In the early weeks of 2026, the United States has witnessed a level of enforcement violence that feels unprecedented yet hauntingly familiar. According to the American Immigration Council (2026), the year began with a “horrific start”: six deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and several fatal shootings within just weeks. Among the dead are not only migrants but also U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alexi Pretti, whose lives were cut short by an agency operating with a mandate of aggressive “activation” that now threatens the very public it claims to protect.
To understand how an immigration agency devolved into a force capable of such domestic wreckage, we must look back to 1704. That year, South Carolina established the first formal, government-sanctioned slave patrol (Hassett-Walker, 2021). While the targets have shifted and the uniforms have changed, the institutional logic remains the same: a system of roving surveillance and racialized control designed to maintain order through the threat of state-sponsored violence.
The 1704 Blueprint
The slave patrols of the 18th century were the first uniquely American contribution to policing (Hadden, 2021). Unlike traditional constabularies, these patrols were proactive and mobile, empowered to cross property lines and monitor the movement of a specific population deemed a “threat” to the social order (Durr, 2015). This created a culture of total immunity, where the enforcer’s suspicion was sufficient grounds for detention or death.
Today’s version of ICE mirrors this blueprint. Under current policies, the agency has been activated as a tool of White supremacist control, relying on what scholar Laurence Ralph (2019) calls the “logic of predatory violence.” This logic presumes that the “other,” whether the enslaved person of 1704 or the “suspect” of 2026, is inherently dangerous. As Ralph notes, this fantasy of violence justifies preemptive force, turning standard interactions into lethal encounters.
The Cost of “Othering” Everyone
The tragedy of modern enforcement is that the “othering” theme, while rooted in racism, eventually consumes the entire citizenry. The deaths of Renee Good and Alexi Pretti in 2026 serve as a stark warning. Good, a 37-year-old mother, was killed during an immigration raid in Minneapolis; Pretti, a VA intensive care nurse, was shot while attempting to assist a neighbor during an ICE operation (American Immigration Council, 2026).
When an institution is trained to see the public as a battlefield, the distinction between “citizen” and “alien” becomes a secondary concern to the preservation of the agency’s power. This White supremacist activation creates an effect where the erosion of rights for some inevitably degrades safety for all. By activating agents to view specific communities as zones of combat, the state fosters an environment where any person, regardless of their race or citizenship, can be caught in the crosshairs of an unaccountable force.
A Broken System by Design
The institutional decay is not a secret; it is being aired from the inside. In February 2026, a PBS NewsHour report featured whistleblower and former ICE attorney Ryan Schwank, who described agent training as “deficient, defective, and broke.” Schwank revealed that training periods have been slashed and instruction on Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections have been diminished to meet aggressive quotas (PBS NewsHour, 2026).
This lack of training isn’t just a bureaucratic failure; it’s a return to the patrol mentality, where the primary qualification for an enforcer is the willingness to exert control. This is further shielded by a lack of transparency. Even when body cameras are present, Lessing (n.d.) argues that ICE policies are structured to make the footage unlikely to improve accountability. Like the patrollers of 1704, modern agents are often protected by a “shield of secrecy” that allows state violence to go unchecked.
The Evolution of the Ache
The family of Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old Black man killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles, recently stated that the “ache will never go away” (Levin, 2026). This ache is a historical through-line connecting the families of the enslaved to the families of Renee Good and Alexi Pretti. The “othering” recurrence hurts all involved: it kills the marginalized, traumatizes the witnesses, and deteriorates the humanity of the enforcers themselves.
Moving forward, we must acknowledge that we have been here before. The 1704 slave patrol was never about safety; it has always been about the management of people through fear. As long as contemporary public policy remains rooted in that same soil, the violence of the state will continue to claim lives across all racial and
legal boundaries. True public safety cannot be built on the foundation of a patrol; it requires a rejection of the “othering” logic that has haunted American enforcement for over 300 years.
References
6 deaths in ICE custody and 2 fatal shootings: a horrific start to 2026 - American Immigration Council. (2026, February 11). American Immigration Council. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-deaths-shootings-2026/
Durr, M. (2015). What is the difference between slave patrols and modern-day policing? Institutional violence in a community of color. Critical Sociology, 41(6), 873-879.
Hadden, S. (2021). Police and slave patrols. The ethics of policing: New perspectives on law enforcement, 205.
Hassett-Walker, C. (2021). How you start is how you finish? The slave patrol and Jim Crow origins of US policing. Human Rights, 46(2), 6-8.
Lessing, S. (n.d.). Why ICE’s body camera policies make the videos unlikely to improve accountability and transparency. The Conversation.
https://doi.org/10.64628/AAI.7egv5cakd
Levin, S. (2026, January 17). Family of man killed by off-duty ICE agent in LA demands charges: ‘The ache will never go away.’ The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/16/keith-porter-jr-ice-killing
PBS NewsHour. (2026, February 23). Watch: Whistleblower and former ICE attorney calls agent training deficient, defective and broke.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-whistleblower-and-former-ice-attorney-calls-agent-training-deficient-defective-and-broke
Ralph, L. (2019). The logic of the slave patrol: the fantasy of black predatory violence and the use of force by the police. Palgrave Communications, 5(1).