When Immigration Enforcement Operates Outside the Usual Rules

What does it mean when immigration enforcement begins to look and feel like policing, but operates under a different set of rules? On this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi speaks with criminal justice scholar and lawyer Candace McCoy, a professor emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about ICE’s expanding role in carrying out U.S. immigration policy. McCoy argues that ICE officers are not police in the traditional sense: Their mission is not to protect human life or investigate crimes, but to enforce administrative immigration law. That distinction, she says, has major consequences for how the agency operates, from the use of masks and militarized gear to detention practices, federal-state conflicts, and broad legal protections for officers acting within the scope of their authority. The conversation also explores the limits of court intervention, the friction between federal enforcement and state power, and the deeper questions ICE raises about accountability, democratic governance, and the rule of law.