# ICE is just War on Drugs with extra fascism
Date: 2025-10-19

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### ICE is just War on Drugs with extra fascism

From a report done [10 years ago](https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/DrugPolicyAlliance/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Drug_War_Mass_Incarceration_and_Race_June2015.pdf):

> With less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its incarcerated population, the United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world — largely due to the war on drugs. Misguided drug laws and harsh sentencing requirements have produced profoundly unequal outcomes for people of color. Although rates of drug use and sales are similar across racial and ethnic lines, Black and Latino people are far more likely to be criminalized than white people.

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/ice-is-just-war-on-drugs-with-extra-fascism-8fb99a0b86.png)

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/ice-is-just-war-on-drugs-with-extra-fascism-16c1b9c879.png)

Currently the war on drugs [has reduced](https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/) just in time for ICE to get going with the same MO — punish brown undocumented workers but not the white people who hire them.

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/ice-is-just-war-on-drugs-with-extra-fascism-92be23a1ae.png)

Even down from peak War on Drugs is still big business — especially in more racists states:

![Ranked Imprisonment Rates (Per 100,000 People) in State & Federal Prison, 2022](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/ice-is-just-war-on-drugs-with-extra-fascism-e1cbddf6a8.png)
*Ranked Imprisonment Rates (Per 100,000 People) in State & Federal Prison, 2022*

And these same actors stand to [clean up on ICE funding](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/private-prison-companies-enormous-windfall-who-stands-gain-ice-expands). However even less racists areas are not above weaponizing drug use [against the poor](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-oregon-reviving-war-drugs-fentanyl-crisis-rcna142387):

> Fueled by increasingly visible signs of homelessness and drug usein Oregon and San Francisco, officials are restoring punitive measures for drug-related offenses amid a worsening fentanyl crisis.

The good news is that there is a lot more push back on ICE then there ever was against War on Drugs — perhaps because people are not as racist as Trump was hoping. However the general populace is still not aware just how ineffective and expensive the War on Drugs methods ICE is using are:

> In 2023, the [UN high commissioner for human rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_High_Commissioner_for_Human_Rights "UN High Commissioner for Human Rights") stated that “decades of punitive, ‘war on drugs’ strategies had failed to prevent an increasing range and quantity of substances from being produced and consumed.”[[16]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#cite_note-:18-17) That year, the annual US federal drug war budget reached $39 billion, with cumulative spending since 1971 estimated at $1 trillion.

So when ICE is debated the right wing is allowed to pretend that it has a hope of success beyond making money for the incarceration industry:

Similarities with War on Drugs are so overwhelming that Saagar keeps bringing up drugs as if confused.

That’s really unfortunate as the one silver lining of the lives wrecked by War on Drugs and the trillion dollars wasted could have been knowing that ICE is a complete fraud.