Paul CantrellFeb 22

❝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

‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks

Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone’

The Guardian
Show threadPaul CantrellFeb 22

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.

Show threadPaul CantrellFeb 22

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.

Show threadClare Page
@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!
Feb 22 at 5:39pmWeb
Show threadLynn I 🗽Feb 22
@frog67 Yes, the whole thing is a huge mess, but really, all this began the day he took office in 2017. This has been one event building on another, with a four-year pause for the Biden administration, in between.