Why I don't support ICE or Trump's immigration crackdown

I don’t support open borders, but I also can’t get behind Trump and ICE’s heavy-handed crackdown on illegal immigration.

15 years ago, I wrote two articles about illegal immigration.

The first, “I love Arizona“, lauded Arizona passing stricter immigration enforcement laws. It went on to call for racial profiling of Hispanics, before segueing into a call to form a militia to march into Mexico, kill the cartels, and burn Mexico City to the ground. The article ended with a call to authorize deadly force on people sneaking across the border.

The second article was straight to the point. “Let’s invade Mexico” didn’t pull any punches. It opened with me reiterating my call to march into Mexico City and burn it to the ground, then turned into me hurling childish insults at the head of the Los Zetas drug cartel. Throw in some more encouragement of Arizona’s anti-immigration laws, more ranting about liberals, and more calls to violence against Mexico. I literally said “let’s flood their streets with blood”.

I was wrong.

Those articles were half hyperbole, but they were still half serious. At the time, I truly believed that illegal immigration from Mexico was a serious problem, one that needed to be dealt with forcefully. I’m not apologizing for writing any of it, but in 2026 it doesn’t accurately reflect my views anymore.

I realized just how little I knew about Mexicans and South Americans when I began spending more time around Juan and his family. The more I saw of these people, the more I began to understand that maybe my hardliner stance on illegal immigration was wrong. These weren’t hardened criminals who were stealing jobs from Americans while leeching off of the system. These were people who were working their asses off at multiple jobs for shit pay and living ten people to a small house because their home countries sucked and they wanted better lives. They didn’t make excuses or complain, they were doing what they had to do to make money (“mucho dinero” as Juan would say). Money that they then spent in America. Meanwhile, I watched more and more of my American friends make excuses about why they couldn’t work or didn’t want to take a job because they felt that it was beneath them.

I’m not going to pretend that every person coming up here from Mexico or South America is just some dreamer looking for a better life. There’s plenty of criminals coming across the border too. And that’s definitely a problem.

But the solution to that problem isn’t mass-deportations using a militarized federal police force.

Every time I look at the news, I’m seeing more and more stories about ICE and their heavy-handed tactics. I see pictures of guys decked out in military gear wearing masks over their faces, booting down doors and dragging people out of their homes. ICE agents look less like federal law enforcement officers and more like some kind of paramilitary force.

I get why they’re wearing masks. The agency has been facing severe backlash for their actions, and ICE wants to prevent their agents from being doxxed. But at the same time, the masks shield these agents from any accountability, essentially indemnifying them from legal culpability because they can’t be properly identified. An agent roughs up a bystander? Good luck proving that it was him in court when his face is concealed. Allowing ICE agents to hide their identities from the public skates a very fine line between safety and public accountability, one that we should have never had to come to.

What’s up with ICE’s uniforms anyway? Who thought it was a good idea to make them look like literal shock troopers? The right wonders why the left is drawing comparisons to Nazis, but I can see exactly where they’re coming from on this one:

There’s no reason to have ICE agents dressed up like they’re about to breach a terrorist stronghold in Kandahar. It’s excessive, and it’s only being done to instill fear.

Then you have guys like Greg Bovino, a Border Control commander who’s decided to lean into the bad press like he’s a pro wrestler on a heel turn:

Who let this man go out dressed like this? Why does the federal government allow one of its commanding officers to run around dressed like he just crawled out of a World War 2 history book? A total lack of professionalism here. This guy got a lot of hate while he was running the operation in Minnesota, and when I see him dressed like this I can’t help but think that maybe the hate wasn’t unjustified. The Trump administration removed him from Minnesota, and later wound down the operation, but the damage has already been done.

I’m all for rounding up the criminals and the gangbangers and other illegal immigrants that are causing problems. But leave the actual workers alone.

The right defends this by saying that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. Really? I don’t see Americans lining up to pick fruit or be janitors. I see them lining up at welfare offices and making excuses about why they can’t work, or refusing to take jobs because they don’t pay enough (which I’ll concede is a valid point, but still, someone has to do the shit work). Illegal immigrants are a valuable source of cheap labor, and I don’t think most people realize just how integral they are to our economy. If you start rounding them up and deporting them, then who’s going to do the work? Sure, you could offer Americans more money to do it. But then you’d have to also raise the prices to offset the increase in wages paid.

Those illegal immigrants are also putting money back into the American economy. Yes, some of them are sending money back to family in their home countries. But they’re also spending money paying for their American house, buying groceries and other household stuff in American stores, and filling their cars at American gas pumps. They’re still contributing to the American economy.

I also have some questions about the endgame here.

Recently, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to buy up large warehouses and convert them into detainment facilities to house illegal immigrants. According to the article, some of these facilities can hold up to 8,000 people.

Just exactly what are they planning with these facilities?

Aren’t we supposed to be deporting these people? If that’s the case, why do we need giant facilities to hold thousands of them at a time? Despite not being a fan of Trump, I’ve never really been on board with calling him and his supporters Nazis. But now the administration is building internment camps, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s time to rethink my position. I don’t want open borders, but I sure as hell don’t want internment camps for illegal immigrants either. It feels like they’re setting up the infrastructure for something even more sinister. How soon until these facilities are being used to detain Americans? We keep saying “It can’t happen here”, but it definitely can, and people are so brainwashed by their political parties that they’ll cheer it on when it does.

As I said earlier, I’m not going to pretend that all illegal immigrants are just innocent people looking for work, nor am I going to suggest that we allow these people to come across the border willy-nilly. But we can’t go around using a militarized federal police force to blindly round them up either. Like it or not, many of these illegal immigrants are engrained into our workforce, and by extension our economy. Unless Americans are willing to start stepping up and doing the shit work, we need some of these people.

If you want to bring the hammer down on the cartels or gangs like MS-13, then that’s fine. If you want to go after the Somalis committing fraud, then go after them. But leave the people picking my fruit and laying carpet alone. They’re helping this country more than they’re hurting it.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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