The ICE squad system in American capitalism

ICE agents and bystanders in Minneapolis after the January 07, 2026 shooting of Renée Good

The following is an article published from Nuevo Rumbo, the official publication of the Central Committee of the PCTE, the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain.

The recent murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good and the constant violent raids against the migrant population by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have generated strong indignation and popular protests, especially in Minneapolis (Minnesota).

These events have been the final straw in a prolonged process of state violence, driven primarily during the Trump administration. Although some media outlets and political parties in Spain (such as the PSOE and Sumar) echo the arguments of the US Democratic Party, presenting the current state violence as exclusive to Trumpism , the reality is that violence against the migrant population has been a constant since the creation of ICE in 2003 under George W. Bush, and has continued during the Obama and Biden administrations. In fact, during the 2021-2025 period, the Biden administration increased ICE's budget.

However, the most drastic increase occurred during Donald Trump's presidency, when its budget rose from $8 billion to $30 billion and the number of agents increased from 10,000 to 22,000. This expansion is understood within the framework of the racist and anti-immigrant narrative of the so-called MAGA movement, which centers its discourse on hatred against foreign workers and promotes violence and their systematic persecution. Images of raids against immigrants carried out by paramilitary-style ICE federal forces, traveling in unmarked vehicles, with their faces covered and, often, out of uniform, demonstrate the consolidation of a veritable shock force directed against the working-class population of foreign origin, a force that can be extended to other sectors of the workforce, as shown by the violence perpetrated against anti-racist protesters.

Furthermore, the criminal violence deployed by ICE cannot be explained solely in terms of narrative or as a point of support for the MAGA discourse, even though it has made migrant workers a scapegoat for the problems stemming from inequality in the country. Beyond fueling the reactionary narrative, it is about creating a paramilitary force aligned with the MAGA movement, capable of carrying out terrorist violence that ultimately aims to confront the working class and popular sectors that oppose the capitalist policies of the US government. It could also play a significant role in the confrontation with other political sectors in the US, which in turn express the interests of different blocs of the American bourgeoisie. This possibility exists because its military equipment far exceeds what is necessary for the repression of the civilian population, possessing tactical capabilities for carrying out special operations typical of war zones, as we will see later.

ICE has become known for its opaque practices that grant it impunity. To this end, it has adopted measures such as disabling agents' body cameras and establishing a legal apparatus capable of circumventing any complaint with criminal consequences. Furthermore, it enjoys broad legal tolerance for its excessive actions, including home invasions and the abduction of children. ICE commands the authority to use violence, and therefore knows it can act with impunity. Only in this way can its cold-blooded murders be understood.

The ICE, squadron force

The ICE recruits the most reactionary elements of the MAGA movement from among its aspirants, becoming a veritable squad-like shock force to ultimately discipline popular protest. The resemblance to the Italian Blackshirts and the German Brownshirts is evident. However, one could argue that there is some nuance. In the case of Nazi-fascism, the squad-like genesis initially stemmed from political sectors of radical nationalism located outside bourgeois institutions—although in collusion with the most reactionary elements of the State—later incorporated into bourgeois power as a shock force for monopoly capital. However, in the case of the ICE, its genesis has a more statist character, seeking to create an armed, paramilitary organization loyal to the MAGA movement.

In any case, both in Nazi-fascist squadrism and in the ICE, the objective is the same: the formation of an ideologically aligned force, in this case, with the most reactionary elements of the MAGA movement, which responds to its leadership, since the ICE is an agency dependent on the Department of Homeland Security, currently headed by Kristi Noem, loyal to the MAGA movement.

However, despite state brutality, popular resistance was swift. Solidarity networks based on early warning systems were organized to alert immigrants to the presence of ICE agents, while the recording and documentation of paramilitary actions by the public became widespread. The mobilizations against ICE escalated to the point of organizing a massive day of action and general strike on January 23, called by unions and other social organizations. ICE's response was swift and brutal, cracking down with extreme violence against members of these networks, even resorting to cold-blooded murder, as in the shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, which we discussed earlier.

ICE, an arms business

The other key element of Trump's ICE policy is ensuring the diversion of public funds to arms manufacturers, who reap substantial profits by equipping the agency. ICE is equipped with assault rifles, long guns, and laser sights, as well as Black Hawk tactical assault helicopters, MQ-1 drones, and mine-resistant armored vehicles like the Israeli-made Golan MRAP. This is a lucrative business for both the arms industry and related companies, such as General Atomics. Other companies, like Palantir Technologies, Clearview, IBM, Onix, and BI Technologies, handle digital surveillance to locate deportation targets, perform biometric and facial recognition, analyze iris scans for identification, monitor WhatsApp and Signal chats, and track social media to identify immigrants and potential enemies. Similarly, billions of dollars are allocated to companies operating within detention centers, such as Geogrup and CoreCivic.

ICE, therefore, plays a multifunctional role at various levels. It acts as a cohesive force for the supremacist and racist discourse of Trumpism , facilitates the awarding of lucrative contracts to large American companies, and consolidates a paramilitary force with tactical deployment capabilities, intended to repress the organization of the working class and popular sectors against capitalist domination.

The importance of capitalist investments in Minnesota

The federal government needs to guarantee bourgeois order in Minnesota to secure capitalist investments. Specifically, on January 21, the Senate lifted the restriction on mining in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, near the Duluth mining district, an area rich in metals that the U.S. considers strategic, such as nickel, copper, platinum group metals, and titanium. Furthermore, Minnesota is the largest producer of iron ore and taconite, and it also excels in the agricultural sector and its rail network, playing a key role in securing control of the trade routes connecting Canada and the United States.

The ICE, as a tool of terror of the capitalist class, is financed through public funds produced by the work of the working class, to end up benefiting, as already pointed out, the arms industry and other companies that perform auxiliary functions: border surveillance or digital espionage, among others.

Aggressive foreign policy and internal discipline

Meanwhile, the so-called liberal international order has openly revealed itself as the farce it has always been. It is no longer even necessary to invoke human rights as a pretext for intervening in and invading countries, as happened in the cases of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. On the contrary, the legal architecture of that order has shed the veneer of human rights and is revealed for what it truly is: the most ruthless war between imperialist powers seeking to secure maximum profit for their capitalists. During the Cold War, the USSR acted as a counterweight to the excesses of imperialism; after its demise, following decades of US hegemony and the exacerbation of inter-imperialist contradictions, the liberal order displays its death certificate, unabashedly appealing to imperialist interests in this war of plunder, as demonstrated by Trump's statements regarding Venezuelan oil or his claim to Greenland as a "natural" area of ​​US influence.

The Trump administration's aggressive approach to international relations with its competitors simultaneously necessitates containing the fundamental contradiction between capital and labor domestically. In this regard, ICE serves the interests of the ruling class as a disciplinary instrument against the working class: not only against migrant labor, but also against all workers and popular sectors who dare to confront bourgeois power. Its aggressive foreign policy and repressive domestic policy thus constitute two sides of the same monopoly capitalism, which needs to secure spheres of influence, markets, resource extraction, and capital exports, while keeping the working class subjugated at home.