ICE Agents Continue to Get Charged With Sexual Assault, Abuse, and Bribery
ICE wants you to focus on the mugshots of immigrants.
What happens, though, when we look at the mug shots of ICE agents?
Since 2020, at least two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors have been charged with crimes based on a search of public records. Already, seventeen have been convicted. Others have yet to face trial. Yet the crimes ranged from domestic violence to sexual assault of detainees to bribery as well as corruption.
This is happening as ICE has more than doubled in size to 22,000 employees in less than a year, on top of a $75 billion fiscal windfall from new congressional funding.
Among the cases:
A 20-year ICE veteran and field supervisor in Cincinnati was jailed after being accused of repeatedly abusing and attempting to strangle his girlfriend. A judge described him as “volatile and violent.”
An ICE contractor in Louisiana admitted to sexually abusing a detainee in custody for over five months.
A deportation officer in Houston was indicted for allegedly accepting cash bribes to remove immigration detainers.
An ICE supervisor in New York was charged with providing confidential immigration information in exchange for gifts.
Two ICE investigators in Utah were sentenced to prison for stealing synthetic drugs from government custody and reselling them.
Other cases involved agents driving drunk with government firearms in their vehicles, threatening to run deputies’ immigration status during arrests, or assaulting protesters while off-duty.
In one particularly disturbing case, a longtime ICE supervisor was arrested in a sting operation after allegedly arranging to pay for sex with someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl while driving a government vehicle and carrying his official badge and firearm. Prosecutors described it as a “reprehensible” abuse of power.
What makes this especially dangerous is the power imbalance.
ICE agents control whether someone is detained, deported, or separated from their family. They operate in facilities where detainees have limited access to legal counsel. They conduct arrests in public spaces where protest and resistance are increasingly common.
The Associated Press review found repeated instances where ICE employees allegedly exploited that power against detainees, against romantic partners, against protesters, and for personal financial gain.
Meanwhile, ICE continues to brand the people it arrests as “the worst of the worst”… but if we’re going to talk about public safety, accountability has to go both ways.
ICE’s brand has been built on the notion that it stands between the American people and chaos. Power in law enforcement without accountability does not create security; it creates vulnerability.
Where agents are accused of assault, sexual abuse, bribery, exploitation, and the reaction is one of expansion, additional funding, and the need for “absolute immunity,” then we are no longer talking of isolated abuse; we are talking of institutional failings.
When an agency entrusted with enforcing the law is continually accused of violating it, it is no longer optional but imperative that the agency be overseen.
Because the question isn’t whether ICE can detain and deport.
It’s whether ICE should be abolished or not, and the answer is yes.
... And these are just the ones who got CAUGHT!!
I mean. Are we really surprised?