The Pour Over Today - TPO Explains: What Is ICE and How Does It Actually Operate?

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, they’re explaining ICE. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠Cru⁠ ⁠Wild Alaskan⁠ ⁠Safe House Project⁠ ⁠Gloo⁠ ⁠QAVA⁠ ⁠CCCU⁠ ⁠Filament Bible⁠ ⁠Upside⁠ ⁠Mosh⁠ ⁠LMNT⁠ ⁠Theology in the Raw⁠ ⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast⁠ ⁠Bible Gateway Plus⁠ The Pour Over Corrections Page

All right, folks, today we are talking about ice. And I had plenty of questions coming into this episode, such as where does ice even stand in the government structure? Do you even know what ice is? Do you know what stands for? I didn't even know what it stood for. What goes into becoming an ice agent? Why do they wear masks? That was my question.

What's the jurisdiction? Like who has the power when you mix ice with state government, local law enforcement? Yeah. Why was ICE even created taking a place? back that far. And what goes into deciding acting upon a mission with these with ICE enforcement? Yeah. How's it different from Border Patrol? Lots of aspects that we'll dig into today. Kathleen, okay, you were just explaining before we hit record that you got tendinitis in your shoulder? Well, I think so. I don't know. My shoulder was hurting. And then I went to the

carburetor and I was like can you fix my shoulder and she said oh you have tendinitis and I said how did I do that and she was like I don't know this is embarrassing I don't want to talk about anymore um she was like oh well did you do bicep curls and I said I did do bicep girls and then she was like maybe you're using too heavy of a weight and I thought to myself man I was only using 20s so embarrassing but Reps matter because 100 reps of 20 pounds. It was not 100. He was like 15.

Splitting to two steps. Oh, my. Well, what's, okay, so what's the regimen here? What do you need to do to get out of this tendonitis? I don't know. She just said rest, but I have no idea. I was trying to Google it a little bit. And it was like, yeah, it usually resolves pretty quickly like a couple weeks.

I'm like, weeks. How am I supposed to get swole? like I gotta rest my tendons I don't know I'm hoping that it'll just like go away if I continue to ignore it So if you're gonna just keep working out It's just gonna go away because you're not gonna think about it Yeah maybe I'll just like build up muscle around it is that how that works If you're a doctor let me know

Yeah folks in the chat if you know the cure for tendonitis of the shoulder Kathleen needs your help So embarrassing I'm trying to do like a push-up challenge where you do like 10 push-ups every day And, I mean, I still do them today. And I thought to myself, like, am I making it worse? Like, I don't know. 10 push-ups a day for every day this year?

Forever, yeah. Forever. Well, for the year, yeah. Zan's doing it, so I have to do it, too. Is it just you two that are committing to this? No, it's like the whole, like, nourish move of love that we follow their workout programs. It's like a thing. So I tried to make James do them the other day, and they were the, that's my five-year-old.

He just turned five on my. Happy birthday, James. He keeps asking me if he's still five. I'm like, yeah, buddy, still five. But anyway, I tried to make him do the push-ups a couple days ago, and they were the worst push-ups I've ever seen. I mean, just terrible form, so I have a long way to go. Just awful.

Yeah, yeah. You'll notice folks that it's just Kathleen and I today. Just the two of us. Because Mr. Jason just ditched us. He did. Honestly, it was just like a last minute message. He's like, hey, I'm traveling, figure it out. It was much kinder than that.

So, yeah, you have the A team finally. That's right. Yeah. No distractions. Yeah. Actually, only distractions. The dad is out of the house. Yeah.

Now it's time to party. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. All right. Should I go ahead and introduce this topic? Let's talk about it.

Okay. Well, this has been huge in the news lately. There's so much controversy. So, yeah, I do want to provide kind of the playing field here as we get into this topic that, you know, it's a sensitive topic. We are going to talk more about ICE. We've seen that in the news a lot recently. And a lot of banter going back and forth, even on the emails and the podcast that we've sent out, just reporting on the news surrounding ICE. And so we wanted to take this episode to dive in more into ice and all things.

And just explain what it is. Like what should you picture when you hear about an ice agent and ice raid, just explaining what it is? Let's just talk about some facts. What were you just saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we had a Bible study member who has since moved for, residency in the medical field.

