ICE Explained- What Media Wont Tell You

We are a nation of immigrants. That has always been part of the American story. More than 12 million people passed through Ellis Island alone between 1892 and 1954. They came from Italy, Ireland, Germany, and dozens of other places. Most arrived with little money and limited English but came with a willingness to work. My own family followed that path. My father immigrated from Germany in the 1950s and my mother came from Poland in the 1970s. Like millions before them they weren't looking to change America. They wanted to become part of it. They believed in the opportunities this country offered. The freedom to build a life, raise a family, and pursue success in ways that many immigrants felt simply weren't possible back home. But history showed something else too. Every nation that survives draws a line somewhere. Immigration has always existed alongside borders, laws, and enforcement. Even at Ellis Island people were screened, questioned, and sometimes turned away. Because a nation without borders eventually stops being a nation at all. And that tension between welcoming newcomers and protecting sovereignty has shaped American policy for more than a century. The MAGA Republican supported invasion of Portland and Chicago and LA and Washington DC is not making us any safer. Instead it is putting our people in danger. This is an attack on neighborhoods, on lawful residents, on U.S. citizens. That's not preventing crime as Donald Trump claims. That's threatening public safety. Today that tension has a name most Americans recognize. ICE. Immigration Customs Enforcement. And depending who you ask it's either a necessary safeguard or a symbol of everything broken in the immigration debate. So how did we get here? If roughly 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island over more than six decades and roughly 12 million migrating encounters were recorded at the southern border during the Biden years alone, what does that tell us about how immigration today compares to the immigration America experienced a century ago? And while immigration has always involved risk, today's scale raises a different kind of question. High-profile tragedies like the killings of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, Lakin Riley in Georgia, and Rachel Moore in Maryland have kept immigration enforcement in the national spotlight. Each case involves suspects who entered the country illegally and the rise of transnational criminal groups like Venezuela's Tren de Uruguay, now identified by federal agencies in multiple U.S. cities, underscores that border policy isn't only an economic or humanitarian issue. It's also a public safety issue. No country actively seeks more crime especially from individuals who entered unlawfully. So if immigration enforcement once operated quietly in the background, why has it become one of the most emotionally charged issues in modern America? And what happens when enforcement itself becomes a controversy? Let's try to find out. Hello, I'm Mike Joberg, Marine Corps veteran and filmmaker and we will try to answer these questions on today's episode of Forgotten History. The beginning of the toughest 26 days in Marine Corps history. With confidence. The 36th president of the United States died this afternoon. Long before cable news arguments or social media outrage, the United States was already trying to answer the same question we're still asking today. How do you remain a nation of immigrants while still controlling the ones who come in and whether they stay? Ellis Island is often remembered as an open door but in reality it was more like a filter. At its busiest times inspectors processed thousands of immigrants a day but not everyone got in. Roughly two percent were denied. That sounds small until you realize that meant hundreds of thousands of people were turned away for illness, criminal history, financial concerns, or political reasons. And Ellis Island was only one piece of a larger system. The federal government had already started regulating immigration decades earlier. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first major federal law restricting immigration based on nationality. Chinese laborers often accepted lower wages and tougher working conditions. Employers liked that because it reduced costs. White laborers, especially in the west, saw it as wage suppression. That economic tension was real, not imagined. Then the Immigration Act of 1917 added literacy tests and expanded medical screening. The laws reflected growing concerns about public health, mental fitness, and assimilation. Supporters saw it as necessary regulation while critics argued it unfairly targeted poorer and non-western immigrants. Those policies were controversial then just like immigration policy is controversial now. But they show something important. America has always balanced openness with control. Border enforcement evolved for the same reason. In 1924 the United States formally created the Border Patrol. At the time, illegal crossings were already happening, especially along the southern border, often tied to labor demand in agriculture, railroads, and construction. Prohibition added another layer with alcohol trafficking increasing cross-border enforcement challenges. Interior enforcement also existed long before ICE. Deportations were happening in the earliest 20th century, sometimes in large numbers during economic downturns when political pressure rose to prioritize American jobs. That cycle, economic stress followed by immigration enforcement debate, has repeated multiple times in U.S. history. By the late 20th century, immigration enforcement responsibilities were spread across multiple federal agencies. Customs focused on goods and contraband, immigration authorities handled visas, deportations, and legal status enforcement. Investigations into trafficking, document fraud, and cross-border crime often overlapped. Then September 11th happened and immigration enforcement became a national security issue. That shift is what ultimately led to the creation of ICE. 19 terrorists responsible for 9-11 entered the United States legally, mostly on temporary visas. Several overstayed. Some moved around the country without triggering coordinated federal tracking. Investigations after the attacks exposed a fragmented system. Immigration enforcement, customs enforcement, and internal security responsibilities were spread across multiple agencies that did not always share information effectively. In 2003, the federal government reorganized much of its security infrastructure under a new umbrella, the Department of Homeland Security. That restructuring created Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. The goal was Interior Immigration Enforcement, human trafficking investigations, and national security concerns were brought together under one agency. Supporters saw the agency as necessary modernization after 9-11. Critics worried about expanded