As the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have intensified over the past year, politicians and journalists alike have begun referring to ICE as a “paramilitary force.”
Rep. John Mannion, a New York Democrat, called ICE “a personal paramilitary unit of the president.” Journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a book about how American police forces have been militarized, has argued that President Donald Trump was using the force “the way an authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, to carry out his own personal grudges, to inflict pain and violence, and discomfort on people that he sees as his political enemies.” And New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie characterized ICE as a “virtual secret police” and “paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule.”
All this raises a couple of questions: What are paramilitaries? And is ICE one?