But he is of the Gen Z generation, and I was so thankful for that because he was providing our Bible study, providing me, honestly, just the newest lingo. And so one time we said something, and he just was so excited and amped up, and he said, facts, no printer. Okay. Facts, no printer. All right, so no printers allowed. We're just given facts today.

Okay, so let's just, let's start with what is ICE. Like, do you know what it stands for? Not off the top of my head, actually. Okay. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So any guesses on when ICE, like, became a thing? Because you were just saying, like, you know it's not new. Yeah.

My first thought was 9-11. Yeah. Is that when it started? 2003, so after 9-11. And that was actually going to be one of my questions, but it's such. to softball, like what event do you think changed the course of, of Homeland Security? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was 9-11.

So after 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security actually wasn't even a thing before 9-11. It was created with the Homeland Security Act in 2002. And so before that, and it was kind of, I was listening to, you know, some podcast preparing for this episode. And just it was kind of interesting when 9-11 happened. all 19 of the hijackers were in the United States on some sort of like tourist or business or student visa and four had overstayed and several had like false documents and had lied on applications and so there's just kind of this question of like is there not a way for all these departments to talk to each other and kind of protect the homeland was the big thing so um the department of

homeland security brought together 22 organizations and kind of made it a lot easier for departments to work together to, you know, try and foresee things like that, you know, prevent things like that. So very helpful to set the stage. 9-11 happens. Then they created the Department of Homeland Security. And so when they did that and brought, like I said, those 22 departments, they ended up merging some, changing some.

So from there, that's where you ended up having ice. So ice is a part of the Department of Homeland. Homeland Security. Got it. It is one arm of the Department of Homeland Security. Okay. Do you know any of the departments of Homeland Security? Like I said there were 22 and some of them have been kind of combined and changed names,

but what do you think is in the Department of Homeland Security? All right. When I'm thinking of that department and also 9-11 that we established, like started this, the TSA came out from that event too, right? Yep. It did. And then Secret Service also was brought in. I guess makes sense.

They should be informed on protecting the homeland. The Coast Guard is part of Homeland Security, not Department of Defense. And so I think during war times, they can report to the Navy, but they protect the homeland. They protect our coastlands. Coastlands? So then when it comes to immigration, you have within Homeland Security, you have three, like distinct, well, you have more than that, but three distinct entities that kind of makes sense for this conversation. So you have Customs and Border Patrol. So that's who's enforcing immigration law at our borders.

Okay. And then you have ICE, which is Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. And then you have the like sort of judicial-ish who would handle immigration stuff. So that's the U.S. citizenship and immigration services. So when you're thinking, like when we did the episode on Asylum, that would be U.S. CIS. I think it's this acronym. So they're kind of handling who's going to court for immigration stuff. Like when you're appealing for or when you're applying for visas and stuff like that, that's that group.

So when it comes to enforcement, you have Border Patrol and then ICE. And so ICE is within not the borders right in the United States enforcing immigration law. Okay. I'm understanding that. Okay. Yeah. I don't know how we got here. Took us a minute.

Okay. So kind of gives you an understanding of where they fit into the hierarchy of the government maybe. Yeah. No, that definitely was coming into this conversation. One of my first questions was, where in the government structure does ICE even lie? So that was really helpful. My next thought or thing I want to ask you is who can be an ICE agent? Like who are these people that are training to be part of this team?

Yeah. Um, an ICE agent has to be a U.S. citizen. They have to be at least 21 years old. Um, they have to be under 37 years old. Um, wait, over 21 and under 37. That's kind of a tight age window. I know. I wonder where that comes from.

I don't know. I guess you need to be agile. Yeah. Um, not that you can't be agile if you're over 37. But the 10 to 9th already starts to kick in. It starts early. Yeah. Um, okay.

So it's at the time of applying. So under 37 to apply to be a criminal investigator, but under 40 for ERO agents. And then there's like different ages for other divisions. And then there's also potentially age waivers for veterans who want to apply. And you have to have a bachelor's degree. They prefer if there's some sort of like criminal justice or homeland security degree, prior law enforcement or military experience can strengthen the applicant. but it's not required.

