[News] ICE Brings the War Home

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/26/ice-brings-the-war-home/>
ICE Brings the War Home
Nick Turse
February 26, 2026
------------------------------

Image by Colin Lloyd.

Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pulled over
several cars in Eagle County, Colorado. They took the people away in
handcuffs, according to a witness, and left the cars idling at the side of
the road. When family members of the disappeared immigrants arrived, there
was no sign of their loved ones. What they found instead were customized ace
of spades playing cards
<https://www.vocesunidas.org/post/ice-left-racist-death-cards-to-intimidate-latinos-in-eagle-county>
that
read “ICE Denver Field Office.”

When I saw an image of that card
<https://theintercept.com/2026/02/03/ice-death-cards-ace-of-spades-colorado/>,
the memories came flooding back. I’d seen something similar many years
before. Sitting in the U.S. National Archives building — Archives II — in
College Park, Maryland, sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I’d
spent parts of several afternoons watching film footage shot by — and of —
U.S. troops in Vietnam back in the 1960s. One of those silent military home
movies always stuck with me.

That short film opened with a Vietnamese woman clutching a child next to a
group of 10 or 15 other children huddled together. They all look wary.
Worried. Scared. The camera lingered on a young girl, perhaps five years
old, clutching a baby. If that girl survived, she would be around 64 years
old today.

After several shots of those children, the source of their fear was
revealed. The film cut to a group of foreign young men — heavily armed U.S.
soldiers. They were tanned and gaunt, smoking and talking, standing over
the corpses of some young Vietnamese men or boys. We see the dead bodies at
a distance, again. Lying together and yet eerily alone. Next, the film cuts
to a collection of weapons — perhaps a cache found in or near the
Vietnamese village where all of this occurred — that resembled old junk
more than lethal armaments. The film kept cutting between short scenes of
American troops and Vietnamese bodies until *it* happened.

I’ve never forgotten the scene that followed because I was initially
shocked that it had been immortalized on film. I was also surprised that
the film had never been destroyed. But then I remembered how ubiquitous
such activity was at the time. How soldiers bragged about it. How it was
covered — positively — in the U.S. press. How it even showed up in the
Congressional Record, not as an outrage deserving of investigation but
essentially as a thank you
<https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP67B00446R000400080012-7.pdf> to
a manufacturer of playing cards.

In the next scene, we see a soldier pull an ace of spades from what looks
like a big stack of such cards. He’s nonchalant. He’s clearly not worried
about an officer seeing what he’s doing. He obviously knows he’s being
filmed. He reaches down and, as another soldier presses his boot into the
chest of that corpse to hold it steady, he tries to insert the card into
the mouth of one of the dead Vietnamese. It’s apparently not so easy. It
takes a bit of doing, but it proves possible. The next scene shows an ace
of spades sticking out of the dead boy’s mouth. The camera lingers. It’s
oddly and sickeningly cinematic. The following scene shows another
Vietnamese, his face blackened. There’s a battered ace of spades jammed in
his mouth, too.

*“Impeding” ICE*

Such “death cards
<https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/troops-place-ace-of-spades-playing-cards-into-the-mouths-news-footage/2246144215>”
— generally either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card
claiming credit for a kill — were ubiquitous among U.S. troops in Vietnam
in those years. Some soldiers, like those in that unit of the 25th Infantry
Division operating in Quang Ngai Province in 1967, used a regular ace of
spades of the type you’d find in a standard deck of cards. But Company A,
1st Battalion, 6th Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade, for
instance, left their victims with a customized ace of spades sporting the
unit’s nickname “Gunfighters,” a skull-and-crossbones, and the phrase
“dealers of death.” Helicopter pilots, like Captain Lynn Carlson,
occasionally dropped similar specially made calling cards from their
gunships. One side of Carlson’s card read: “Congratulations. You have been
killed through courtesy of the 361st. Yours truly, Pink Panther 20.” The
other side proclaimed, “The Lord giveth and the 20mm [cannon] taketh away.
Killing is our business and business is good.”

The cards found last month in Eagle County harken back to that brutal
heritage. They were the same general size and shape as those shoved into
the mouths of dead Vietnamese: black and white 4×6-inch cards with an “A”
over a spade in their top left and bottom right corners. A larger ornate
black-and-white spade dominates the center of the card. Above it is the
phrase “ICE Denver Field Office.” Below it, you find the address and phone
number of the ICE detention facility in nearby Aurora, Colorado.

The 10 people taken away by ICE in Eagle County are now reportedly being
held in that very same Aurora Detention Facility.

In a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the
Democrats in Colorado’s Congressional delegation called out ICE’s use of
the ace of spades. The card, they wrote, “has long been known as the ‘death
card’ and has been used by white supremacist groups to inspire fear and
threaten physical violence. It is unacceptable and dangerous for federal
law enforcement to use this symbol to intimidate Latino communities.” They
continued: “This behavior undermines public trust in law enforcement,
raises serious civil rights concerns, and falls far short of the
professional standards expected of federal agents.”

