From the moment Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began raids within sanctuary cities like Minneapolis, Democrats and their corporate media allies have pushed a single narrative: that ICE is not a legitimate law-enforcement agency, but rather a lawless paramilitary force operating outside political norms and constitutional constraints. Not only is this narrative false, it is also a legitimate threat to the rule of law and constitutional order.
The scale of liberal lies and exaggerations about ICE activities is breathtaking. New York Times op-ed columnists have advanced hyperbolic claims that federal agents are targeting “innocent” immigrants, “disappearing” them into “concentration camps,” and violently suppressing so-called “peaceful” dissent. They have even gone so far as to characterize the shooting of activist Renee Good as an “execution,” despite video evidence that shows Good’s car making contact with ICE Agent Jonathan Ross, who reportedly suffered internal bleeding from the incident.
Unfortunately, this narrative has begun to gain traction beyond activist circles.
Joe Rogan—one of the most influential media figures in the country—has likened ICE to an American version of the Nazi Gestapo, while legacy media outlets continue to emphasize polling in the wake of the Renee Good shooting that suggests more Americans are starting to question ICE tactics.
The truth, of course, is of no concern because this narrative is politically useful to Democrats, in both the short and long term.
In the short term, it serves to energize the Democrat Party base ahead of midterm elections. By framing immigration enforcement itself as immoral and illegitimate, Democrats hope to mobilize single-issue voters to the polls in November and thereby impede the second half of President Donald Trump’s term.
In the long term, this narrative builds momentum toward Democrats’ broader objective of abolishing ICE and ending immigration enforcement altogether. These two pillars are critical components of an electoral strategy which relies on sustained mass migration into the United States.
But liberal claims about ICE’s operations do not withstand even minimal scrutiny.
One of the most fundamental responsibilities of government is immigration enforcement and the defense of national sovereignty. Allowing large populations of illegal aliens to live, work, commit crimes, and yes, even vote within the borders of the United States would be an abdication of that duty.
While Democrats claim that ICE is targeting innocent civilians, the data says otherwise. 47 percent of all ICE detainees have had criminal charges beyond entering the U.S. illegally or overstaying their visas, with a total of 20,000 criminal aliens added to the DHS “Worst of the Worst” website.
Just days before Ilhan Omar made her assertion that ICE had not “been able to produce any evidence that they are finding people who are undocumented who have committed crimes,” ICE provided Fox News with a detailed list of violent criminal illegal aliens arrested during expanded operations in Minnesota. Among them were multiple convicted child rapists and ten convicted murderers, many of whom had been under final deportation orders for years but remained at large due, in part, to Minnesota’s sanctuary policies that impeded federal immigration enforcement.
These facts received little attention from legacy media or prominent new-media figures, reinforcing a familiar pattern in which emotionally charged narratives crowd out inconvenient evidence.
Within this environment, activist organizations such as ICE Watch have found fertile ground, deliberately inserting themselves into enforcement operations to provoke confrontation and generate emotionally charged social media content. Meanwhile, liberal media outlets like MS NOW encourage citizens to “flood the public sphere with real footage” of ICE operations.
Activists can then either omit context or reframe events to show ICE encounters in the worst possible light, or even amplify stories that turn out to be complete hoaxes.
In the digital age, political power is increasingly exercised not through formal institutions alone, but through the shaping of narratives that influence public perception and policy outcomes.
Social media platforms enable coordinated networks to amplify selective imagery and emotionally resonant framing, often described as “empathy triggers,” that shape how deportations and immigration enforcement are understood and judged, regardless of the underlying facts.
The convergence of social media platforms, activist networks, and legacy media has therefore become a powerful force in shaping domestic policy debates, often determining not just which policies are pursued, but whether existing laws, such as those surrounding immigration, are treated as legitimate at all.
Recent polling around ICE operations being seen as “too tough” reflects the success of leftist activist networks like ICE Watch. However, the long-term political implications of these narratives extend well beyond a single election cycle – the implications of which become clearer when demographics are considered.
Latino immigrant voters and their U.S.-born children constitute the largest immigrant-origin population in the United States. Given the scale of recent migration across the southern border during the Biden administration, nearly 11 million recorded border encounters over four years, it is unsurprising that ICE enforcement activity has disproportionately involved this population.
This is also an ethnic group that has historically voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Despite recent efforts to argue that this reality is overstated – often by highlighting Republican gains among Hispanic men in specific elections – the broader data tells a different story.
In 2024, Hispanic voters favored Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by a margin of 62 percent to 37 percent.
In 2020, Latino voters backed Joe Biden over Donald Trump roughly two to one, casting 16.6 million votes – an increase of more than 30 percent over 2016.
In 2012, a survey of Latinos who were not yet eligible to vote found that 31 percent identified as Democrats, compared to just four percent who identified as Republicans.
These dynamics held true in the 2012 presidential election, when Latino voters supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney 71 percent to 27 percent.
If immigration levels are permitted to rise unchecked, voting blocs centered around identity will increasingly shape American politics. The electoral consequences of this will be even more difficult to reverse if Democrats succeed in abolishing ICE while advancing policies such as expanded pathways to citizenship, as well as increased work permits and refugee/asylum admissions.
These policies, combined with the current understanding of birthright citizenship, would perhaps permanently shift American politics to the left – which is why Democrats are so desperate to resort to any means necessary to demonize ICE and immigration enforcement.
The stakes of this debate became explicit following the violent riots in Minneapolis after the shooting of Renee Good, when Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared that “It’s important for there to be VERY STRONG RESISTANCE” to ICE. Other blue-city officials have even threatened to criminally charge ICE agents for doing their job.
“Resistance to ICE” means resistance to immigration enforcement, and resistance to immigration enforcement is, at its core, a rejection of U.S. sovereignty. Those who support immigration enforcement believe that America is a sovereign nation with the right and obligation to enforce its borders and immigration laws, while those who oppose immigration enforcement do not believe those things.
The question, then, is not whether ICE should exist, but whether the United States itself should. Because a nation that refuses to protect its borders and deport those who have no right to be here is no nation at all.
Adam Johnston is a writer and Senior Contributor to The Federalist, whose work has also been featured in The Blaze, and the Daily Caller. He is also the creator of the Substack publication “Conquest Theory,” where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @adamkjohnston.