And then you have to pass background checks, drug tests, fitness exams, medical exams. And then it kind of depends on the department again. But for enforcement officers, you can expect about 27 weeks of training. Oh, gotcha. What's that? Half a year? Six months?

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It's just anecdotally it could strengthen your application. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So there's two enforcement divisions. You have Homeland Security Investigations. So they kind of, if you think of what the FBI does, think of that but transnationally.

So this is criminal stuff. So this is like terrorism, national security threats, smuggling of narcotics or people, anything like that, anything criminal like that, they're doing the criminal stuff. So then you have enforcement and removal operations, ERO. And I think when most people think of ICE agents and ICE activity, that's what they're picturing. So that's going to be the apprehension, detention, and removal of undocumented immigrants. So they do target public safety threats. So they state that their mission is to find undocumented immigrants and specifically public safety threats. But they, broadly speaking, uphold immigration law.

And so as it's written, you know, if you're here illegally, that's breaking immigration law. But one of the distinctions between the two enforcement divisions, the Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations is Homeland Security Investigations, they're going to be investigating criminal activity. And then immigration law itself is civil. So do you know the distinction between like criminal and civil like why that would matter to To distinguish between the two? I was afraid. Yeah. Okay, you looked it up, which makes me feel a bit better because I was afraid you're going to ask me.

So civil compared to criminal, you know, I think you're teeing up here. It's either more severe or less severe. With civil, I would just, I don't know, is it less severe? Yeah, I think I think one of the things that was helpful for me is, um, I think, um, I think, When you hear, like, ICE is, has somebody detained, potentially you could think, like, oh, it's a criminal. And technically, like, that's a civil offense. And so I think just separating out, like, the potential, like,

the way you think about the people that maybe are being detained by ICE, like, yes, they broke the law by overstaying their visa or whatever it is. But to say that they've committed a criminal offense is not technically accurate. And then the other, the like more administrative side of it is there's no guaranteed public defender with civil offenses, no jury trial. And the warrants are, they like don't have to be signed by a judge. Their administrative warrants. The procedures happen like outside of criminal court. So it's just more more administrative.

So it's less severe in some cases as far as like you're not going to trial and having to, you know, have a jury. decide if you meant to overstay your visa or not. But then you're also not getting a public defender. So, you know. Yeah, depending on how you look at it, actually, from an administrative standpoint, I think this was a helpful distinction that you made. It like expedites or can streamline the process. Yeah.

Yeah. And what all that entails. Yeah. I did see. So ICE will put on their website, like, press releases of who they've just arrested and removed, which is interesting. Like to see one of them was this long list of like, I mean, heinous crimes that people had create.

And they're like, this person's here illegally, has had a removal order for X amount of years. We found them. We are removing them. And then one of the people was like, this person has been removed. They were convicted of murder. Served their half, most of their sentence, I think it was in North Carolina, served most of their.

sentence was released from jail and then ICE removed them. And so it's like criminally, he was charged, served his time, and then civilly, ICE was like, yeah, and you still can't stay. So it's kind of interesting, like how the two potentially like work together or are separate, but also work together. So yeah, other examples, I know I said visa overstay, you could miss a court date. That's a civil offense for immigration law, your status violation. if you have a removal order, you know, if any of those things would be reasons why you could pop up on ICE's list. Did you find in your research common ways that people get put on the radar of ICE?

Yeah. There are a lot of sources for information for ICE. So first, ICE could use its own records. That's different departments. It could be book. hearings, arrests, investigations, custody status case notes. If HSI conducts an investigation on like fraud or smuggling and shares the identity of somebody who could be removable, then ERO could take that and start investigating a person. I can pull from other DHS systems

like Border Patrol or Citizenship and Immigration. That could be visa applications, border crossings, overstays, immigration status. I could receive state or local enforcement, law enforcement booking information. So if somebody's already in custody, I do want to say any of the state and local information sharing would depend on state and local policies. And that varies widely across the country. I can also use public and commercial data. So DMV records, publicly available online information like social media posts, court filings, property records, anything like that they can use to confirm identities. And then, again, it's all filtered through their internal policies.

