Last Friday, June 6, a wave of protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Donald Trump’s immigration policy gained momentum in the streets of Los Angeles and Paramount. ICE agents carried out raids and detained undocumented workers. At least 44 people were violently arrested by masked agents and taken to the ICE federal building in downtown Los Angeles.

These warrantless operations drew criticism for the use of excessive force, potential rights violations, and racial profiling. Most of those arrested were low-income workers; many were not undocumented, nor did they have criminal records. Some were even community leaders. By late afternoon, protests had grown in front of the ICE building, where they were met with violence, sparking even more demonstrations throughout the city.

The Los Angeles police, the FBI, and, since Saturday, 2,000 National Guard soldiers were deployed—without a formal request for help from Governor Gavin Newsom. This is an unprecedented move in the U.S. in the past sixty years. Soon after, the Pentagon announced the deployment of 700 Marines as reinforcement. All this in the name of restoring order and ensuring the continuity of ICE operations.

Despite the scale of the mobilization, media coverage remains limited to presenting ICE merely as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Rarely is there any explanation of what it actually is, who controls it, how it operates, the historical context in which it emerged, or its worldview on who should be watched, detained, or deported.

September 11 Is Still With Us

ICE is one of the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Initially, the DHS’s focus was counterterrorism. But soon, the presence of certain foreign groups began to be framed as a national security issue. The DHS started targeting foreigners, even those with no ties to terrorism. In 2003, ICE was created alongside Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP controls the borders, while ICE operates inside the country.

Since then, ICE has been the subject of numerous allegations of abuse and violations. These intensified during the Obama administration with the “Secure Communities” program launched in 2008. This controversial initiative allowed local police to act as immigration officers, identifying individuals for deportation and handing them over to ICE. ICE gained further notoriety under Trump through the “Zero Tolerance” policy, which led to increased detentions and deportations, including family separations. Now, ICE is back in the headlines due to the conflicts in California.

Republicans and Democrats

While criticism of the Trump administration is common, ICE is not an exclusively Republican creation. Its foundation was a bipartisan effort during George W. Bush’s presidency, with support from Democrats such as Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. DHS, to which ICE belongs, is a permanent federal agency, a structural part of the U.S. government—not a temporary creation or partisan project. Both parties, despite their slightly different rhetoric, support strict and exclusionary immigration policies.

Let’s not forget that Democrats often soften the discourse but maintain hardline practices. During Obama’s presidency, the U.S. reached record numbers of deportations. Kamala Harris, despite her progressive tone, traveled through Latin America during the Biden administration securing agreements to block undesirable foreigners. Repression is a shared endeavor—only the language and political strategy differ.

Smile, your data was stolen!

Seeing images of the conflict in California, one might wonder: how does ICE locate workplaces, workers, and political activists? This brings us to another under-discussed aspect of ICE: its connection to data mining services provided by Palantir Technologies. Initially funded by the CIA in 2003, shortly after 9/11 and the creation of DHS, this Silicon Valley Big Tech company was founded with a nationalist, pro-Western mission: to track potential “threats” to national security. Since then, it has become essential to ICE’s social profiling of undocumented foreigners.

Biometric and personal data—such as location, text messages, and contacts from platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and even SMS—are mined by Palantir and passed on to ICE through multi-million-dollar contracts paid with tax dollars from both documented and undocumented workers in the U.S. This digital infrastructure was reinforced under Obama, radicalized under Trump, and remains active today. Interestingly, the name “Palantir” comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

In that world, the “Palantíri” were magical seeing-stones used to monitor threats, maintain order, and preserve alliances between kingdoms. In this narrative, we—Latin Americans—are the threat to be surveilled by ICE. This is not just about undocumented workers, but about anyone who falls outside the Western identity defined by the U.S. and its allies.

Laboratories of repression, violence, and surveillance

Investigative reports have shown that this agency maintains close ties with the Israeli military, reflecting deep connections between DHS and Zionism, which employs advanced technology for the extermination of Palestinians in Palestine. Big Techs such as Palantir, as well as major U.S. military contractors (Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and RTX) and Israeli firms (such as Elbit Systems), are directly involved in conflict zones and border control. They are, in effect, open-air laboratories.

With executives in high government positions or funding electoral campaigns, these companies secure billion-dollar contracts to sell weapons at the Mexican border and in Gaza. They apply weapons and data-mining technologies to repress and dominate entire populations. As Palantir CEO Alex Karp put it: “Hard times mean strong internal finances. Hard times are very good for Palantir.”

This makes it clear that the conflict goes beyond immigration. It is a sadistic racial and class struggle. While it is too early to predict the impact that the California protests will have on U.S. social and labor policies, one thing is certain: they reflect a wave of dissatisfaction. This discontent comes from workers—documented or not—mostly in low-paid jobs with minimal social protection.

It is also a dissatisfaction with a world plunged into a crisis carefully engineered since 2008. A crisis that, on one hand, made shadowy Silicon Valley companies and the U.S. arms industry fabulously wealthy, and on the other, imposed austerity as the only “solution” for historically marginalized populations. The discourse of terror has become an efficient policy of control and extermination.

_{*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva.}