ICE’s Denver field office offered a boilerplate response to *TomDispatch* when
questioned about the use of the cards. “ICE is investigating this situation
but unequivocally condemns this type of action and/or officer conduct,” a
spokesperson wrote in an email, adding, “Once notified, ICE supervisors
acted swiftly to address the issue.” The spokesperson said that ICE’s
Office of Professional Responsibility, which deals with employee
misconduct, will conduct a “thorough investigation,” but the Colorado
lawmakers asked for more. Those lawmakers called for an independent
investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector
General.

“As the son of immigrants and the father of two young children, I am
horrified by the abuses being committed by the Trump administration — from
the streets of Minneapolis to right here in Eagle County,” said Democratic
Representative Joe Neguse, a member of the delegation that wrote the
letter. “These outrageous, aggressive intimidation tactics,” he added, “are
meant to stoke fear among our neighbors, and it is immoral and wrong. This
administration must be held accountable, and we cannot allow this to
continue unchecked.”

ICE Denver has a much different opinion. “Under President Trump and
Secretary Noem, ICE is held to the highest professional standard,” the
spokesperson there told *TomDispatch*. “America can be proud of the
professionalism our officers bring to the job day-in and day-out.”

Americans think otherwise. A clear majority of voters — 63% — disapprove of
the way ICE is doing its job after more than a year of immigration
crackdowns across the United States, according to a January poll
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/22/polls/times-siena-national-poll-crosstabs.html>
by
the *New York Times* and Siena University. Sixty-one percent of voters said
that ICE had “gone too far,” including nearly one in five Republicans. The
poll was conducted after Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and legal
observer, was gunned down in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

Federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people since September,
according to data compiled
<https://www.thetrace.org/2025/12/immigration-ice-shootings-guns-tracker/>
 by *The Trace*, killing at least five, including Good and Alex Pretti
<https://theintercept.com/2026/01/24/minneapolis-killing-border-patrol-ice-alex-pretti/>,
a Minnesota resident who was gunned down by Border Patrol agents last
month. Before their killings, Good and Pretti
<https://theintercept.com/2026/01/24/minneapolis-killing-border-patrol-ice-alex-pretti/>
had
been observing
<https://theintercept.com/2026/01/24/minneapolis-killing-border-patrol-ice-alex-pretti/>
the
activities of agents. Federal officers frequently confront
<https://www.facebook.com/reel/1226461065966696> and threaten
<https://x.com/KimKatieUSA/status/1977428375506768289> those observing,
following, and filming them for “impeding
<https://www.facebook.com/reel/1329375022201281>” their efforts. In numerous
prior instances <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCTUIEHpAD0>, they had
unholstered <https://x.com/cwebbonline/status/1944742592530485518> or pointed
weapons
<https://web.archive.org/web/20251208161959/https:/www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-10-31/feds-say-tiktoker-who-was-shot-previously-escaped-a-video-casts-doubt>
 at people <https://x.com/KimKatieUSA/status/1983220247822741841> who filmed
<https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1935540098482733220> or followed them
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-11-10/ice-agent-points-gun-at-female-fullerton-police-stop-not-knowing-the-identity-of-the-armed-male>
.

A recent report
<https://www.cato.org/blog/dhs-policy-threatening-arresting-ice-observers-violates-their-rights>
by
the Cato Institute notes that it is “crucial to understand that ICE and the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and
ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in
‘impeding.’” It goes on to note that DHS “has a systematic policy of
threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities
with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased,
detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow
them.” In the wake of Good’s death, to take one example, the Justice
Department opened an investigation of Good’s widow for allegedly “
interfering
<http://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/prosecutors-doj-resignation-ice-shooting.html>”
with an ICE operation — apparently for filming the shooting.

*A Death Card Moment*

Killing, wounding
<https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/07/ice-minneapolis-shooting-renee-good>,
threatening, or investigating observers are just some of the many abuses
<https://theintercept.com/2025/07/07/ice-raids-la-violence-video-bystanders/>
 and violent tactics
<https://www.npr.org/2025/10/13/nx-s1-5566785/ice-dhs-immigration-tactics-more-violent?utm_source=bsky.app&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews>
of
immigration officers in the era of Donald Trump. Others include brutally
beating
<https://abc7ny.com/post/alberto-castaeda-mondragn-skull-was-broken-during-st-paul-minnesota-ice-arrest-says-beating-unprovoked/18560172/>
detainees,
employing banned chokeholds
<https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens>,
or spraying chemical irritants
<https://www.startribune.com/federal-agents-are-deploying-clouds-streams-and-spatters-of-chemical-irritants-what-are-their-health-consequences/601568140>
on
protesters. They also have carried out arbitrary and unlawful arrests and
detentions
<https://refugeerights.org/news-resources/court-orders-ice-to-stop-unlawful-arrest-and-detention-of-refugees>
, fired tear gas
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/10/23/united-states-federal-agents-use-excessive-force-in-illinois>
 and flash-bang grenades
<https://x.com/mozkid8/status/1936202906144997499> into
crowds, and shattered the windows
<https://projects.propublica.org/trump-ice-smashed-windows-deportation-arrests/https:/projects.propublica.org/trump-ice-smashed-windows-deportation-arrests/>
of
vehicles.

