Stanford University’s 1971 infamous social psychology study observed what people did when they were perceived to have power.  For those not familiar with this groundbreaking experiment, participants were randomly selected to be a prisoner or a guard in a simulated prison.  Though the experiment was slated to last two weeks, it had to be stopped after just six days when the “guards” began engaging in abusive behavior toward the “prisoners.”

So what happens when we have a leader or culture that encourages similar inhumane behavior by empowering the “guards” without repercussion?  We get the same outcome.

But today, this isn’t an experiment.  It’s real life.  And we see it on the streets of America with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  

Full disclosure, twenty years ago, I worked for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (it was known as simply the Office of Investigations then).  Twenty years ago, and sometime thereafter, the agency was about preserving the integrity of the immigration system.  It was about prioritizing the removal of criminals, fighting terrorism, and uncovering fraud and abuse. 

When I was at ICE, I worked on a denaturalization case for a man who impregnated his fifteen-year-old daughter.  The crime occurred before he became a U.S. citizen but it came to light after the fact.  My office worked on removing Marko Boskic, a human rights violator who participated in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.  I also aided the agents who worked on cases to uncover and prosecute perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide living in New England.  These are people who not only don’t belong in this country, they also don’t deserve to live free in the world.

I, and the vast majority of the agents I worked with, cared about the fair administration of our immigration laws.  They weren’t out there kicking down doors to fill a deportation quota.  They treated the people they arrested humanely, even the worst of them.

In one case, our office received an alert of a Lebanese woman who did not have legal status.  Being that this was just a few years post-9/11, ICE agents were quickly knocking on her door.  The agent went to the home of this woman to arrest her and to place her in removal (deportation) proceedings.  But when he got there, he listened to the woman tell him how she had given her money and documents to an individual purporting to be an attorney to file to get her legal status.  That guy took the money and ran, never having filed anything.

The agent still could have arrested her.  But he didn’t.

He brought her to the conference room of our office, and got me, with my experience at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and at the immigration clinic of the International Rescue Committee, to sit down with her and help her file the papers she needed to obtain legal status.  I sat in that conference room for hours with that woman and her whole family going through multiple forms, helping them fill out every question.  We also tracked down the “attorney” to get all her documents back.  She got her green card and appropriately was not deported.

That’s what integrity looks like.  That’s what fairness looks like.  And those were the kind of people I worked with at ICE.  I’d give the agents who worked on this case and the other cases I mentioned above a shoutout here if I didn’t think they may be retaliated against for being decent human beings. 

That doesn’t mean there was never a bad apple in the mix, but as a general rule, bad, illegal, or violent behavior was not tolerated when I was at ICE.  Never would the murder of U.S. citizens, or anyone else for that matter, have been tolerated.  I am confident that justice would have been swift had that occurred under the ICE leadership when I was working there.

I had always been proud of my service to my country, even when that service wasn’t particularly politically popular, but today for me and many others who have and still work for ICE, we’re embarrassed and outraged by what the agency has become. 

I’d be hard pressed to find many similarities with the ICE I knew and the one I am seeing now.  There’s no accountability and many of the agents, particularly the newer ones, are attracted to the agency because of their embellished sense of authority and lax rules, and who behave much like those “guards” in the Stanford prison experiment as we’ve all witnessed playing out on the streets of America. 

The failure is not this administration’s alone.  It is Congress’s failure, too.  They have the power—and the duty—to provide oversight to all agencies within the Executive Branch of our government, including ICE.  Congress has the power to change our immigration laws if they don’t like them.  Congress could mandate that ICE officers wear body cameras.  They could prohibit agents and officers from covering their faces during routine operations.  But these days Congress is about as useful and functional as a rotary phone. 

ICE needs to change. 

We’re at the point now where I’m not sure if the agency is even viable anymore.  We do need some governmental entity to enforce our immigration laws, but the ICE of today just isn’t it.

When I left my job with the United States Capitol Police in 2023, I could have returned to the Department of Homeland Security—I was offered a job—but I didn’t and that was a deliberate choice.