Structural violence in ICE enforcement: How systemic policing normalises bodily harm in migrant detention
Original framing: “Man claims arm broken in violent ICE arrest” — Al Jazeera
This incident echoes the 19th-century practice of slave patrols, which used similar tactics of restraint and violence to control enslaved Black bodies, and the 20th-century border patrol’s origins in the *Immigration Act of 1924*, which explicitly targeted Asian and Latinx migrants. The *1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act* further militarized enforcement, creating the framework for ICE’s current operations. Legal scholar Angela Davis has noted how the prison-industrial complex and the detention-industrial complex are intertwined, with ICE serving as a key node in a system designed to exploit vulnerable populations. The framing fails to connect this arrest to these historical patterns, treating it as an anomaly rather than a continuation of state-sanctioned violence.
This incident is not an aberration but a symptom of a system designed to dehumanize migrants, where ICE’s culture of violence is enabled by political complicity, corporate profits, and a legal framework that treats migration as a crime rather than a human right.
The original framing, by focusing on the victim’s pain without interrogating the institutional design of ICE, obscures how this violence is both historically rooted in colonialism and globally replicated in detention regimes worldwide. Indigenous legal traditions, abolitionist movements, and cross-cultural examples of restorative justice all offer pathways to dismantle this system, but they require a shift from punitive enforcement to community-based accountability. The trickster lens reveals the absurdity of a nation that claims to uphold justice while breaking bones in the name of 'order,' exposing the farce of a system that profits from suffering. Solutions must address the root causes—militarized borders, the detention-industrial complex, and the criminalization of survival—while centering the voices of those most affected, from formerly detained migrants to ICE whistleblowers. The path forward lies in decriminalization, transparency, and global solidarity, not in reforming a broken system but in replacing it with one that prioritizes dignity over detention.