Amnesty International calls for abolition of ICE for the first time in new report

International human rights organization Amnesty International has called for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a new report alleging human rights abuses in the Trump administration’s immigration operations.

The report focuses on documenting human rights violations in ICE operations in the Twin Cities, Chicago, New Orleans and Washington, DC, including racially discriminatory immigration enforcement; unjustified use of force by federal agents; unlawful killings by federal agents; repression of protests through tear gas and pepper spray; unlawful surveillance; and inhumane detention conditions.

It’s the first time the organization has called for the abolition of ICE. Amy Fischer, Amnesty’s director of refugee and migrant rights, said it’s rare move for the organization to call for an agency to be fully abolished, but that the report shows the agency has reached a tipping point after decades of “mass impunity.”

“There are simply no reforms that would bring this agency into alignment with United States right human rights obligations,” Fischer said in a press call Thursday.

The report is over 100 pages and gathers information from laws and policies, legal cases, news articles, academic papers and official communications and reports to document the four immigration operations. The organization interviewed 154 people across the four cities as part of its research, including Reformer reporter Madison McVan.

ICE was established in 2003 following the September 11 attacks. The movement to abolish ICE gained mainstream traction on the left during Trump’s first administration and has been galvanized by Trump’s second administration’s immigration operations. In Minnesota, the winter’s chaotic surge of thousands of federal agents, who killed two U.S. citizens, shot a Venezuelan immigrant and violently arrested others, led to mass protests against ICE, attended by tens of thousands in subzero temperatures.

The organization is also calling for immediate independent investigations into all human rights violations in the four operations; investigations into the killings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Silverio Villegas González and others killed during immigration enforcement; and the end of facial recognition surveillance technologies.