Those who back a scared dog into a corner than blame it for biting have a fundamental misunderstanding of their own culpability. Our Kentucky legislators would force us into the same corner should they insist our local law enforcement agencies work against our better interests of safety to instead aid masked ICE agents routinely operating outside the bounds of law.
There are several bills facing Kentucky’s legislature this year that would require forms of capitulation to federal ICE agents’ demands by our local law enforcement. In no way are these bills meant to keep us safer, but rather to keep us quiet. They are meant to force Latino members of our community — both with papers and without — into hiding from the violent federal agents roaming by the thousands, unchecked and armed on our streets. Anyone who supports them will also become targets.
The guise of helping law enforcement is a powerful draw for Kentucky voters. We are a commonwealth of neighbors, trying to do better for one another while sharing shrinking resources. We support the thin blue line between us and anarchy.
However, bills such as Senate Bill 86 work against the interests of our communities by entwining the limited resources of our local law enforcement agents — who know our communities’ needs the best — with the masked aggression of anonymous federal agents. Yet their missions are diametrically opposed.
Violence, fear, and civil rights violations increase dramatically in communities that fall under the shadow of ICE. As reported by the National Immigration Law Center, anonymous ICE agents have shot and killed at least nine people in the past five months, “and 2025 is on record as the deadliest year for immigrants in ICE custody in more than two decades.”
As NBC reported this week, ICE agents have shot a total of 11 people since September, showing “a pattern that policing experts say is alarming: officers firing into cars and injuring and killing drivers.” Further, there have been no public reports of investigations into those officers’ use of deadly force, including whether it was justified or the officers were disciplined, reported NBC.
To put it plainly, ICE officers are using deadly force outside the constraints of the rule of law, shooting and killing their targets with less oversight than a DoorDash driver.
Federal agents tired of peaceful protestors have been reportedly using illegal surveillance tactics against them, such as license plate readers and personal information on car registrations. Such data is reserved for an active criminal investigation, according to John Boehler, policy counsel with ACLU of Minnesota in a report by Minnesota Public Radio.
As he told MPR, “Following or observing or reporting on federal agencies or federal activities is not a criminal activity - it’s protected First Amendment activity. To be using those cameras, to use those license plate readers, to surveil protesters has a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, and that’s what we think the goal is.”
Nor will propping up ICE in our communities take our county’s worst criminals off the streets. Long dead is the assumption ICE agents are deporting the “worst of the worst.” As reported by the Deportation Data Project, about 75,000 people taken by ICE through September of last year had no criminal record. Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, noted on NPR last month that this figure was equal to more than a third of all ICE arrests.
“Of those that do have a criminal conviction, we know from previous reports from ICE and experience that we’ve done research on that the majority of those criminal convictions tend to be traffic violations or lower-level offenses,” Soto told NPR in December.
The violent criminals putting our communities in danger are more likely heavily armed ICE agents attacking bystanders with chemical agents, more so than the Hispanic family who has lived next door for 20 years with nothing more than a speeding ticket on their record.
Surely an agency so obesely well-funded as ICE has no need for small-town material support, either. ICE’s budget has tripled since 2024, and now tops $28.7 billion. For perspective, the Muhlenberg County Sheriff’s Department was allotted less than $2 million in the county’s 2023-2024 budget.
So why does a heavily armed, well-equipped military such as ICE — with the supreme might of the federal government — need to demand our local officers support them in their slide towards violence? It isn’t for our own officers’ safety, or for community peace and order. It isn’t due to a lack of resources. It isn’t to quell any sudden rise in crime.
Rather it is to push us aside, ensuring local officers who care for us are equally hogtied, thus allowing anonymous federal agents to bulldoze over any civil rights they find too cumbersome: due process, freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, restraint and oversight when using deadly force.
The ACLU has already expressed serious concern regarding the aim of such legislation and its potential to undermine local agencies’ ability to keep their communities safe.
“Using local law enforcement to go after immigrants will mean more racial profiling, more people afraid to seek police protection, more fear in our communities, and more Black and Brown people in immigrant detention,” wrote the non-profit in a letter to Congress.
If Kentuckians hope to retain faith in the rule of law, then it makes no sense to wed our own underpaid hometown heroes to the whims of the president’s overly funded para-military regime. Our officers of the law cannot serve two masters while our communities and civil rights are torn asunder. Instead, local law officers should stand on the side of the law, the Constitution, and the communities they call home.
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