Minneapolis aside, ICE seems to be winning the respect of local law enforcement officers and a few of their parent organizations. There are now 1,168 agencies with officers trained to help ICE, up from 135 during Joe Biden’s administration, according to analysis by FWD.us, a nonpartisan immigration and criminal justice policy organization. But the interagency love is far from universal – there’s also an internal LEO civil war with police chiefs detracting from the positive vibe.
In Detroit, two officers crossed a line to call federal reinforcements while on the job to translate for them after pulling over a non-English speaker. That tactic got a couple of foot soldiers on the unfortunate radar of Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison, who first called for termination and then, two days later, settled for a reprimand after the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners pulled rank on him. The officers received a two-week suspension without pay.
Bettison came up the ranks from patrolman and knows his way around the mean streets. But he’s a bureaucrat now, and the soft on immigration stance looks better for him on the front page of the Detroit Free Press.
But back to the scourge of illegal immigration: Trump and his ICE agents cannot do it alone.
The Example of Minneapolis
It was the massive Somali community’s fraud that lit a fire under the Trump administration. And while crimes against taxpayers will be under investigation for no doubt decades, ICE decided to run amok, knocking on doors, setting up neighborhood roadblocks, and, in some cases, allegedly looking for trouble. As the late Congressman John Lewis might say today, not the good kind. The goal was righteous, but the implementation came off a bit skewed – and Trump has suffered from the unrelenting bad press of a few tragic incidents.
All ICE agents must complete extensive training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), including the 16-week Basic Immigration Law Enforcement Training Program (BIETP), a five-week Spanish course, and on-the-job training covering immigration law, arrests, and firearms.
American Oversight, which, according to its webpage, acts “where corruption and government power overlap,” filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in early 2025. What they believe they found is evidence of something gone wrong in the department. Documents, they say, “suggest[s] there could be major gaps between how ICE agents are being trained and how they are operating on the streets of US cities.” It delves into more gray area with officers being told their badges should be “clearly displayed when making a stop for officer safety/liability.” But agents were also advised they did not have to publicly identify themselves before making an arrest. That would be confusing no matter the color or language of the person they’re interacting with.
The documents show that in the first two months of Trump’s second administration, “DHS was aware of a 353 percent increase in use of force incidents involving officers.”
ICE Is Not the Enemy
America is at a crossroads with the handling of illegal immigration and deportation. Plenty of agencies in the US are finally allowed the break needed in handling unchecked illegal immigrants, who were given an invitation to overrun our communities and resources because the Biden administration did not care about what was happening to the shining city on the hill. Well, that time has passed. The Gopher State has its own predicaments to navigate: a super spreader STD, Somali “Learing” Centers, and just this week, Minneapolis police said a naked man stole an ambulance that had a patient on board. But this administration needs to stay consistent, on message, and on point lest the situation devolve into even bigger problems than the one Minnesota presents.
