Garrison Davis

Individual agents certainly could be motivated by racism, political ideology, a paycheck, or a combination thereof.

But the motivating factors across the entire agency cannot solely be based on ethnicity itself, or else you wouldn't see as many Hispanic, ICE, and CBP agents.

People tend to think of hate as a vague causal force itself.

rather than it being the result of complex societal factors shaped by material forces, like the economy, jobs insecurity, and housing shortages.

These material forces are often expressed as racial or ethnic prejudice, but the underlying motivation of ICE as an agency, and by extension DHS, still rests on material forces, not racial hatred as an abstract ideal.

rank-and-file employees could have entirely different motivations compared to some of those at the top of the agency or the agency as a whole.

And people in charge of the agency may themselves even be confused as to the material motivations that underline the existence of immigration enforcement agencies.

But this lack of alignment is a weakness in the agency and DHS more broadly, as demonstrated by the fallout of Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which left ICE and DHS in a compromised state.

So why does ICE exist?

What material role does it fulfill?

It seeks to stabilize the social order by targeting surplus populations.

And what's the most efficient way to do that?

By going after the most marginalized populations with the least amount of legal and economic protections, which are undocumented immigrants.

This operation may be sold to the public, and indeed its enforcers, by marketing it in the language of race and crime, categories which are often equated,

But underneath that, it's still an attempt to solve problems caused by material economic forces.

In reality, this material motivation establishes a certain direction of impact as well as material limits, like budget, personnel, and balancing between public approval and public opposition.

So with that in mind, does it make sense to claim that immigration and customs enforcement is going to conduct the targeted mass detention of trans people as a class?

Science points to no.

It's not that I disagree with the idea that trans people are under threat from the government.

but they're under a different threat than that of undocumented immigrants or people detained by ICE based on profiling.