The Briefing:
- Amnesty International is urging Washington to abolish ICE and says it has never before asked any country to dissolve a government agency, based on a 168-page report released Sept. 24.
- Researchers interviewed 154 people in four metro areas and concluded that agents used deadly force against seven people, including three killings that might qualify as extrajudicial executions, and that detention conditions could amount to torture.
- Amnesty wants Congress to rescind ICE money and back the Melt ICE Act, even though roughly $70 billion for ICE and Customs and Border Protection was already approved in June. The White House rejects the report.
Amnesty International is calling on the United States to shut down Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that abuses documented during city-wide enforcement surges point to a flawed institution rather than a handful of rogue officers. The group laid out its case in "We Had Whistles, They Had Guns," a 168-page report released on Thursday, Sept. 24.
A Break From Amnesty's Usual Approach
Amy Fischer, who leads Amnesty's refugee and migrant rights work, said the organization has never before pressed for any country's government agency to be dissolved, MPR News reported. She described the violence and discrimination in the findings as built into how ICE operates, not flaws that better training or revised policies could repair.
Nadia Daar, who heads Amnesty International USA, made the same point in the group's public messaging: "Piecemeal reform is not the way forward."
What Researchers Examined
Between March and June 2026, Amnesty's team interviewed 154 people in the Washington, D.C., region, the Chicago area, New Orleans and the Twin Cities, according to the full report. Those interviewed included people directly affected, family members, lawyers, educators, health workers, faith leaders and elected officials. Amnesty's Evidence Lab also verified 29 videos and three photographs.
The operations under review are the federal takeover in Washington that began in August 2025, Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, Operation Catahoula Crunch in New Orleans, and Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Lethal Force and Disputed Official Accounts
Across those operations, agents used deadly force against seven people, the report says. Three of the cases ended in deaths that Amnesty calls unlawful: Silverio Villegas González in the Chicago area, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The group says those killings might qualify as extrajudicial executions under international law. The remaining four involved a shooting in Chicago, the wounding of a man in Minneapolis and shots fired at two people in Washington.
One of those cases has already reached the courts. The agent who shot Julio Sosa-Celis in north Minneapolis faces federal and state charges for assault and for lying to investigators.
Amnesty also questions the government's explanations. In some instances, accounts from DHS and senior officials were contradicted by video, witnesses or later investigations, and the group found gaps in prompt, independent inquiries into deadly force.
Profiling, Protest Tactics and Surveillance
Amnesty says agents in all four areas chose whom to stop largely by race, skin color, national origin or ethnicity, along with stand-ins such as accent, workplace and neighborhood, and often checked immigration status only after making an arrest. U.S. citizens and people with legal status were among those detained. MPR News highlighted Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen of Somali descent who says agents refused to look at his passport before releasing him hours later.
In Chicago and the Twin Cities, the group documented tear gas, pepper spray and other chemical irritants used on observers, rapid responders and demonstrators. Amnesty says the tactics were aimed at frightening and scattering people, not at stopping an imminent threat, and often came without warning.
The researchers also recorded facial recognition in use in every city, including the Mobile Fortify phone app, on people agents tried to detain as well as on observers and protesters. Amnesty classifies such systems as mass surveillance that violates privacy and equality rights.
Detention Conditions
People arrested during the surges were often taken to intake sites never meant for long stays, including the Broadview processing center outside Chicago, the Whipple federal building in Minnesota and ICE's Washington Field Office in Chantilly, Virginia. Amnesty found detainees held well beyond the agency's own 72-hour ceiling in crowded and unsanitary rooms, with no health care and limited access to lawyers.
The group concludes that this amounted to cruel or degrading treatment, and that prolonged confinement combined with pressure to accept "voluntary" departure could constitute torture. It also documents cases in which ICE would not confirm where someone was being held, which it labels incommunicado detention and possible enforced disappearance.
Why Amnesty Rejects Reform
Amnesty says the violations cannot be pinned only on individual agents, thin training or oversight lapses. Instead, it describes an institution led by officials who encouraged forceful, racially biased enforcement, with agents frequently unidentified, safeguards weakened and misconduct rarely punished. The report ties that pattern to the administration's sweeping detention-and-removal drive.
It also stresses that the problem predates the current White House. Amnesty says similar abuses and a culture of impunity have marked ICE since its creation in 2003, under presidents of both parties.
What Amnesty Wants From Congress
In an open letter to lawmakers, Amnesty urges Congress to stop funding ICE and claw back money the agency already holds, steering it toward community programs. It specifically asks House members to cosponsor the Melt ICE Act (H.R. 7190), which would strip ICE of its power to hold immigrants, cancel existing detention contracts within two years of becoming law and bar the department from signing new ones.
The funding fight is not hypothetical. Amnesty's report notes that another $70 billion was allocated to ICE and CBP in June 2026, on top of a much larger package approved in 2025.
The report's recommendations summary does not name a replacement agency, framing abolition as a step toward an enforcement system that meets international human rights standards. Because Congress created ICE through the Homeland Security Act of 2002, dissolving it would require legislation.
Government Response
Amnesty says it offered ICE, DHS and the governments of Minnesota, Louisiana, Illinois and the District of Columbia a chance to respond and heard back from none of them. A DHS spokesperson asked about the report by MPR News pointed to a roster of Chicago detainees with criminal histories, according to the department.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis called the findings "smears" meant to malign ICE officers, in a statement quoted by Yahoo News, and said abolishing the agency would make Americans less safe.
