Black lawmakers and scholars’ comparison of ICE to slave patrols isn’t as far-fetched as you may think

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Man shot dead by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis

Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett raised eyebrows last week when she compared President Donald Trump to a domestic abuser, suggested that the tactics displayed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were akin to Nazi raids and accused the Supreme Court of sanctioning “modern-day slave patrols.”

“Whoever thought we would live in a country that progress looks like having the Supreme Court that says, ‘Yes, it is OK to kill somebody or listen to their accent and give permission to grab them?’” Crockett asked during a field hearing in St. Paul, Minnesota, on January 16. The congresswoman was referring to a Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for ICE agents to utilize race as proper grounds for conducting immigration stops and fuel the Trump Administration’s agenda regarding immigration and deportation.

With the guidance handed down from the Supreme Court, interactions between ICE agents and mundane citizens across the country have escalated, with many of the incidents captured on video. While ICE has touted that it is justified in its actions regarding patrols in cities such as Minneapolis, Minnesota, the visual of masked agents detaining and arresting whoever it may find in violation of the law evokes those same images Crockett brought up.

Jelani Cobb, the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, was recently a guest of Stacey Abrams’ “Assembly Required” podcast and when asked the question regarding ICE and its historical context, Cobb put it in the perspective of how people responded when slave patrols appeared in their cities in the North.

“People had a wide array of views about the question of slavery; what they did not tolerate was the idea of their neighbors being ripped out of their community,” Cobb said.

He then connected the thought to modern times.

“What we have when we fast forward with what’s happening with ICE now, I would wager that if you were to take a poll of people in the streets, they’re opinions about immigration will be a wide spectrum of views,” he said. “What they will be united on is Joe, or Brenda or

Lisa, or a person who has been in their community for 10, 12, 15 years, with you dragging those people out of their homes and shipping them to places where they may well be tortured with no justification whatsoever.”

On the same week of Crockett’s statements regarding ICE, the state of Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed suit against the Department of Justice over the surge of ICE agents in the area. The state cites “harm” brought by the surge, which included the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good earlier this month, among other highly profile conflicts.

Officials in the state argue that ICE’s presence in the Twin Cities has little to do with fraud or safety, as federal officials have previously stated. Instead, lawyers argue that the DOJ’s actions via the Trump Administration are a means of political retribution.

“The unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents is hurting Minnesota,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said. “People are being racially profiled, harassed, terrorized, and assaulted. Schools have gone into lockdown. Businesses have been forced to close. Minnesota police are spending countless hours dealing with the chaos ICE is causing. This federal invasion of the Twin Cities has to stop, so today I am suing DHS to bring it to an end.”

Recently, ICE erroneously detained a U.S. citizen on Sunday (Jan. 18), believing he was another man who was wanted on sexual assault of a minor and other charges. ChongLy Thao was held outside of his residence in his underwear in freezing temperatures. The two individuals DHS claimed they were looking for, Lue Moua and Kongmeng Vang, were not at the residence and Thao’s family denied that the two men lived with them.

Moua has been serving a sentence in a facility in Faribault, Minnesota, since 2024 on kidnapping charges and is not scheduled to be released until 2027. The Minnesota Department of Corrections stated that DHS had filed a detainer for Moua, requesting that a facility hold the prisoner until ICE can take custody of the individual after they complete their sentence.

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