that this country was always acting discriminatory and installing practices to exploit and expel anyone who is seen as "others."

These are all different ways of racialized control. When there is racialized control, that control is used to incarcerate others. This leads to mass incarceration against marginalized communities. When they are incarcerated, they are then used as slaves. The system of racialized abuse is cyclical and never went away. It just changed its face. From slavery, to "Manifest Destiny", to Jim Crow, to "The War on Drugs", to immigration enforcement. It is all ways for the people in power to surpress and control the non-white communities. Currently, in modern times, the driving mechanism for control into slavery is mass incarceration.

There can never be enough words and evidence to show how deeply rooted this problem is in the United States. Especially with black americans. Since the beginning of this nation, they have been enslaved, murdered, lynched, beaten, abused, controlled, and insert any negative adjective and it has happened from white supremacists to black people in the United States. They have been consistently targeted, convicted, and put into prison. All to exploit them for their labor and treat them as slaves. Slavery still is legal in the United States, just has to be in prison. That is why the majority of people in prison are non-whites. More specifically, it is people who are black. One paragraph simply does not give this topic justice and for more information about this topic, please read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

This treatment extends to not just prisons, but also immigration camps as well. The whole immigration process is entirely difficult and is created to entrap and convict people who are coming to this country and who are in this country. To get an employment visa, it is extremely hard and it is backlogged. Receiving a green card is even more difficult. Many have no legal pathway to get citizenship, or visa support, so they are stuck with their status. Application fees are extremely expensive and many people are forced to work without authorization because the process is too difficult to access. This creates a system that ensures marginalized peoples can never fully legalize, can always be deportable, and can always be exploited. All of these are reasons that ICE is using to detain and put people in detention camps. At these camps, they are being used for slave labor and treated inhumanely. The numbers are people detained is way up and this is because the current administration wants ICE to target non-white people. On top of this all, the largest source of unauthorized immigration is people overstaying their visas. Nothing criminal in any manner. Overstaying your visa gives no reason to be treated inhumanely, even killed. These are people who entered legally as a tourist, student, or for work and remained until after their visa expired or while they are in the process of trying to renew their visa during the extremely difficult and long process. Many of whom are from Canada and Europe. The majority of people that ICE is targeting are not from Canada and Europe. They are people from Latin America, or the Caribbean. More specifically, it is brown and black people.

ICE has created quotas that they need to keep beds in the detention camps filled. This is incentivizing mass detention. This structure that they operate under today is all in place because of the centuries of frameworks that has been installed in this country that was discussed previously in the above paragraphs. The frameworks have always and continue to discriminate against marginalized communities, make money off of them, enslave them, and feed the incarceration system with bodies to keep it operating. Bodies, who are people. People who love. People who feel. People who are discriminated against because of the color of their skin. People who the immigration system is designed to incarcerate because white supremacists want to enslave them. People who deserve to be treated as such. Those affected by the centuries of racialized discrimination in this country need to be protected and those who are being targeted today by the flawed incarceration and immigration systems that stem from the racialized discrimination need support. One of the major players enforcing discriminatory practices and fueling the slavery business of mass incarceration is ICE. They are doing this through their tactics against non-white people. Most significantly affected is Latino communities today and is important to know that these tactics did not appear out of nowhere. They have always been engrained in this country and the history proves it. The United States is a white-supremacist nation built upon the enslavement and destruction of others.

Additionally, in immigration proceedings, the people at trial do not have a right to an attorney. This is because immigration proceedings are considered civil cases, which denies the right to an attorney that the sixth amendment guarantees in criminal trials. This is highly unfair and heartbreaking because the stakes are extremely high for people in immigration proceedings. These can result in permanent separation from their families, loss of their home, being deported back to dangerous conditions, and being put in detention for an undisclosed amount of time. Additionally, immigrants who are unrepresented are deported at rates way higher than those with counsel.