Trump wants to rename ICE to “NICE” as deaths in ICE custody reach record high

President Donald Trump floated renaming Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to National Immigration and Customs Enforcement — NICE — on Monday, 27 April.

“GREAT IDEA!!! DO IT.  President DJT,” Trump wrote via Truth Social on Monday alongside an image of a March post from right-wing influencer Alyssa Marie making the suggestion.

“I want Trump to change ICE to NICE (National Immigration and Customs Enforcement) so the media has to say NICE agents all day everyday,” Marie wrote.

The suggestion comes as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, remains unfunded by Congress.

Democrats have called for new restrictions on ICE’s operations or the abolition of the agency entirely, as its funding has ballooned under Trump and it leads the charge on the president’s mass deportation agenda.

Those calls for reform were inflamed by the January killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis when ICE and other federal agencies flooded the city for an operation that the president described as both targeting immigrants and serving as a punishment for the city and state’s Democratic leadership.

Earlier this month, ICE reported its 29th death of a detainee in its custody since October, the start of the fiscal year for the federal government, per NPR. That’s the highest total since the agency’s inception in 2003, surpassing the previous high of 28 deaths in the entirety of fiscal year 2004.

ICE and DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from PEOPLE on the deaths, nor the president’s proposal to rename the agency.

DHS told the outlet in an article published on April 17 that the deaths were attributable to the size of the immigrant population ICE is currently incarcerating, which has grown to 60,000 in a mix of existing facilities, areas of jails run by state and local governments, and hastily constructed new detention centers.

The department told the outlet that “death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population” and argued that for many immigrants detained and awaiting deportation, the administration is providing “the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

The most recent death, according to ICE, occurred on April 16 in Miami. The agency said 27-year-old Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt was found dead in his cell by a federal officer in what ICE described as an apparent “suicide attempt” by the Cuban man.

Other recent detainee deaths include a 19-year-old Mexican man who ICE also said died in an apparent suicide and a 41-year-old father of six from Afghanistan who fought alongside U.S. troops. The latter man died less than 24 hours after being detained.

In January, a Texas medical examiner determined the death of a 55-year-old Cuban detainee was a homicide at Camp East Montana, a hastily constructed tent facility on a military base in El Paso that houses thousands of immigrants and has seen at least three die in recent months, according to The Texas Tribune.

DHS denied the man’s death was a homicide at the time and claimed that he was attempting to kill himself when officers intervened before he died.

The 29 deaths total, based on ICE’s legally-mandated reports, do not include the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Nor does it include deaths like the Myanmar refugee Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a blind father of two who was found dead in Buffalo, N.Y., after Border Patrol agents allegedly left him alone, miles away from home.

Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed on Jan. 24 by federal officers in what the local medical examiner determined was a homicide. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed by ICE officer Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7. Her death was also ruled a homicide.

Criminal charges have not been filed in either shooting.

DHS officials and Trump himself have defended the actions of the federal officers in Minneapolis and laid the blame for the violence at the feet of protesters and Democratic politicians.

“A rebrand won’t distract us from the truth: this reprehensible agency murdered two Minnesotans in broad daylight,” wrote Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who frequently is in the president’s crosshairs, in response to Trump’s proposal on Monday. “Abolish ICE.”

 

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