LOOKING at events in the US from a British perspective can be a difficult task. Many of the public here still rely on mainstream media for news reporting and commentary on US politics. The BBC’s deliberate doctoring of a Trump speech illustrates how false an image of events one can acquire by relying on these sources. Millions in the UK still believe that Trump told his supporters to invade the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and that he called for violence, based on this kind of doctored and biased reporting.
We should therefore regard all mainstream reporting on the US with an automatic scepticism, informed by the understanding that the British media, regardless of whether they call themselves left- or right-wing, intensely dislike Donald Trump and his government, and that they will break every traditional code of ethical journalism or professional standards to present this prejudice as factual and correct.
Now we come to the issue at the heart of current hysterical accusations against the Trump administration, which is the activities of ICE and other US border and immigration agencies. Many people will have seen extensive media coverage of the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, two ‘protesters’ killed in confrontations with ICE agents. Like George Floyd did for the BLM riots, these people have become instant martyrs and proof for many that ICE are ‘out of control’, that the Trump administration is ‘fascist’, or that what we are seeing in the US is the result and fault of Donald Trump being some kind of putative, would-be dictator abandoning the norms of civilised democracy.
This ‘understanding’, if it can be called that, comes not just from the left-wing British media. It comes from all our media, and it is utterly poisonous to our own politics. Both Andrew Neil and Daniel Hannan, supposedly right-wing commentators, have recently expressed the same ideas calling the Trump administration fascist or presenting ICE as somehow lawless, out of control, and completely illegitimate in their actions.
Let me be clear. Any presentation of ICE as lawless murderers, as Trump as a kind of Hitler, or of the Trump administration as responsible for chaos and disorder, is not ethical reporting. It’s biased, unjust, hysterical and untrue, representing either a personal prejudice or a paid-for campaign of misinformation. And I will explain why as succinctly as I can.
First, let’s address the legitimacy of what ICE is doing and who they are. ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s a body not created by Donald Trump, and there is nothing new or unusual about its activities and duties. ICE was created in 2003, when George W Bush was president, in the wake of 9/11 with the aim of helping to prevent a repeat of that terrorist atrocity, by enforcing the removal of dangerous foreign individuals who enter the country illegally. Its remit has always extended beyond counter terrorism, including illegal aliens who commit any manner of crime in the US, but it’s of course particularly beneficial and particularly necessary in response to illegal aliens who commit the very worst crimes, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, slavery, rape, murder, child abuse and organised crime. For 22 years it has done exactly what it is doing today, without anyone ‘mainstream’ declaring it a fascist organisation or a tool of oppression.
About 4,000 innocent US citizens every year are killed by illegal aliens. One was Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University. On February 22, 2024, she was ambushed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal alien who had already committed a series of crimes. He tried to rape her and then bludgeoned her to death with a rock. Had Ibarra been removed before his crime, Laken Riley would still be alive.
Riley’s death led to the only legislative novelty about modern ICE operations under Trump, the Laken Riley Act, which Trump signed into law on January 29 2025 as one of his first acts in power in the second term. The Act mandates detention without bond for foreign criminals charged with theft, burglary, assault on law enforcement, or any crime resulting in death or serious injury. Why does it do that? Because illegal aliens are the most likely criminals to evade punishment for their crimes by ignoring bond conditions and disappearing, and because Ibarra was released by Democrat New York courts multiple times for minor offences before he killed Laken Riley.
So the bottom line is this: ICE is doing what it has always done, both a morally good and a completely necessary function. Border and immigration law and their enforcement are not fascism. They are the government doing what it is the duty of a responsible government, which is protect innocent citizens such as Laken Riley from attempted rape, or murder, or similar violent crimes. Ordinary law enforcement is supposed to do that too, but border enforcement is supposed to prevent such crimes coming from people who shouldn’t even be in the country in the first place. The only change in how ICE operates is the Laken Riley Act, which is an obviously sane and moral piece of legislation responding to a heinous murder.
There is nothing novel about ICE and other border agencies detaining, arresting and removing or deporting people who entered the country illegally, with or without other serious crimes to their names. The US President responsible for the largest number of deportations in US history is not Donald Trump, it was Bill Clinton. He deported 12.3million people in his two terms, many of them right at the border. George W Bush oversaw 10.3million deportations. Barack Obama oversaw a total of 3.1million deportations, with 407,000 in his peak year of 2012. Even Joe Biden, who completely opened the border, oversaw up to 4.7million deportations.
Now I should address a technicality here, which is whether these events are called ‘deportations’. Under US law you can offer people the choice to leave voluntarily before their case goes through the court system, and under previous administrations this occurred much more frequently. Those are called ‘removals’, if we are being technical. Deportations are what happens after a person is charged with illegal entry and then removed. I have used deportation for both, since it’s ultimately the same thing, stopping illegals and removing them from the country. When you do that, you can see that enforcing border and immigration law is so necessary and sane, and so obviously conducive to the protection of innocent citizens, that even Democrats used to do it.
Tomorrow I will address what changed to make these long-term ICE operations ‘fascist’.
