Hamed Ali Aziz covers immigration for BuzzFeed.

He knows how serpentine the American system for migrants can be.

But he says if he had to pick one agency that truly embodied the radical changes in immigration policy over the last four years. Hitpick ICE, immigration and customs enforcement.

Hands down.

It felt like every week, every month, there was something happening with ICE that became top news.

I think ICE, you know, pretty quickly became the face of, you know, Trump's, you know, immigration crackdown.

It was ICE agents who carried out family separation at the border.

ICE leaders who engineered some of the largest workplace immigration raids in a decade.

Hundreds of children came home Wednesday, some on the first day of school, to find their parents had been taken away by immigration and customs enforcement.

So I want my dad to be free and everybody else.

The officers have the jackets and there's, you know, there's TV crews following them during

the, you know, while they do their work.

The agents would surround the perimeter of the plant, then move in.

They would check for proof of residency from the workers.

Those without it were lined up.

Their hands were zip tied behind their backs, and their personal possessions were put in

clear plastic bags.

And unlike, say, customs and border protection, ICE agents, they're everywhere.

They conducted operations targeting states and cities with sanctuary laws.

And when the mayors and governors of these places refused to increase their cooperation with ICE,

the agency paid for billboards with photographs of quote-unquote wanted immigrants in the same areas.

Back when Trump first took office, the head of ICE, famously said the president had taken the handcuffs off his agency,

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