So arrests are not automatic. They typically result from information coming from a lot of different places that's then reviewed and weighed against like their legal authority and then priorities. So all of these databases share with each other. And so a hit can trigger, you know, if they, let's say a person's name is in the system for overstaying their visa. So they've applied for a visa and there's an expiration date on that. The expiration date has passed. They have their name there. And then that person gets pulled over and, you know, shares their ID.

And then now ICE knows where they are. And, you know, they've, they have broken the civil law by overstaying. Right. And so technically ICE can go and find them and remove them. Gotcha. Okay. That's helpful. Or get them in removal proceedings.

Right. Right. And just take them to the border and, you know, but they'll start the process of like, okay, now you have a court date. Now you need to. I think the progression was like arrest, detainment, and then legal proceedings. And so they can be detained while they're waiting for their case to proceed. Gotcha.

So one of the other questions that I think a lot of people have had is how ICE can work with other law enforcement agencies. Yes. I think you were saying earlier, you have questions about that. Yeah. Before we hit record, I was wondering like the jurisdiction, the authority, like, where does the authority lie when you have ice and local law enforcement and state governments and how does that all work together and who at the end of the day has the power? Yeah.

So local law enforcement is local. So they'll enforce local laws and state laws and ICE agents are federal. And so they're kind of just two distinct entities. they can work together. Like I think that there's a program actually for like local law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE. And sometimes they don't want to because they, you know, let's say that there's something going on locally and the police want to maintain like a trustworthy presence. And so they don't want to be seen as like this. There's just this negative connotation with ICE agents.

And so sometimes they don't want to work together. But there is a program for that where they can work together. And then if you, like you mentioned, the National Guard, if they come in, they're going to report to whoever activated them. So if it's a state activation, then they'll report to state authorities. And if it's a federal activation, they'll report to federal authorities. Gotcha. So kind of, and they can do joint operations, but there's still three distinct entities. Yeah, yep.

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What other questions did you have when I told you we were going to talk about? I was trying to visualize what goes into like a, and I don't know if this is the right term, folks, so I apologize, but like a mission. I'm just going to call it a mission where perhaps they, the, you mentioned the homeland investigations, they've done a lot of their due diligence research. you know, they have the criminal charges against said person. And then, you know, they go and target this person in a mission, right? Like what goes into deciding like, yep, we're going to activate it and go after this individual or this group? I don't exactly know. But I was trying to visualize what all goes into something like that.

Yeah. As far as like the criminal investigations, there's. broad legal authority to conduct those investigations. And so I think they operate a lot like I said, like the FBI does. Like they're going to be, I don't know, I just keep picturing like crime shows where they're, you know, tracking things down. I think a lot of the more nebulous, like how do the operations work or with the civil cases?

Like the, what is it? I already forgot what it stands for, the ERO. So just how did they operate? Because I think a lot of times people hear like ice raids. And it's like what should I picture when I hear ice raid? Right. So because a lot of a lot of the ERO enforcement and it involves trying to locate and arrest and like detain the individuals who have broken immigration law. And that can happen like at workplaces in public areas.

I think one of like the FAQs on the ICE website was like, can ICE arrest you in a courtroom? And the answer is like yes. So if you have a court date and you show up to it, can I arrest you if you've also broken? Like, you know, the law. I mean, the answer is yes. And so which complicates things because then people, you know, people have a court date and they're afraid to show up to their court date because they think they might be detained. Right. But they're not random.

I guess is the biggest thing to take away from this. A lot of times, like, there are people who are on the list, especially if, you know, they say they prioritize threats to national security. And so if this person is perceived to be, like, a credible threat, then they're going to be on the list, and ICE is going to go try and find them. There's also, like, an emphasis on workplace practices. And so if a workplace is suspected for, you know, illegal immigration practices and having undocumented workers, then they'll go and raid that workplace.

Yeah. So I guess the biggest takeaway is that it's not random. Yeah. That it's because somebody's on their list and they want to identify that person. Or, I mean, it does say, you know, if they have credible suspicion that somebody is here illegally, then they'll detain them for questioning to find out if that's the case. That's huge, Kathleen, because, you know, I'll just share a personal anecdote. Like, you know, I saw on Instagram, this was months ago.

ago and just a shared video someone at a local grocery store. There's a video circulating about a with an ICE agent, just walking in broad daylight, like regular business hours and you have the patrons that are just there grabbing their groceries and all of a sudden there's this whole scene. And all I got was the Instagram video. I have no context. I have no background and, you know, people will just make their, their conclusions based off, you know, this clip that we don't know what went into it.

