How ICE Became So Powerful—and How Those Choices Can Be Reversed.
The modern immigration enforcement system didn’t emerge overnight. The legal architecture behind today’s mass detention regime stretches back decades, shaped by bipartisan legislation, post-9/11 restructuring, expanding executive authority, and a growing network of private contractors and local partnerships. Under Trump, those powers have accelerated into something far more visible: aggressive raids, swelling detention populations, weakened oversight, and a federal enforcement apparatus that critics increasingly describe as authoritarian in scope.
But advocates and legal experts argue this system is not inevitable, and it is not beyond repair. In this week’s piece, we examine what it would actually take to rein in ICE. The path forward is politically difficult, but many of the proposed reforms are less about inventing something new than restoring guardrails that have steadily eroded over time.
The Case for Rebuilding America’s Immigration System
There’s hardly been a more visible manifestation of the Trump administration’s authoritarian push than the expanding power and detention footprint of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Whether it’s ICE themselves or the many other federal agents delegated to it, federal immigration agents have sparked public anger by occupying politically oppositional cities, arresting organizers, and administration opponents, injuring and killing protesters, deporting longtime residents, and operating inhumane detention facilities that are expanding nationwide.
From the Reporter’s Notebook 📓
I often tell people that immigration is the area of policy with the widest gulf between how strongly people feel about it and how largely it looms over our political life, and how much people tend to actually understand its basic mechanics. The truth is, the average person knows very little about a system that — unlike healthcare or education or taxes — they can spend a lifetime never interacting with personally. That remains true, but I think that the Trump administration’s maximization of the system’s depravities has put things into stark relief. In the same way that the ’90s crime panic sparked the ‘96 laws and changed the system in ways that proved lasting, I think the groundswell now can break some political inertia and reshape the approach to an enforcement system many people are realizing they don’t want and don't need.
Next on Repairing America: A Roadmap For a Fairer Tax System
As America approaches its 250th birthday, Portia Allen-Kyle looks at the history of taxation as a story about power, belonging, and representation. Her reporting explores how fiscal policy has shaped inequality—and what it would take to create a tax system that serves a more inclusive vision of democracy.
Read More From the Series
The Post-Trump Challenge Isn’t Restoration. It’s Reinvention.
While experts warn the federal government has lost generations of institutional knowledge under the Trump administration, they also believe the destruction could force long-overdue structural reforms. Max Burns with the full report here.
What It Would Actually Take to Fix Women’s Health Care in America
A functional health system requires autonomy, investment, and a cultural shift that centers women’s lived experiences.
Read the reporting from Lauren Rankin here.
Can Treating Journalism Like Public Infrastructure Fix Our Broken Media?
State governments are experimenting with public funding models to preserve reporting. Can it be a national blueprint?
Read the full piece from Parker Molloy here.
The Blueprint for a More Affordable America Already Exists
From guaranteed income to universal childcare, solutions to the affordability crisis are already in motion. The challenge now is political will—not policy design.
Rainesford Stauffer reports.