❝ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone.❞

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

❝ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone.❞

Read that. Reread that. Internalize it. Map that back to every story you’ve heard of ICE agents going off the rails, every random kidnapping, every brutal and stupid ICE story.

❝“Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that.”❞

🧵

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton-valid-visa-detained-ice

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

You know the classic story of the foolish employer who paid software developers per bug fixed? If you haven’t, you can guess the outcome: program called off when one developer “fixed“ hundreds of bugs in a single day (that they’d intentionally introduced).

This is just like that, except not like it at all: the “fake bugs” — ICE agents abducting random people to make a buck — are the •intended• effect.

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

Here in Minneapolis it’s been widespread common knowledge that ICE agents are getting paid per head they bring in, no matter how incorrectly, no matter the actual immigration status of the person they kidnapped, no matter how carelessly or violently they do it.

It’s nice to see this confirmed in print.

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

Do spend a moment with my assertion that this is the intended effect. If it’s clear who the secret police are targeting, then it’s clear whether you are safe, whether you should be afraid. If the secret police are randomly targeting everyone, then •everyone• has to be afraid.

•That• is what an authoritarian regime wants. The systems that created ICE’s chaotic, violent behavior are not accidental.

[frog67@tweesecake.social]

@Lynn Regarding this boost, It's bad enough that those ICE agents are violently kidnapping anybody, let alone not caring if the victims are immigrants or not, and getting paid per head for the people they grab anyway! Not only is your president a criminal, but he's allowing agents to act like criminals themselves: what a mess, to put it politely!

[parsingphase@m.phase.org]

@inthehands It’s likely a truism that if a police force can be transparent about who they’re targeting, they wouldn’t need to be *secret* police.

[nead@social.vivaldi.net]

@inthehands It's the wild, wild west and these goons are bounty hunters.

[gardengeek@mstdn.social]

@inthehands

it's not surprising ICE uses the term "body" when referring to a (very much alive) human being. This is the vernacular of Border Patrol, which had >75 year head start on ICE (BP established in 1924, ICE in 2002). Same dehumanizing culture in both now, esp now that armed gangs of chubby thugs are co-mingling across agencies, sharing an SUV as they illegally terrorize communities.

The long-time violent culture of BP at the southern "border" is being inflicted on "the interior."

[chigaze@mstdn.ca]

@inthehands It brings new force to the idea of perverse incentives.

[knutson_brain@sfba.social]

@inthehands
Siri, what is the definition of perverse incentives? ( #DomesticTerrorism )

[jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com]

@inthehands

Perverse incentives create perverse outcomes.

[robo105@mastodon.social]

@inthehands quotas are a wonderful thing for fascists