So I think that's really big a takeaway for me personally because to know that there is some prioritization on public safety or they got this specific credible tip on this individual or this group or this company with some practices that are not following the rules. So that, I think, just to make it with real life here, you know, an anecdote there. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of those types of videos going around. And it's hard to not look at them and be like, and you see headlines too. And I don't know.

I think that trying to understand that there's probably all more to the story and there's context and there's, you know, at some point, there's reasonable suspicion for something, even if they've gotten it wrong. I don't know. It's hard to, it's hard to see some of the videos sometimes and not remember, I don't know, and not have trust. Right. Yeah. I think context is important and it's hard to see some of that stuff and remember that.

But, I mean, at least, so ICE's website, they say they prioritize. Like, of course, if their mission is to enforce immigration. immigration law. Like if you, like we've said a few times, overstay a visa or something like that, like, yes, you have broken immigration law. But it seems like historically ICE has said they prioritize like their list of who they're looking for based on people of violent, people convicted of violent crimes, gang activity, drugs, weapons, terrorism, and people who are on final deportation orders. So it feels like at least from what they say their priorities are. priorities are, they're looking for the true, like, threats to national security within the scope of and they've overstayed their orders. Like, they're a bad guy and they've overstayed their orders. Now we can go and do something about it. Yeah, that's very helpful. I didn't realize, like, that that's like a stated thing that we've seen from them to say, hey, here's how we do focus our efforts and prioritize and make decisions on who we're prioritizing to interact with.

Yeah. Let's see. Did you have any other questions about ice? You answered all of my initial questions going into this. I think you're just being nice. I don't know if I answered anything. I will say one of the questions I wanted to know is why they were always wearing masks. Have you noticed that? No, I haven't. So when you see like images of ice agents doing their thing, a lot of times they have masks pulled up. And at first I was like, oh, they're somewhere where it's cold. But it's actually more. widespread than that and it um from what I was able to find actually last year there's this like sort of influx in knew what doxing is isn't that where someone's location is triggered as like no oh well maybe I don't know you might have been going to get there but um like if let's say somebody

were to recognize an ice agent and then they say do you see this guy like his family lives at this location like they go and like personally um they they use their their identity against them um so in an effort to protect ice agents from doxing that's when they started wearing masks more widespread which is wild wow okay it just goes to show like I said earlier like this negative connotation like to the point where they feel like they have to like wear masks to hide their identities, which of course doesn't do great things for people's perception of them. But yeah, when you think about it from that perspective, just understanding like these are people who might have families and feel the need to hide

their identity. It's kind of wild. Right. Wow. No, I did not know or realize that was a common thing. This is closest. We're going to get to fun facts on this topic. Yeah, I know.

Yeah. I told you guys from the beginning. This is big in the news, but it's definitely a heavy topic, but we're not going to steer clear just because it's a more sensitive topic. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I have a Christian perspective. Yes, let's do that.

So while I was researching this, and I know I always say, well, maybe not always. I think I'm always like a choose humility or an above all love. But above all love really stood out to me on this one just because there's so many, like, people that. parties at play and, you know, whether it's an undocumented immigrant, whether it's an ICE agent, anyone in between, anyone who feels differently than I do on this subject, like Christians are called to have, you know, compassion for our neighbors. We are called to seek justice. We are supposed to love everyone, right? And so the Bible verse that came to mind was just that Bible verse in First John that says we love because he first loved us and and remembering that that includes everyone.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's a lot of our dynamics here and different perspectives. And my takeaway here is context is so important. So I appreciate you bring up like all the behind the scenes that go into a decision and not putting my trust into just some short video clip and not knowing all the details and the things like that go into it. it. Yeah. I mean, just broadly speaking, if you consider why this organization exists and, you know, then also consider that two things can be true. Like we can have, you know, empathy for and love for people who are fearful of ICE and we can also have, you know, appreciation for and love for ICE agents. Like two things can be true. So, and that's not to

to ignore any of the contentious aspects of this topic. But just, you know, yeah, that was my takeaway. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us on another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for tuning in.

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