Amnesty International Urges Abolition Of ICE After 168-Page Report Alleging Systemic Abuses

Amnesty International on Sept. 24 released a 168-page report calling for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), alleging widespread and systemic abuses by the agency. The report documents everything from fatal shootings to detention conditions and operational practices that the organization says may amount to torture.

Key Findings

Amnesty's investigators say their review includes interviews with 154 people affected by enforcement operations and dozens of videos from multiple U.S. cities. The report cites specific cases, including the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez and a Sept. 20 incident in North Austin in which ICE officers shot and injured Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, of Venezuela. Amnesty also documents patterns it says include blocking detainees from meeting attorneys, pressuring people to sign "voluntary" deportation forms, prolonged and punitive use of shackles, and extreme overcrowding in holding cells.

Amnesty's Assessment

"There are simply no reforms that would bring this agency into alignment with the United States's human rights obligations," Amy Fischer, Amnesty International's director for refugee and migrant rights in the U.S., said at a news conference. "The scale, persistence and structural nature of these failures cannot be adequately addressed through piecemeal reform."

The report includes more than a dozen references to practices Amnesty says may amount to torture and documents multiple cases of detainees held in cells designed for far fewer people — in some instances as many as 100 people confined in spaces intended for 12 — and being denied meaningful legal access.

Surveillance, Technology And Intimidation

Amnesty details the use of advanced technologies by ICE and other homeland agencies, including widespread use of facial recognition to identify immigrants and, reportedly, protesters. The report alleges officers used those tools to locate protesters, sometimes showing up at their homes, and that some interviewees reported drones following protesters or immigrant families when ICE was operating nearby. Amnesty notes that links between all drone sightings and ICE activity were not always verifiable.

Official Responses And Context

A White House spokesperson dismissed the report as "smears," saying critics seek to vilify officers who carry out immigration enforcement. Independent research cited in Amnesty's report — a July study by Syracuse University researchers — found that more than 70% of people in ICE custody had no criminal conviction, and that roughly 65,700 people were detained nationwide at that time.

ICE was created in 2003 after the Sept. 11 attacks and has been a flashpoint in U.S. politics, particularly during periods of expanded enforcement under recent administrations. Amnesty says the problems it documents span leadership, recruitment and training, operations, oversight and accountability, and therefore cannot be fixed through incremental changes.

USA TODAY and others have reached out to ICE for comment about the report and specific incidents described in it.

What Amnesty Is Calling For

Based on its findings, Amnesty International concluded that the scale and systemic nature of the documented abuses justify a rare, public call for the agency to be abolished. The organization argues that meaningful accountability and a human-rights-compliant approach to immigration enforcement would require dismantling and replacing ICE, rather than attempting piecemeal reforms.