America on Thin ICE
A Canadian angle, grain of salt included
Reading time: 5 minutes
punditman says…
Of all the disastrous and outrageous policies, and all the wanton cruelty and corruption of the Trump regime, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids shock me the most.
As a Canadian observer, I’ve developed a theory. Like many theories, it’s not provable. That’s why it’s a theory.
It goes like this: what we’re seeing in America—armed, masked thugs in unmarked vehicles kidnapping people off the streets, from stores, schools, and workplaces, smashing windows and dragging people from their cars—would spark greater pushback in Canada, if something like this were to unfold.
Duh, no kidding, Punditman…Canadians are too nice! But I’m not trying to be Captain Obvious.
The reason for my shock is that Americans are supposedly all about individual rights. Distrust of government overreach is baked into their DNA, especially on the conservative side of the spectrum. In theory, that means standing up for everyone’s rights because if you don’t, guess what? Your rights will be violated next! So goes the theory.
On the other hand, Canadians tend to whine a lot about the government, but will defer to authority when they perceive it as legitimate, often grudgingly.
UCLA law professor Jonathan Zasloff says ICE has effectively been operating with “impunity,” even as both legal immigrants and American citizens are targeted in the raids. (A recent ProPublica investigation found that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained as of Oct. 5).
“They could break all these constitutional rights and nothing could happen to them,” he said.
Call me naive but I thought there would be way more resistance in the U.S. from what’s left of Never Trump Republicans, and the media, and those hapless Democrats.
I still can’t get my head around it.
Despite what anyone thinks of any particular prime minister, Canadians haven’t even come close to electing an out-and-out gangster like Trump, whose moral failings and carnival-barker idiocy are on another level entirely.
But it’s not as if the country hasn’t seen abuses of state power—whether it was the War Measures Act of 1970 (arguably), the internment of Japanese Canadians and the dispossession of their property during WWII, or the long, ongoing injustices inflicted on Indigenous peoples.
But even if a real Trump-style authoritarian took charge here, I doubt they could get away with the type of draconian abuses of immigrants we’re witnessing in the U.S.
I like to think our collective psyche would snap.
It’s not because we don’t have racism or extremism.
And it’s not because we don’t have issues with immigration. No country gets that completely right.
In fact, according to a December 2024 poll, nearly half of all Canadians would support mass deportations as necessary to stop illegal migration. And a Fall 2025 poll indicates 56% believe the country accepts too many immigrants, a significant increase from previous years.
Nonetheless, even if some government tried to roll out such extreme measures here—no doubt there’d be some Maple MAGA types cheering it on, but I can’t picture Canadians overall tolerating the kind of cruelty we’re watching unfolding against refugees, immigrants (documented or not), and minorities like we’re seeing under Trump 2.0.
I like to think that our sense of fairness and balance would hold sway.
I believe we have a national instinct against bullying, kind of an unwritten rule. If someone goes too far, we seek justice in order to put things back in balance—like the hockey enforcer stepping in to protect a teammate from a cheap shot, ensuring the game doesn’t spiral out of control.
In 2022, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” or “Truckers’ Protest” deeply divided Canadians, prompting intense debate over public safety, civil liberties, and government overreach. And because the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act to respond to the blockades, it was legally required to establish the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC). Led by Justice Paul Rouleau, the POEC concluded in 2023 that the government did meet the Act’s high threshold. While also acknowledging serious failures in policing coordination and federal–provincial cooperation, the commission ultimately found that the national situation—especially border blockades and rising security risks—justified the temporary emergency powers. It also issued 56 recommendations related to policing, intelligence, and online misinformation.
However, in early 2024, the Federal Court subsequently ruled that the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because the legal threshold for a national emergency had not been met. In other words, existing laws could have dealt with the circumstances. This put the court at odds with the POEC, creating a situation where two oversight bodies reached the opposite conclusion.
How’s that for balance?
***
Recent human rights reports tracking people that ICE has deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison are beyond grim. This Mother Jones report, based on a Human Rights Watch / Cristosal investigation, shows that many Venezuelans deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega‑prison—even some with no serious criminal record—endured systematic torture: beatings, sleep deprivation, denial of food and hygiene, incommunicado detention, psychological torment, and sexual assault. These grave violations come with a warning: that the U.S. is deeply complicit.
I can’t imagine stumbling across these raids if they were happening on Canadian streets. I know what I feel when I see it online: visceral rage followed by a strong urge to reach through my phone and intervene (though they’re armed, so that’s a bit of a problem and the whole assaulting federal officers part too :-(.
At the same time, many of these ICE and DHS agents appear to be minorities themselves. I wonder how ICE recruitment would look without the $50K signing bonus and no age restriction.
Of course plenty of Americans are resisting—filming these abuses, screaming at the agents, even confronting them physically, sometimes chasing them out of their communities. Simply googling ICE clash and clicking on Videos will keep you busy for hours.
Of course my theory could be wrong. I’m sure many Canadians think, even smugly, that it can’t happen here. That, collectively, we wouldn’t stand for this kind of state-directed bullying. Undoubtedly many Americans thought the same.
Like I said, it’s just a theory.
And the fit for this post is “Join Ice” by Jesse Welles. He’s great…check him out!
Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this article and want to encourage Punditman to keep going, you can buy me a coffee below. Every little bit helps!
Edit: The first version of this essay incorrectly referred to Canada’s suspension of civil liberties as the “War Powers Act.” This has now been corrected; it was the “War Measures Act,” whose invocation by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during the October Crisis of 1970 remains widely debated. Critics contend it amounted to an abuse of state power—citing the arbitrary suspension of civil liberties and the mass detention of innocent people without charge, which included physical and psychological abuse—while supporters argue it was a necessary response to a genuine terrorist threat.
Interesting contrast between Canada and the U.S. I know that Canadians were generally favourable to immigration and that's why the Liberals kept increasing the numbers from the usual 250,000 a decade or so ago up to more than 350,000 but when they loosened the rules for people on temporary student visas to allow them to work as much as 40 hours per week instead of just 10, we had a huge influx of temporary visa student. Add to that the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (including the Seasonal Workers Program), the total numbers approached close to 1 million in 2023. And now we're in a quasi-recession so the attitudes are more negative towards immigration, despite the fact that the Government has scaled back on the temporary visa students and immigration in general. But, as you say, it's highly unlikely we'd ever have something like ICE in Canada. This is a very Trumpian thing and when combined with his obvious racism and quasi-fascist approach scapegoating immigrants, the situation is now overtly fascist. That's possible there, unlike in Canada, because they have the best government money can buy. Billionaires like Miriam Adelson, Musk, etc. have been able to get Trump reelected despite his horrendous behaviour and character. With limits on what Canadians can contribute to political campaigns, even Canadians' more negative views about immigration, could not create an equivalent to ICE here. Thanks for raising these issue Punditman!