> Deporting everyone who isn't in the country legally is their mission

This is not in fact the stated mission of the agency.

That would put them in the criminal record column, unless you mean "without legal review", ie anyone they feel like?

It is extremely important to distinguish between people who are here illegally and people who are subject to a deportation order. ICE's mission is to deport people with deportation orders, and get people suspected of breaking the law in front of a court. The way you've worded it makes it sound like their mission is to go straight from "here illegally" to "deport" which it very much is not.

I outright think deporting every person here undocumented now is not ethical, or beneficial to society, given the history of immigration and enforcement in this country.

https://wannabewonk.com/how-are-they-different/

>Many of the discussions above are based on a central fact: Undocumented immigrants are here, now, in large numbers. In a world where America had zero undocumented residents, arguments could be made to be less tolerant of their presence, to discourage them from being here. It wouldn't be patently inhumane to deport someone if they have been here weeks, rather than years or decades.

A serious, ethical attempt to reduce illegal immigration would be to set a path to legal, documented residence for all current non-felon aliens, and begin "undocumented" enforcement with a clean slate.

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edit to reply to Izikiel43 since my participation in the thread has been throttled:

Is it incomprehensible that we could have a compromise solution not involving deportation of tens of millions of people, while at the same time implementing employment validation and other checks that begin actually doing immigration enforcement before families settle?

You assume that a path to legal citizenship for long-time residents here would 100% mean the situation would repeat itself, and I disagree.

"Protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety."

It’s also the federal government’s job to go around arresting everybody carrying or smoking weed, as it is still illegal no matter what any state says and every single person consuming it is a lawbreaker.

Should they go around and do that too?

The law dictates who can be deported, generally not who must be deported.

Who must be deported is mostly left up to discretion.

And since deportation is very expensive and drastic - an option of last resort - it's usually better for all involved to come up with other arrangements.

Most prior presidents had good sense enough to understand that mass deportation is a major foot-gun, politically and economically. And kind of morally monstrous.

For better or worse, the arrangement that's been informally agreed upon is to let most of the undocumented who have been here a long time, remain (dreamers, etc).

Sadly, that left them all vulnerable to the discretion of a capricious criminal wanna-be dictator like Trump.

That wasn't the campaign promise and isn't worth spending money on. Also they are deporting and detaining people who are here legally and even killing American citizens. Even if it isn't a official mission it's the inevitable side effect of funding a domestic law enforcement agency like a military and making them explicitly beholden to a political agenda.