Colorado specifically has seen numerous abuses by immigration agents in
addition to the use of those death cards. ICE officers in Colorado continue
to arrest people because of the color of their skin and in violation
of a federal
judge’s order
<https://coloradosun.com/2025/11/25/federal-court-rules-against-ice-arrests-colorado/>,
according to a complaint filed earlier this month by the  American Civil
Liberties Union of Colorado and two Denver law firms. In November, U.S.
District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson found that ICE was routinely conducting
illegal arrests
<https://www.denverpost.com/2025/11/25/colorado-immigration-arrests-ice-lawsuit-ruling/>
in
the state.

“Just in Colorado, we’ve seen ICE agents pepper-spray protestors in the
face. We’ve seen ICE drag elderly women on the ground,” said Judith Marquez
<https://www.cpr.org/2026/01/16/what-to-do-ice-immigration-encounter/>, a
volunteer for the Colorado Rapid Response Network and a campaign manager
for the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition. “We don’t want to wait for
another Renee Nicole Good to be murdered.”

Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of Voces Unidas, the immigrant rights group
that took possession of those death cards in Colorado, fears that ICE might
be using such cards as an intimidation tactic elsewhere, too, but that
information about such acts remains unreported because those affected are
unlikely to trust local law enforcement officers, elected officials, or
even mainstream human-rights groups.

In the wake of the killings of Good and Pretti, the Trump administration
quickly branded those observing ICE as domestic terrorists
<https://theintercept.com/2026/02/02/trump-nspm-7-domestic-terrorist-minneapolis-alex-pretti/>,
and federal authorities insisted that Minnesota had “no jurisdiction”
<https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/17/ice-minnesota-officer-renee-good>
to
investigate those killings, while blocking the access
<https://www.kare11.com/video/news/local/ice-in-minnesota/full-press-conference-minnesota-bca-says-they-were-blocked-by-dhs-when-responding-after-fatal-ice-shooting/89-064aeac3-31eb-4189-aa88-25ef09413e4d>
of
state investigators to evidence at the crime scene.

As U.S. District Judge Alex Tostrud wrote in an 18-page decision
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26781309-ruling-on-pretti-evidence-tro/>:
“Federal agents collected evidence from the scene… They won’t share it with
the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension [BCA]… After BCA agents
arrived, federal agents blocked them from accessing the scene.” Earlier
this month, Tostrud, an appointee of President Donald Trump no less, lifted
the emergency order he had issued the day of Pretti’s shooting that
required federal investigators to preserve evidence gathered at the scene
of that fatal shooting
<https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/02/us/alex-pretti-shooting-trump-administration-narrative>
.

In the absence of independent oversight of the crime scenes,
*TomDispatch* asked
DHS if the federal agents who gunned down Good and Pretti had left death
cards at the scene of those killings.

The Department never responded.

For more than two decades, America’s forever wars
<https://tomdispatch.com/william-astore-america-s-forever-wars-have-come-home/>
have
been coming home in large and small ways. But in 2026, death cards made
famous in a war that ended more than 50 years ago — a war that America’s
president dodged via a draft deferment for seemingly spurious bone spurs
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/us/politics/trump-vietnam-draft-exemption.html>
—
have made a reappearance. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a war of extreme
brutality rooted in racism would have resonance with ICE any more than that
those macabre calling cards are on brand for a self-proclaimed peacemaker
<https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-inauguration-speech-war/> president
who has made war on Iran
<https://theintercept.com/2025/06/23/trump-iran-nuclear-strikes/>, Iraq
<https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/4121311/centcom-forces-kill-isis-chief-of-global-operations-who-also-served-as-isis-2/>
, Nigeria
<https://theintercept.com/2025/12/25/trump-nigeria-isis-attacks-airstrikes/>
, Somalia <https://theintercept.com/2025/02/04/trump-airstrike-somalia/>,
Syria
<https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/4074572/centcom-forces-kill-an-al-qaeda-affiliate-hurras-al-din-leader-in-northwest-syr/>
,  Venezuela
<https://theintercept.com/2026/01/03/venzuela-war-nicolas-maduro-airstrikes-caracas-trump/>
, and Yemen <https://theintercept.com/2025/03/26/signal-chat-yemen-strike/>,
as well as on civilians in boats
<https://theintercept.com/collections/license-to-kill/> in
the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. While he might not have actually dealt
those cards in Colorado, it’s hard not to see them as Donald Trump’s death
cards.

*This piece first appeared on TomDispatch
<https://tomdispatch.com/ice-brings-the-war-home/>.*
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