For months, Democrats have insisted that ICE operations represent unchecked executive power. Under President Donald Trump, ICE has been framed as proof of creeping authoritarianism — a symbol of a president governing through force rather than law. That claim collapses once the legal structure governing immigration enforcement is separated from the emotion driving the narrative.

Trump’s immigration agenda does not rest on novel executive authority. Rather, it rests on statutes enacted by Congress over decades and signed by presidents of both parties. Enforcing those statutes is not an act of discretion layered on top of the law; it is the law. The executive branch does not possess the authority to selectively suspend enforcement simply because a policy has become politically controversial.

Much of the current rhetoric relies on a careless misuse of the term “dictatorship.” In constitutional terms, dictators bypass legislatures, override statutes, and consolidate unilateral power in defiance of institutional constraints. Trump’s immigration enforcement record reflects the opposite. He did not create a new deportation law. He did not invent ICE’s authority. He simply directed federal agencies to enforce existing immigration statutes that Congress passed and repeatedly declined or failed to repeal.

When Americans object to immigration enforcement itself, they are not actually objecting to Trump. They are objecting to Congress’s decisions — many of them bipartisan — and to statutory requirements that long predate the current administration. That distinction matters. A constitutional system cannot function if laws remain binding only until enforcement becomes unpopular.

The collapse of legal clarity is most evident in how enforcement has been described by the media and elected officials. The Independent recently published a column by historian Guy Walters arguing that ICE’s public presentation — particularly the clothing worn by Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino — reflected “one of the oldest tricks in the authoritarian playbook: aesthetic first, policy second.”

Other rhetoric has gone further. Representative Emily Randall declared that “using ICE agents to kill people in the streets is fascism,” a claim that insinuates ICE agents are murderers and is untethered from any serious legal or factual standard.

ICE agents do not operate as death squads. They execute warrants, make arrests authorized by statute, and operate under federal use-of-force guidelines that apply across law enforcement agencies. Treating every enforcement action as political violence erases the difference between state authority and lawlessness.

Even former President Barack Obama publicly rejected the idea that presidents could blatantly disregard deportation law. In a 2010 clip that has resurfaced, Obama addressed critics who urged him to halt deportations unilaterally. He responded that they were asking him to “ignore the laws on the books and put an end to deportation until we have better laws,” a demand he correctly described as unconstitutional.

Congress writes the law. The executive enforces it. When enforcement disappears while statutes remain intact, the separation of powers breaks down. Selective non-enforcement does not preserve democracy; it transfers legislative power to the executive by default.

None of this denies the moral complexity of immigration policy. Families are affected. Communities feel the consequences of enforcement decisions. But emotion does not replace constitutional responsibility. The executive branch does not have the authority to nullify a law in response to public pressure, any more than courts can rewrite statutes in response to popular demand.

Immigration enforcement under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and even to some extent Joe Biden reflects the same underlying principle: laws enacted by Congress remain binding until Congress changes them. The debate Americans should be having is not whether enforcement itself is authoritarian, but whether the statutes being enforced should be amended or repealed through the legislative process.

Calling enforcement “fascism” may generate headlines, but it obscures the real issue. The Rule of Law does not end when enforcement becomes uncomfortable. It ends when laws are treated as optional.