Abolish ICE, says Amnesty, as report details abuses under Trump

Amnesty International accuses US immigration enforcement of unlawful killings, possible enforced disappearances and detention conditions that may amount to torture. It says the agency should be scrapped.

Human rights NGO Amnesty International released a new comprehensive report on 24 September documenting human rights violations carried out by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since Donald Trump took office on 20 January 2025. The report directly calls for the abolition of the agency.

ICE is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Homeland Security that has been mired in controversy and widely opposed by activists for its often-violent treatment of immigrants and those who support their cause.

The report describes a deliberate mass detention and deportation system, a system that according to Amnesty, is being implemented through a series of laws, directives and practices that have:

· Stripped individuals of regular immigration status.

· Expanded federal agents’ ability to detain people.

· Severely curtailed due process protections.

· Made release from immigration detention increasingly difficult.

· Facilitated the removal of people from the United States, often without due process.

The report, “We Had Whistles, They Had Guns”: Human Rights Violations in U.S. Immigration Enforcement Operations and the Case to Abolish ICE, determines that the Trump administration’s legal framework, operational practices and public rhetoric demonstrate a coherent state policy directed at the mass detention and deportation of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, which is being implemented in deliberately cruel and harmful ways intended to instil fear within migrant, asylum seeker and refugee communities.

The report documents a wide array of rights violations in no uncertain terms, stating that “The administration is implementing a mass detention and deportation system, fuelled by racist, xenophobic and false narratives and white supremacist theories, whose objective is to detain and deport as many racialised migrants, asylum seekers and refugees from the United States as possible”.

The violations themselves range from harassment, racialised discrimination, and unlawful arrest to “cruel, inhumane and degrading detention conditions that may violate the prohibition on torture,” “unlawful use of force, including lethal force, which in some cases may amount to extrajudicial executions,” and “possible acts of enforced disappearance.”

Read the Amnesty International report here.