federal enforcement powers and potential overreach. That debate began almost immediately and has never really stopped. But regardless of where someone lands politically, one fact is clear, ICE did not appear out of nowhere. It was created in response to a specific moment when immigration enforcement, national security, and public safety became tightly linked in the American political conversation. And that connection between enforcement, politics, and public perception is what brings us to the Sanctuary Cities and the growing strain between federal immigration law and local government priorities. Supporters of Sanctuary City policies say local police should focus on crime, not immigration status, so immigrant communities would feel safer reporting violence without fear of deportation. Over time, those informal practices evolved into formal policies. Some cities limited cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Others restricted how much local authorities could ask about immigration status or share information with federal agencies. This created enforcement gaps, especially when individuals already in custody were not transferred to federal authorities. But the conversation intensified dramatically when federal border policy itself began shifting in 2021, changing not just how immigration was enforced at the border, but how cities and states responded internally. When President Biden took office, several Trump-era immigration measures were stopped, including the border wall construction. By that point, roughly 450 miles of barrier had been built at a cost of about $15 billion to taxpayers. Construction largely stopped, leaving unused materials estimated to be worth roughly $350 million. Some of those materials were later auctioned off, in some cases with starting bids as low as a few federal dollars per piece, fueling political controversy about why taxpayer-funded security infrastructure was discarded. The Biden administration emphasized humanitarian processing, asylum claims, and changes to detention practices. Supporters saw this as restoring compassion to immigration policy. That message signaled weaker enforcement and contributed to the unprecedented rising migration numbers. Encounters at the southern border surged to the highest levels ever recorded during this period. Official encounters alone topped 10 million during the Biden presidency, at roughly 2 million estimated gotaways, and you're already past 12 million crossings, before even considering those who were never detected. That surge didn't just affect federal agencies. It placed significant pressure on cities, including many that had long identified as welcoming or sanctuary jurisdictions. That's where the political dynamic started shifting. In the sanctuary city of New York, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, leading one of the country's most immigrant-heavy cities, warned publicly that the migrant influx was straining housing, public services, and city finances. His message wasn't anti-immigrant. It was about capacity, about whether even cities built on immigration could realistically absorb large numbers indefinitely. Not long after Adams publicly started saying New York couldn't handle the migrant surge, he found himself under federal indictment. Authorities insisted the charters were unrelated, but in the political arena, the perception was that speaking out came with consequences. Many saw that moment as a turning point, but nowhere did that broader tension between immigration policy, local leadership, and federal enforcement become more explosive than in Minnesota, where major ICE operations trigger protest, political pushback, and national attention. Allow our children to go back to school. We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody's going to write that children's story about Minnesota. What started as a federal immigration enforcement operation quickly turned into a national flashpoint. ICE agents were conducting arrests tied to immigration violations and criminal investigations, but almost immediately the situation escalated. Protests formed fast. Political leaders weighed in before all the facts were even settled. Media coverage intensified. Social media amplified everything, and suddenly immigration enforcement wasn't just policy anymore. It was confrontation. Federal officials argued that inconsistent cooperation from local authorities made enforcement more difficult. ICE had long complained that when local jurisdictions declined detainers or refused to share custody information, individuals who could be transferred directly to federal custody instead ended up back on the street. The situation was further complicated by ongoing federal investigations into large-scale Somali immigrant fraud cases, totaling over 250 million dollars that had already drawn national attention to the state. Those investigations helped trigger one of the largest ICE enforcement surges in recent history. Whether coincidence or escalation, tensions rose. Supporters of enforcement saw ICE doing exactly what it was created to do, enforcing laws already on the books. Critics saw overreach, but let's start with something simple. When someone dies, it's a tragedy. Every time, no exceptions. Rene Good is dead. Alex Pretty is dead. Families are grieving. Communities are angry, and the full facts in both cases are still being investigated. But there's another reality that rarely gets talked about honestly. Immigration enforcement isn't abstract policy. It's people on the ground, agents doing a job Congress created, in situations that can turn dangerous very fast. Rene Good's vehicle struck an agent before the shots were fired, and when confrontations escalate around law enforcement, the odds of tragedy go up dramatically. The same goes for protests. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right, but showing up armed around federal agents in a volatile situation is not a recipe for calm. It's a recipe for escalation. History shows that over and over, and when political leaders compare federal agents to the Gestapo, warning communities that enforcement could target their grandmothers and pull back local cooperation, tensions rise. Fear rises. Confrontation becomes more likely. That doesn't calm a situation, it inflames it. Peaceful protest is part of America, but confronting armed federal agents in an already volatile situation, escalating rhetoric before facts are known, and turning enforcement into a political battlefield doesn't produce justice. It produces risk, and sometimes, tragically, it produces funerals. Nothing good comes from chaos. Nothing. If we want fewer tragedies, stability has to matter. Facts have to matter, and leadership has to cool tensions, not ignite them. Let us know your thoughts about ICE in the comments below. Thank you for watching Forgotten History. Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any comments or show ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks again.