The shocking events that unfolded in Minneapolis under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Operation Metro Surge have left the community reeling. In a city still healing from the devastating police killing of George Floyd, the worst aspects of troubling law enforcement culture were on display with ICE’s deployment agents acting under the guise of rounding up and deporting illegal criminal immigrants.
In reality, ICE was racially profiling people who ‘look’ like immigrants, recklessly using force, including killing innocent bystanders Renée Good and Alex Pretti who were standing up for their neighbours, intimidating lawful protestors and straining federal government relations with state and local officials, including local law enforcement agents. This flawed response is driven by the most dangerous aspects of law enforcement organisational culture.
Expansion of ICE under the Trump administration
Since Donald Trump took office in 2025, ICE has hired 12,000 new officers, offering $50,000 signing bonuses but minimal background screening. But getting these officers ‘operation ready’ was haphazardly and chaotically done.
A whistleblower recently described ICE training as ‘deficient, defective and broken’, with dramatically reduced training on ‘the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits of officers’ authority’.
These worrying developments not only raise serious constitutional questions about these mass federal law enforcement deployments, but also cut against the core principles many in local policing having been working towards following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
ICE is not ‘the police’
ICE is not what we think of as the police in most Western democracies. While many public and private organisations can perform what we recognise as ‘policing’, we tend to look at the police as a local public agency working in local communities, not descending on them in the thousands in temporary surges.
We usually consider ‘policing’ to be enforcing criminal laws, controlling crime, conducting investigations and maintaining security, all carried out with local community knowledge. In theory, local policing is supposed to operate according to the principles attributed to the founder of the London Metropolitan Police, Sir Robert Peel.
These Peelian Principles highlight how we expect the police to act in democratic societies – prevent crime, apply restraint in the use of force, maintain good relations with the community and operate with public approval and legitimacy. While it is debatable whether local police forces primarily operate in Peelian ways, the ICE activities in Minneapolis under Operation Metro Surge did not even try to be remotely Peelian, and were clearly designed to instil terror and fear in local communities.
ICE’s ‘warrior’ culture
What is evident from ICE’s conduct in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge is that it displayed some of the most troubling aspects of a very problematic law enforcement culture. Different agencies can have different types of organisational cultures, influencing how they behave and carry out their policies.
These cultures are significantly shaped by how new recruits are trained and how behaviour is rewarded. Indeed, training academies set the norms, standards and expectations that new recruits take into the job, and the consequences for misconduct.
Whistleblower evidence indicates that these new ICE agents receive minimal guidance when it comes to their behaviour within communities – limiting the use of force, de-escalation procedures, constitutional obligations, the importance of legitimacy and community relations, for example. Instead, recent ICE agents seem to be trained to act in accordance with the most worrying parts of law enforcement and military culture – the warrior culture ethos.
Law enforcement’s warrior culture ethos embodies its military-like hierarchical structure, prioritises and rewards violence, stresses conflict and aggression and supports the use of force and escalation directed at designated populations. It is often characterised by aggression, violence, insularity, intolerance, masculinity, racism, sexism, homophobia and stereotyping, among other characteristics.
This model approaches policing like war, with disconnection from local communities, who are in the process dehumanised. A warrior force like ICE sees itself as a temporary occupier, uninterested in building long-term relationships with communities, since it won’t be around long enough to deal with the consequences of its actions.
In Minneapolis and in other cities, ICE leaves state and local law enforcement agencies to repair damaged community relations, as expressed repeatedly by Minnesota officials in recent weeks.
Lacking legitimacy in the community
Warrior law enforcement bodies, like ICE in its Operation Metro Surge, appear unconcerned with the perceived legitimacy of their operations in the local community. Institutional legitimacy in the police, military or other sectors means how much trust and confidence people have in them.
To be legitimate, a police or military organisation must establish and follow procedural rules, and act with public consent for its work. When groups like ICE act unfairly – through disrespectful interactions, racial profiling, use of force or the arbitrary killing of innocent bystanders – the public will not respect or support their activities.
ICE’s conduct erodes the support people have not only for ICE, but potentially for law enforcement and the law more generally. This is problematic for local police forces, since communities who do not see law enforcement as legitimate feel less obligated to follow police directives or obey the law, not to mention report crimes or provide crime tips. It will take state and local officials years to try to repair the damage ICE has done to law enforcement legitimacy in communities like Minneapolis.
Guardian policing is one way forward
ICE’s scorched-earth warrior approach is not the only way to do law enforcement. After George Floyd’s murder, state and local police departments in Minneapolis and beyond were forced to take a hard look at their relations with local communities, particularly in minority neighbourhoods.
While there were varying degrees of progress made with post-Floyd reforms, including the defunding of some police programmes and adoption of public health responses, what is clear is that continued warrior policing is not a sustainable law enforcement approach. Instead, effective and legitimate community relations require law enforcement to move towards the guardianship policing model.
Guardian policing sets law enforcement norms and values in the opposite direction from warrior policing. It focuses on building and enhancing legitimacy, community trust and confidence, on mutual respect and on encouraging police officers to have a sense of belonging to the communities they serve.
This community-focused approach requires a reduction in police violence and hostility toward communities, instead emphasising support, consideration, trust and goodwill. As my recent research on policing suggests, some local police already work in this way, with around one third of American police officers approaching the job as community guardians rather than as warriors.
Given that ICE surges appear poised to continue during the current administration, state and local law enforcement and public officials must lean into local guardian policing and other police reforms to counteract the devastating effects of these federal law enforcement efforts.
Tara Lai Quinlan is a qualified lawyer and Associate Professor in Law and Criminal Justice at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham.
Police Diversity by Tara Lai Quinlan is available for £28.99 on the Bristol University Press website here.
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