The expansion of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Donald Trump’s second term reflects anti-pluralism moving from rhetoric into institutional form. The Senate’s immigration bill allocates roughly $150 billion over four years, increasing ICE’s funding beyond the military budgets of countries such as Israel and Italy. Detention funding alone would increase thirteen-fold, alongside a hiring surge of 10,000 deportation officers trained under compressed timelines.

One of the key components of populist politicians, is in claiming exclusive moral representation of “the people” effectively casting opponents outside the political community, creating an us vs them mentality. Immigration enforcement has become an arena for this dynamic. That narrowing has institutional consequences. Trump’s rhetoric frames immigration as an existential crisis and dissent as obstruction of the popular will. The use of crisis farming by the Trump administration is nothing but a tool to justify the extraordinary measures of enforcement, framing it as necessity. In recent weeks the United States has seen just how far the administration is willing to argue “the end justifies the means” with the horrific murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. Right wing news media, alongside the administration, attempted to frame the killings as an unfortunate but unaviodable side effect of strong immigration control. 

Repression of protest illustrates the mechanism at work. ICE operations in Minneapolis and other cities have been met with tear gas, flashbangs, and lethal force. Political science research shows repression often escalates protest rather than deters it. When authorities possess communication channels and embedded relationships with communities, negotiated management becomes more likely. ICE lacks those important linkages. The agency operates within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and remains structurally detached from local political oversight. Officers frequently operate masked and without visible identification. Enforcement agents trained for tactical raids are now functioning in protest environments shaped by distrust. Militarization further conditions behavior. Agencies that adopt combat-style training and military hardware develop adversarial orientations toward civilian space. ICE’s investment in battlefield simulation facilities and armored vehicles signals institutional expectations about confrontation. Organizational culture adapts to the tools and environments in which personnel are trained. When threat perception becomes central, escalation becomes more probable.

The hiring surge introduces another stress point. Reporting from CNN and NBC News documents academy training reduced from five months to just 47 days, incomplete background checks at onboarding, and high failure rates on basic legal exams. Nearly half of recruits reportedly failed an open-book assessment on constitutional search and seizure standards. Historical evidence from post-9/11 border enforcement hiring shows that accelerated growth correlates with increased misconduct and corruption over time. When oversight mechanisms lag behind expansion, accountability deteriorates.

These developments align with populist use of “hijacking” or repurposing state apparatuses. Rather than dismantling democratic institutions outright, anti-pluralist leaders often expand and redirect existing ones. Coercive agencies become central instruments of governance. Mass clientelism and crisis narratives reinforce loyalty within the bureaucracy while insulating it from criticism. Democratic erosion rarely occurs through abrupt collapse. It proceeds through incremental institutional shifts that reallocate power toward the executive while narrowing pluralistic space. ICE’s transformation illustrates this mechanism. A federal agency, rapidly enlarged and militarized, now functions as both immigration enforcer and de facto protest manager. In that dual role, it occupies a structurally advantageous position within an anti-pluralist project. 

Works Cited

Feng, John. “ICE Budget Now Bigger Than Most of the World’s Militaries.” Newsweek, 2026, https://www.newsweek.com/immigration-ice-bill-trump-2093456. Accessed 10 2 2026.

Graff, Garrett. “ICE’s Hiring Surge Is Already a Disaster.” Doomsday Scenario, 2025, https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/ice-s-hiring-surge-is-already-a-disaster. Accessed 12 2 2026.

Sullivan, Heather. “Why ICE is responding to protests with repression.” Good Authority, 28 January 2026, https://goodauthority.org/news/why-ice-is-responding-to-protests-with-repression/. Accessed 13 February 2026.