How Post-9/11 Surveillance Built Up to ICE

Indexed: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]How do you feel like the issue of ICE and the surveillance state has blossomed into the politics of today? And how do you sort of confront it?

[00:00:10]I think what's so hard to confront is that when I started organizing, when I became an activist, that was directly because of the impact that my father's ICE detention had on my life. And I would I started going to rallies around the age of 15, 16 years old. I would go to Dream Act rallies. You know, I would I would um speak out for immigrant rights. And at that time, the discussion around the immigrant rights um movements was about comprehensive immigration reform. It was about this idea that we need to provide pathways to citizenship for immigrants.

[00:00:47]What's so disappointing is that it's been over a decade later. You know, I'm in my 30s now, and we're seeing ICE still kidnapping people off the streets.

[00:00:59]We're seeing more funding for ICE, more of an expansion for ICE, right? And ICE is a direct impact of post-9/11 war on terror policies, of attack on um Muslim communities particularly, and it has now transformed into this entity that is a rogue entity that really has no accountability. They do not follow any measures in the way that they interact with people. And it just is getting worse, and we actually have an erosion of immigrant rights at this moment. You know, DACA was repealed under the Trump administration, right? Like and that was something that was a reform from the this bigger idea of comprehensive immigration reform. So, there's so much left to fight for because now we're just fighting ICE, but we also have to fight to figure out ways to protect immigrants, get them legal status by being here. That's a long-term fight, and if we're just um in this cycle of fighting against violence, we're not getting to fight for dignity, to fight for the pathways for people to be able to stay and feel comfortable and safe. Uh and it's so disappointing, um but it's also something that um keeps me going because um it's not over. There's a huge fight to have politically.