Politics
ICE Made Itself Invisible And Is Now Arresting More People Than Ever
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Trump administration announced earlier this year that it was fundamentally changing how Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts its operations, moving away from what internal memos described as "siege posture" toward something called "soft feet," a term that, upon reflection, means the same agents doing the same work in quieter shoes.
The results have been extraordinary. In the months since ICE became, in the administration's preferred framing, "invisibilized," the agency has arrested more people than in any comparable period in recent memory. The White House has characterized this as a success. It is not immediately clear what the failure would have looked like.
The original approach involved large formations of agents, helicopters in some cases, and an aesthetic that one Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on background, described as "intentionally cinematic." Cable news carried the footage. Advocates organized outside detention centers. Congressmembers showed up with cameras of their own. It was, by any measure, a public relations situation.
So the administration solved the public relations situation by removing the public relations. No more perimeter formations. No more press availability. Plainclothes agents, unmarked vehicles, operations completed, according to one internal timeline, in under 90 seconds. The spectacle disappeared. The deportations did not.
"We are simply executing the law with discretion and professionalism," said Tom Homan, the administration's border czar, in a statement that used the word "discretion" to describe a federal enforcement program that has quietly expanded to cover workplaces, churches, schools, and at least three Walmarts in the greater Phoenix area. "This is what effective governance looks like."
What effective governance looks like, apparently, is a van you cannot identify pulling up to a curb and being gone before anyone on the sidewalk has processed what they saw. Witnesses in several cities described the experience as watching a magic trick, specifically the kind where someone disappears and the magician seems to find this funnier than the audience does.
The invisibility strategy has created a secondary problem the administration has not yet addressed, which is that invisibility is not the same thing as not happening. Arrest numbers are reported. Detention facility populations are counted. Immigration court dockets are public records. The administration has, in effect, removed the footage while keeping the film.
Critics, including a coalition of immigration attorneys and several Democratic senators, have noted that the new approach makes legal intervention harder, since an arrest that takes 90 seconds and leaves no documentation at the scene is difficult to contest in real time. The administration has described this observation as a partisan attack. The attorneys have described it as their entire job becoming significantly more difficult, which is a slightly different complaint but not an unrelated one.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the operational tempo would continue, that agent discretion remained high, and that the department remained committed to transparency, a word that appeared in the same press release as the phrase "we will not be commenting on specific operational details."
The 90-second benchmark, meanwhile, has reportedly become a point of informal competition within certain field offices.
At least one team is under 70.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/28/ice-us-immigration-new-tactics