The videos are damning.
In one, an ICE agent collapses mid-chase while pursuing a handcuffed suspect who breaks free and escapes to the cheers of bystanders. In another, from Prince George’s County, Maryland, a five-minute drive from our campus, an agent drops his handgun during a street scuffle, then appears to aim it toward onlookers.
These aren’t scenes from a comedy sketch—they’re real incidents that expose serious problems with training, protocol and competence within Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Americans are watching, and they’re conflicted. We recognize immigration as a genuine problem requiring bipartisan solutions, yet we’re increasingly uncomfortable with how enforcement is being carried out. This discomfort isn’t partisan handwringing, but rather, a reflection of a nation grappling with the gap between necessary border security and the protection of civil liberties.
The numbers reveal why immigration dominated the recent election cycle. According to a Republican Policy Committee report, monthly illegal border crossings were higher for the last 3 years of Biden’s term than they ever were during Trump’s presidency. The contrast is stark: in Trump’s final quarter, there were roughly 218,000 encounters — a figure that’s been surpassed every month since.Just nine months into Biden’s presidency, that number jumped 138% to over half a million. By the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, encounters reached 785,422, a 260% increase from the Trump years.
These aren’t abstract statistics. They represent a system overwhelmed, communities strained and a Democratic Party that largely sidestepped the issue, contributing to Trump’s decisive electoral victory.
Yet, public opinion on immigration enforcement reveals nuances that politicians often ignore. Pew Research Center data from January 2026 shows the majority of Americans support maintaining a large military presence at the border and reviewing social media accounts of those seeking entry. But they overwhelmingly oppose the administration’s harsher measures: 79% reject giving immigration priority to those who pay a $1 million fee. While roughly two-thirds oppose suspending asylum applications, oppose mass detention, and pausing visa applications from 75 countries. Americans want immigration reform. They don’t want constitutional violations or humanitarian crises.
ICE’s problems extend far beyond viral videos of botched arrests. The agency recorded its deadliest year since when Trump was elected, with the deaths of Alex Peretti and Renee Good among the infamous casualties.
The circumstances surrounding these deaths reveal the complexity of enforcement gone wrong. Student perspectives at the University of Maryland illustrate how this issue cuts across political lines. Eli Turansky, a right-leaning student, frames the issue bluntly: “impeding on ICE, who are federal agents, is the same as impeding on police officers: it is illegal and dangerous. So in the case of Renee Good, while she doesn’t deserve to die, her actions were dangerous,” he said. “In the case of Alex Peretti, that is just flat out wrong.” His perspective reflects a common view that resisting federal agents carries consequences, yet even he acknowledges the tragedy when outcomes turn deadly.
But Turansky also identifies the root problem: training. When asked about reports of ICE reducing training time to just 8 weeks, he responded, “for such an important issue like this, they should be properly prepared.”
Meirav Solomon, a senior criminology major and registered Democrat, shares this concern from a different angle. “It’s incredibly disturbing and disheartening to see our current administration showing the ineptitude of ICE,” she says. “When it’s given too much power and the training time is so small—their Spanish language training and de-escalation training have been reduced—because to put it simply, they want to deport more people. It’s scary to think they are federal employees and abusing it,” she said. “It’s a scary time, but I’m scared for others in this country.”
It’s a rare point of agreement across the political spectrum: agents wielding federal authority over people’s lives and liberty need comprehensive training, not shortcuts.
Detention conditions that were problematic during the Obama administration have deteriorated further. The American Friends Service Committee reports that ICE’s detention system makes people effectively untraceable, a black hole where due process disappears— almost mirroring what is going on in Salvadorian prisons.
This matters because core constitutional principles are at stake. It is unconstitutional to demand papers from American citizens based on appearance or surname. It is unconstitutional to deport anyone, citizen or not, without due process. These aren’t progressive talking points; they’re bedrock legal protections that safeguard everyone’s liberty in this country.
America was built by immigrants and should remain open to those seeking better lives. But “open to immigration” doesn’t mean “no border enforcement.” The challenge is creating a system that’s simultaneously humane, constitutional and functional.
That means ending unconstitutional demands for papers. It means guaranteeing due process for everyone. It means proper training for ICE agents so they don’t drop weapons in crowds or collapse chasing handcuffed suspects. It means detention facilities that meet basic human rights standards and tracking systems that don’t make people vanish. It means processing asylum claims rather than suspending them wholesale.
Most importantly, it means moving beyond false binaries. We can acknowledge that the Biden administration presided over unprecedented border challenges while criticizing the Trump administration’s policies that violated constitutional norms. We can support robust border security while opposing mass detention without due process. We can demand immigration reform without deploying Holocaust rhetoric that obscures rather than illuminates.
The videos of ICE incompetence should shock us into action, not toward open borders or closed hearts, but toward a system that reflects both our security needs and our constitutional values. That’s the reform Americans across the political spectrum are actually asking for.
