The Hill Discovers ICE Is Violent, Forgetting Decades of History
While bemoaning Trump's 'innovations' in cruelty, The Hill conveniently forgets ICE's foundational violence. This is not a 'Trump transformation,' but American policy. From family separations under Bush and Obama (the AP reported in 2011 on parents detained for deportation despite having citizen children) to Obama earning the title 'deporter-in-chief' for removing millions , the agency's tactics
have consistently been characterized by the very 'violence' The Hill attributes solely to Trumpism. One might wonder if the concern for ICE’s actions only truly solidifies when a Republican is in charge. The Hill's selective outrage paints a picture of a pristine pre-Trump era where ICE was a friendly neighborhood agency, only to be corrupted by one man. This narrative conveniently ignores the
systemic nature of an enforcement body born from a post-9/11 fear-mongering apparatus. The 'transformation' they speak of isn't Trump's; it's the media's capacity for strategic forgetting when it serves a particular political agenda.