Since resuming office in 2025, the Trump administration has made swift progress toward fulfilling Trump’s promise to implement the “the largest deportation campaign” in US history. In February 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have increased by 627%, with more than 20,000 people arrested in just under a month of Trump’s second term. The domestic policy and budget reconciliation bill passed in July 2025 (H.R. 1 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) allocated $170 billion dollars for immigration enforcement, including $75 billion dollars to ICE. This new budget makes ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency and even surpasses the budgets of most of the world’s militaries.
As the daughter of immigrants, watching the dramatic expansion of immigration policing, including tense standoffs between protestors and National Guard troops ordered to Los Angeles, Washington. D.C., and most recently in Chicago, has been very difficult. My family’s migration story is different than some, but I still feel strongly for those in my community whose families are directly impacted by the escalation in violence and intimidation. Deportation arrests and raids are taking place in high schools, workplaces, and in and outside of courthouses. Not even U.S. citizens and U.S. Congressional representatives are safe from ICE’s aggressive tactics.
Recent History of ICE
In the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Homeland Security Act (2002) consolidated multiple federal agencies under the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Later in March of 2003, DHS opened the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would eventually be renamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE is made up of two separate units, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), each with distinct roles. The HSI unit of ICE investigates criminal activity (including cross-border activity) while ERO handles interior enforcement of civil immigration laws. But, according to the National Immigration Law Center, the agency’s various functions has “consistently blurred the line” between the HSI and ERO, resulting in the increase of racial profiling within HSI’s criminal investigations. HSI also engages in civil immigration enforcement through conducting mass worksite raids. As a response to the surveillance, increased use-of-force, and racial profiling from ICE some feminist scholars, such as psychologist Joanna Beltrán Girón, have labeled ICE as “a state apparatus of repression” that operates at the nexus of both the prison- and military-industrial complexes.
An Intersectional Feminist Perspective on ICE
U.S immigration policies have historically excluded or otherwise tried to limit non-white racial and ethnic groups from immigrating or becoming naturalized citizens. Over the last twenty years, however, there has been a notable revival of sexist and racist discourses about immigrants (particularly those from Latin America) – with non-white male immigrants frequently portrayed as violent criminals who pose a threat to (white) female citizens.
The increasing militarization of the U.S-Mexico border and of ICE, has had adverse consequences for women, including those seeking asylum; Black immigrants and other immigrants of color; and LGBTQ people.
Feminist scholars have analyzed the role that ICE plays in causing fear in immigrant communities and the repercussions of that fear in their day-to-day lives. Drawing on interviews with immigrant women, Beltrán Girón found that “ICE terror” can result in chronic stress and inflammation. Additionally, Leisy Abrego and Cecilia Menjívar found that fear of ICE and of deportation leads some Latina mothers to decline to send one’s children to school or seek out medical or social services. As scholars have documented, ICE raids, detentions, and deportations result in negative health and socioeconomic consequences for immigrant communities.
Funding immigration enforcement also comes at the cost of funding programs that benefit of-color and low-income women. The “Big Beautiful Bill” massively inflated ICE’s budget while gutting other federal programs. This bill cuts over $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act, which will lead to a loss of health care coverage for those who have few other options. According to the National Partnership for Women & Families, there were 24 million women enrolled in Medicaid in 2024, 56% of whom are in their reproductive years, and over half of whom are women of color. Additionally, Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer for maternal health, including covering critical services such as hospital deliveries. Beyond maternity care, Medicaid ensures access to preventive services like cancer and chronic disease screenings, family planning, and long-term care for aging women and women with disabilities. By slashing health and human services while bloating immigration enforcement budgets, this presidential administration and Congress have clearly demonstrated that women, and their health, are not a priority.
Gendered Health Consequences of Immigration Detention
Researchers have extensively documented the negative health impacts of incarceration, including poor mental health outcomes. The health consequences of immigration detention, however, have received less scholarly attention. This may be due to the fact that 90% of all ICE detainees are held at for-profit, privately run centers, and access to and information about them is purposefully limited. A 2025 study from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School (MGH/HMS) found that those held in immigration detention suffer similar health consequences to those held in U.S. prisons, such as poor mental health treatment or poor medical attention.
Immigration detention and mass deportations exacerbate risks and negative indicators that disproportionately impact the health of women and children.
We know that ICE immigration detention centers – known for crowded, abusive, and unsanitary living conditions – have regularly been sites of gendered violence, including forced hysterectomies.
Many women and girls in detention centers are denied access to menstrual hygiene products and forced to bleed through their clothes, leading to a 2019 lawsuit against the first Trump administration. LGBTQ+ immigrants have also reported experiencing severe abuse and mistreatment while in ICE detention. Additionally, as policing and the threat of deportation increases, women and LGBTQ+ folks are more likely to experience and less likely to leave or report gender-based violence and/or domestic violence.
Immigrants Belong Here: A Path Forward
Those who care about gender equity and the civil rights of marginalized people must come together to resist the current wave of anti-immigrant policing and the increasingly elaborate carceral apparatus dedicated to terrorizing immigrants, anyone perceived to be an immigrant, and Black Americans.
Multiple organizations, from feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women to immigrant rights organizations such as the National Immigrant Justice Center, have called for reforms to our immigration system that protect the rights and humanity of immigrants, such as calling for an end to family separation. But policymakers can do more to ensure that immigrants can live freely and contribute to our nation, including:
- Providing a pathway to citizenship to the approximately 7 million undocumented people who have been living and working in the U.S for years, including creating alternative means of documentation for those working in the informal sector.
- Allow undocumented immigrants to change their legal status by increasing the number of U- and T-visas for survivors of trafficking, domestic violence, and those escaping violence due to their sexual orientation or gender identity and reinstate Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
- The immigration system does not provide court-appointed legal counsel to those who cannot afford it, leaving many immigrants to navigate a complex legal system (many with limited English proficiency) completely alone. Access to legal counsel should be guaranteed for those who need to go through immigration court, as it is for every person facing a criminal trial within the U.S legal system.
- A moratorium on contracts for private detention facilities and building additional detention facilities (such as “Alligator Alcatraz”).
In our immediate moment, policymakers must end the militarization of ICE, demand DHS put an end to ICE’s increasingly violent and inhumane tactics, and end the unnecessary detention of people who immigrated to this country in the hope of finding opportunities and freedom. Ending the current anti-immigrant policing system may seem like a daunting task, but if the public, community organizations, and aligned policymakers apply enough pressure and the right amount of heat, we could melt ICE.
