U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal agency tasked with ensuring that both immigrants and US residents remain safe while borders to and from the US are kept secured. The ICE keeps immigrants safe in a number of ways:
1) By removing illegal aliens from the US. ICE enforcement activities include removing fugitives, criminals, national security threats, illegal immigrants, and others who are in the country illegally and who may pose a security threat. This helps keep everyone safer. For immigrants, removing illegal immigrants helps to remove some of the people who sometimes prey on new arrivals, such as criminals from a common community. As well, removing illegal immigrants ensures that those in the country legally have access to the benefits and privileges intended for them.
2) By targeting employers who hire undocumented workers. The ICE audits employers and arrests employers who hire illegal or undocumented immigrants. This is an important way to protect immigrants, since such employers often take advantage of immigrants by offering them unsafe workplaces or below-minimum-wage incomes. By targeting unscrupulous employers, the ICE ensures that legal immigrants and US workers have access to safe work at fair wages.
3) By creating a transparent agency. Immigrants detained by the ICE have their information published at the Online Detainer Locator System, so that US immigration attorneys and families can find these detainees. The ICE website also publishes details about its policies and procedures online so that anyone can read about this federal agency.
4) By keeping the general public safer. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement works to ensure that dangerous criminals, terrorists, fugitives, and other threats to public safety are removed from the US before they can do harm. This helps keep everyone in the US safer.
5) By helping to keep borders safer. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement works with border security authorities to remove potential threats from border areas and works with other government agencies to secure US borders. This helps ensure that illegal immigrants and dangerous criminals cannot enter the country to do harm.
6) By helping immigrants avoid the labels of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration harms everyone, but it can have an especially negative impact on legal US immigrants. Legal immigrants who go through the correct US immigration systems may find that their actions and motives are suspect because of the illegal actions of a few undocumented immigrants. As well, the money and resources spent on undocumented immigrants can mean less money and fewer resources available for legal immigrants.