The current presidential term’s approach on Immigration and Customs Enforcement has created a large discourse throughout the United States of America, with protests being held in various cities and states. Many communities throughout Columbia feel concerned about how ICE existence has created conflict.
On November 25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act was signed into law creating the Department of Homeland Security in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks to prevent future terrorism attacks and handle border security. On March 1, 2003, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE with civil and criminal authority according to the official ICE website.
During Barack Obama’s presidential term from 2009 to 2017, Obama’s approach to deportation of unauthorized immigrants was to only deport those convicted of serious crimes; however, in October 2015 to September 2016 there was an increase in deportation of immigrants that had led to immigrants not convicted of serious crimes deported, according to the Migration Policy Institute. By the end of the Obama term, he had gained the title “deporter in chief” with over three million ICE deportations according to NPR..
Though ICE was implemented for security from foreign and domestic criminals, some U.S. citizens have also been detained or deported, according to the American Immigration Council. ICE had wrongly identified over 2,000 citizens as non-citizens and an estimate of 214 people wrongfully detained during President Bush’s term and both of President Obama’s.
During this time, many ICE approaches were seen as violent and harsh with many unannounced raids and poor living conditions inside the detention centers and with many shootings done by ICE revealed victims were unarmed, according to The Trace, a nonprofit organization that mainly covers gun violence. This had led to a dividing overlook on ICE from communities throughout the US.
“Its one of those things where we are losing staff and community members that are not willing to come out because they are in fear of the some enforcement practices that have been going on.” A Columbia retail store manager who wishes to remain unnamed, said.
ICE is mainly focused on immigration services, they also work with other communities within law enforcement to protect people domestically such as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). These agencies initial purpose was to investigate and dismantle child exploitation, human trafficking operations, and money laundering according to ICE’s website
Near the end of the Biden administration ICE detained 39,703 adults according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and mainly focused on detainment and deportation of noncitizens with serious criminal convictions or threats to national security.
“Typically we see a lot of hispanic costumers towards the end of the night,” The Columbia store manager said. “Now we haven’t seen as many Hispanic customers for the past year now.”
Under the Trump administration In November of 2025 detention center use had bumped up to 91% from the beginning of the year. Unlike the Biden and Obama administration, Trump’s approach to ICE was more direct with a goal of deporting over 1 million people according to the American Immigration Council website. On July 4 2025, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill act into law allowing $45 billion for expansion of ICE detention facilities and $29.9 billion toward ICE enforcement operations according to the American Immigration Council.