ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- In the 2026 midterm elections, ICE is on the ballot. So it makes sense that -- in states where Republicans expect to take a beating -- the Trump administration has ramped up ICE enforcement to scare voters away from the ballot box.

A recent poll by the University of San Diego showed that 40% of Americans believe that ICE agents will show up at polling places on Election Day. One-third say that, if this happens, it would reduce their trust in elections.

Get ready for trust to drop through the floor. The Washington Examiner reports that ICE has discreetly launched a 45-day crackdown in California ahead of the midterm elections. The surge -- "Operation Safe California" -- started around Oct. 1. One source told the newspaper that ICE agents have been told by supervisors to "pick up anybody."

Recently, when a reporter asked about the election surge in California, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin angrily denied its existence. He insisted that it's business as usual and said, "We're doing our job every day."

Methinks the bureaucrat doth protest too much. In California, we feel the surge every time we hear a whisper that ICE is abducting people down the block.

For the last 16 months, marauding Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have torn apart Democratic-run cities. It started with Los Angeles in June 2025. In the process, the outlaws racked up a body count that, according to Human Rights Watch, exceeded 50 casualties in the first 500 days of President Donald Trump's second term.

A recent Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour poll found that 60% of Americans disapprove of the job ICE is doing while only 33% approve. That poll also found that roughly two-thirds of Americans (65%) feel that ICE agents have "gone too far," and about 62% believe that the surges make communities less safe.

By now, most Americans have probably figured out that we've been hustled. We were told during the 2024 election that ICE was only going to go after "the worst of the worst" in "targeted enforcement actions" aimed at removing specific individuals who were a danger to society -- and even then, only with warrants signed by judges.

All lies. In the immigration raids, tens of thousands of people were detained, arrested and deported. According to studies, seven out of 10 had no criminal convictions.

We've seen TikTok videos of swarms of agents tackling gardeners and housekeepers. We've seen ICE stake out schools, hospitals and courthouses. We've seen ICE agents fire pepper balls at 21-year-old Kaden Rummler and 18-year-old Tucker Collins at separate public protests against ICE tactics, leaving both young men blind in one eye. We've seen ICE roll into Minneapolis and kill Renee Good, a teacher and mother of three. We've seen ICE agents defy federal court orders, detain U.S. citizens and lie to FBI agents who were investigating alleged misconduct. And we've seen law enforcement experts and retired military officers explain that ICE agents -- who are neither police nor military -- have limited jurisdiction beyond their main gig: enforcing the civil infraction of being present in the United States without authorization.

Americans can be slow learners when the lesson is uncomfortable or inconvenient. But eventually, about two-thirds of them realized what I -- as the son of a cop who was on the job for 37 years -- figured out from the jump: ICE agents aren't real police. Since immigration law is largely civil in nature, especially when enforcement takes place far from the border, ICE agents are little more than menacing process servers with guns.

Sworn peace officers go through extensive training without shortcuts or exemptions. Legit cops have to follow the Constitution, refrain from racial profiling and fill out reports when they use force. When legit cops kill someone, they might lose their jobs, get prosecuted and wind up in prison. Legit cops can't hide behind masks, and they have to answer to an internal accountability system when they make a mistake, break protocol or violate civil rights. Finally, legit cops don't chase cash bounties and try to fill a daily quota of 3,000 arrests to advance a political agenda of mass deportations.

It's no wonder that, at this point, ICE is so despised by the public. According to a YouGov poll, 50% of Americans support abolishing the agency.

Half the country is standing up for the simple proposition that a public agency that works on our dime can't enforce one set of laws by breaking a bunch of others.

If that sounds right to you, get ready to take your stand on Nov. 3.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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