The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), far from being an unfortunate bureaucratic misstep, represents a meticulous continuation of state-sanctioned racial subjugation. The organisation does not merely enforce immigration law; it embodies the operational logic of a system built—quite literally—on unpaid labour, racial hierarchy, and legally sanctioned cruelty.

This article serves as a follow-up to ICE: The shadow of unchecked power, moving beyond symptoms and into the structural bones of the matter. We shall trace three interlocking chains: the legal codification of slavery via the 13th Amendment, the evolution of concentration camp logic in immigration enforcement, and the ideological inheritance ICE receives from the American South’s slavery economy.

Spoiler: it is all going rather swimmingly for the oppressors.

The 13th Amendment: A loophole large enough to drive a prison-industrial complex through

The 13th Amendment, popularly celebrated for abolishing slavery, does no such thing. The text reads:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime… shall exist within the United States.”

That small clause—“except as a punishment for crime”—has quietly enabled the rebranding of slavery into a booming carceral economy. In the immediate aftermath of emancipation, the Southern states wasted no time criminalising mundane behaviour (vagrancy, loitering, existing while Black) to arrest newly freed persons and lease their labour back to private industry. One might call it capitalism’s version of recycling.

Fast-forward to the 21st century: approximately two million people in the US remain legally enslaved. This includes thousands of ICE detainees—individuals not convicted of crimes, but merely awaiting deportation or adjudication. They clean detention facilities, prepare food, and carry out custodial work for private contractors such as GEO Group and CoreCivic. Remuneration ranges from 13 to 40 cents per hour, or in some cases, precisely nothing at all. One might observe that the modern free market has truly mastered the art of “cost efficiency.”

This is not “rehabilitation.” It is not “orderly procedure.” It is coerced labour under threat of solitary confinement or basic necessities being withheld. And it is entirely legal—because the law, it turns out, still believes slavery to be an excellent business model, provided one avoids calling it by name.

Concentration camp logic, with American branding

To suggest that ICE facilities resemble concentration camps is not hyperbole; It is historical pattern recognition. The essential features are all present: targeted confinement based on group identity, indefinite detention, isolation from legal and medical support, and routine psychological and physical abuse. Add barbed wire, subtract accountability, and you are almost there.

Historians such as Andrea Pitzer have observed that Donald Trump’s proposed mass deportation scheme—cheerfully revived in 2024—bears remarkable similarity to the architecture of internment in authoritarian regimes. The plans call for the construction of large-scale detention centres, military coordination for civilian round-ups, and the suspension of due process under the convenient euphemism of “expedited removal.” One need not squint terribly hard to see the resemblance to historical events we swore never to repeat.

The phrase “concentration camp” may be distasteful to some ears. One suspects this has less to do with accuracy and more to do with discomfort. Americans, by and large, prefer their atrocities to be euphemised. They are much happier discussing “processing centres” and “migration management facilities” than acknowledging the reality of caged children, denied asylum seekers, and forced labourers.

True, there are no gas chambers. And if one must not use the term “camp,” perhaps we might settle for “profit-optimised ethnic warehouse.” The resemblance remains striking.

Southern plantation logic in federal uniform

Florida Representative Angie Nixon recently described ICE detention centres as “modern-day concentration camps.” Critics called this inflammatory. One might suggest that the only thing truly inflamed is their discomfort with the truth.

The geographical placement of ICE facilities speaks volumes. A disproportionate number are located in Southern states, particularly in rural areas where the carceral economy is one of the few growth industries. Staff are often drawn from people groomed to hate (Life, take two! youtube) and in general from communities steeped in the disciplinary traditions of the American South: punishment as order, whiteness as civility, and cruelty as civic duty.

Reports from detainees confirm the thematic consistency. Racial slurs, denial of medical care, retaliation for minor infractions, arbitrary solitary confinement—none of this is accidental. It is cultural continuity with a federal budget and a digital intake system.

Where once overseers carried whips, now they carry tasers and clipboards. The uniforms have changed, the ideology has not. ICE may not display a Confederate flag above its compounds, but it does not need to—the policy speaks for itself.

A bipartisan industry of silence and profit

Here, one might hope for principled resistance from the political class. One would, of course, be mistaken. The machinery of detention runs on bipartisan fuel. Democrats tut and wring their hands about “the need for reform,” while approving budgets that expand ICE operations. Republicans, meanwhile, have dispensed with subtlety altogether, openly proposing internment and mass deportation as planks of electoral strategy.

Private prison contractors have ensured the arrangement remains lucrative. GEO Group and CoreCivic make handsome profits off ICE contracts, while lavishing campaign donations across the political spectrum. The NGOs and “detention monitoring” outfits do little more than rubber-stamp the system, offering therapeutic palliatives while avoiding the question of abolition.

The mainstream media, predictably, obfuscates. Headlines speak of “border crises” and “migrant surges,” never quite managing to mention that these so-called surges are composed of people fleeing war, poverty, and US-sponsored destabilisation. Instead of asking how many people should be helped, the press asks how many can be “processed”—a term better suited to meatpacking than human rights.

Not broken. Built this way.

ICE is not a rogue institution. It is the logical endpoint of American law, politics, and economy when those systems prioritise order over justice, racial hierarchy over equity, and profit over human dignity.

To abolish ICE is not a radical demand. It is the bare minimum required to demonstrate that the country has any interest whatsoever in distancing itself from its foundational sins. The same goes for the 13th Amendment’s exception clause. A nation cannot abolish slavery while maintaining its legal right to enslave.

One cannot reform ICE any more than one can “improve” a lynching. It is not malfunctioning—it is succeeding.

The chains are legal. The camps are operating. The silence is profitable.

The question is: Who benefits from keeping it this way?

PS: A brief list of suggestions for the not entirely helpless

  • Support the Abolition Amendment, currently proposed to remove the exception clause from the US Constitution. One might imagine a civilised nation would prefer not to have a slavery carve-out.
  • Divest from the detention industry. Demand universities, municipalities, and pension funds stop investing in CoreCivic and GEO Group.
  • Treat asylum as a right, not a PR inconvenience. It is not that difficult. It simply requires a functioning moral compass.
  • Do not wait for permission. Systems of control rarely dismantle themselves. Ask anyone who has ever been inside one.