Moral Injury & ICE: When Doing Your Job Breaks Your Soul

As we protest ICE activity, let’s remember agents’ humanity and the moral injury some suffer. “Loving your neighbor” includes these guys.

Have you seen the videos of women old enough to be ICE agents’ mothers, confronting young men in masks and Kevlar? Wagging their fingers like disappointed moms, they chant, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” The more they chant, the more the agents back away. When the agents turn and retreat, the crowd cheers.

Public Shaming

When I saw the images, I turned to my wife and commented about both the pitfalls and the benefits of public shaming as a method of confrontation and behavior modification. On a personal and societal level, we tend to label public shaming as detrimental to the individual’s well-being. But on a systemic level, when confronting injustice, activists have pulled this tool out of their belts with relative success.

When Shaming Has its Place

Think about the scene from the 1982 film Gandhi. The Indian civil rights leader directs his followers to march up to burning barrels and drop their identification cards in, one by one. The protestors come eye-to-eye with British soldiers positioned by the fire. As each drops their card into the flames, they face batons beating them down. Still, one by one they come. At first, the soldiers do their duty with diligence. But soon, conscience overwhelms them as they comprehend the horror of their unjust actions. Public shame does its job, and the British Empire begins to crumble.

So, public shaming has its place. It can be a tool that leads to societal change. There are some actions for which a person should be ashamed. Willingly participating in a system of oppression should prick the conscience of any morally grounded person. Protests are designed to tug at the ethical compass of good people who are doing unethical things. But protestors need to recognize the humanity of the people they’re protesting against and not cross the line into dehumanizing or “othering” ICE agents.

Loving the ICE Agent as Yourself

Jesus said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” He also said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In fact, Jesus wanted us to move in a continuum from seeing people as enemies, to relating to them as neighbors, and then caring for them even as we nurture our own bodies.

How can ICE protestors love the people they stand toe-to-toe against? You can:

Consider them as children of God, just like you.
Recognize the humanity of the person behind the mask.
Understand that they have families, loved ones, hopes, fears, and dreams.
Commit yourself to refraining from physical violence against them.
Fully invest in your abstention from mental or spiritual harm against them as well. Never use ad hominem attacks.
Protest policies—not people.

Christians should recognize the irony in passionately defending the rights of one group while using the same zeal to tear down another. They should understand that many good ICE agents stand at a crossroads unseen by the protestors. While they do their jobs, moral injury quietly tears at their souls.

Moral Injury

Moral injury happens when a person is called upon to act in a way that violates their own ethical code. ICE agents have spoken about feeling this harmful emotion. Many agents signed up for the patriotic duty of policing their nation’s borders, only to find themselves enforcing less humane orders. No good person wants to arrest farm workers instead of criminals, zip tie children’s hands, or engage in racial profiling.

Ethical people who engage in such acts are going to feel the harmful psychological condition of moral injury. This can lead to shame, guilt, isolation, and depression. Some who protest the work of ICE agents label them as goons, thugs, or Nazis. Of course, while Nazi soldiers suffered moral injury, there is one stark difference: German soldiers could not walk away from their posts without the threat of death.

ICE agents, on the other hand, can’t tell themselves that there’s no way out and that they simply must comply. They have a choice—and when they choose continued employment by the Department of Homeland Security, they accept moral injury as part of their job. Many do this, despite the inner conflict, because they have families to support. While they may feel conflicted, they also feel stuck.

Can Agents “Just Quit” ICE?

Many who protest the work of ICE agents would love to see them “just quit” and do something else. It doesn’t always work that way. Recently, Newsweek reported on Adam Boyd’s resignation from ICE. Boyd said that the agency had abandoned its mission to protect national security. Instead, he said they had prioritized mass deportations instead of offering due process to detained individuals. Boyd said that he felt a great deal of moral injury and that many coworkers felt the same. But they felt stuck, he said, waiting for student loan forgiveness before they can leave.

This highlights the financial entrapment that many agents feel—unable to justify the job they’re ordered to do, but unable to leave, either. Protestors might think that their public shaming tactics can cause agents to “just quit” their ICE positions, but it isn’t always that simple.

What Can Progressive Christians Do?

So, what can progressive Christians do? If we take our call to love ICE agents as ourselves, we must recognize the moral injury that many feel. We should understand the economic dependency that keeps them stuck in soul-killing jobs. And, if we want them to “just quit,” we should seek ways to help them do that. To that end…

We can make our homes, sidewalks, and churches safe spaces—not just for immigrants, but also for ICE agents who regret their actions and want to explore ways to change.
Churches can offer pastoral care to those agents who feel trapped by their job.
We can support initiatives like the “Quit ICE” fund from Never Again Action. This project provides career support and financial assistance for ICE employees who want to leave.
Progressive Christians can advocate for policies like loan forgiveness or job placement programs that help people transition jobs where they suffer moral injury.

In short, we must not protest a national policy or an agent’s involvement in that harmful work without providing a way out of the system.

Restoring Humanity on All Sides

We can protest against inhumane policies all day long—and we should. But these are meaningless if we fail to recognize the humanity of the agents behind the masks. Many feel a tension between their beliefs and their orders. When we attend protests like the “No Kings, No Tyrants” rallies, we must be aware of the conflicted human being on the other side of the riot shield.

Empathy for agents doesn’t mean ignoring harm that they do. Rather, it means getting creative about helping them to leave, heal, and find new direction. Jesus invites us to hold two often contrary things at the same time—justice on the one hand and compassion on the other. This means confronting the harm done by those who uphold ICE policies. It also means offering hope to those who want to leave and helping them make their way back.