Is Argentina creating its own version of the US immigration agency ICE?

When María left her house on the morning of January 22, she thought something serious had happened. Two blocks away from her home, in Villa Celina, a town in the La Matanza district, in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, she saw streets lined with police vehicles surrounding the local market. “There were about 20 trucks, and over 100 police officers. The officers, who were armed, were carrying small devices and demanding that people place their thumbs on the device to check their fingerprints,” she told the Herald. “All the people who were stopped by the police were dark-skinned,” recalled the teacher, who works at a school nearby. Villa Celina is home to a large Bolivian community, and María believes many of those being stopped were migrants from the neighboring country. She said some people were placed in one of the trucks and driven away, something that reminded her of “dictatorship-era raids”. What María witnessed was a different type of raid: for starters it was legal, as opposed to the clandestine operations carried out in the 1970s. But the objective was also new. This raid was not aimed at finding so-called subversives, but rather a group of people who seem to have become the latest target of the Milei government: undocumented immigrants. Just days after it took place, Argentina’s new security minister boasted that the country has either expelled or denied entry to “a record number” of foreigners. The raid took place the same week nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by United States Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, while he was protesting against the forced deportation of undocumented migrants in the U.S. He was the second person killed in protests in that city in just over two weeks. Despite the controversy these deaths have caused, far from downplaying the operation, the Argentine Federal Police (PFA, in Spanish) posted a video of the raid on social media. “In Villa Celina, we conducted a community outreach operation in conjunction with the National Directorate of Migration, utilizing portable biometric equipment (MorphoRapID) for the rapid identification of individuals, thus strengthening federal crime prevention efforts,” it said. Shortly before this story was published, the New York Times reported that the Milei administration was in advanced talks with the Trump administration to act as a third country to receive migrants deported from the U.S., but at the time of writing, it had not been officially confirmed. According to Manuel Tufró, director of justice and security at the human rights nonprofit Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, by its Spanish acronym), this isn’t the first time the National Directorate of Migration has carried out operations to monitor the situation of migrants. “But what’s unprecedented is the involvement of the police,” he told the Herald. Also, previous operations “didn’t have this level of display or publicity.” Another novelty was the use of biometric devices to search for irregular migrants. “This raises the question of the objective of these operations. In the past, the Migration office would go to workplaces like factories, and would penalize employers if they hired undocumented immigrants,” Tufró explained. The workers themselves were not punished. Far from it, the Directorate would offer advice on how to regularize their immigration status. The people detained during the Villa Celina raid were not held in custody (only foreigners who have an arrest warrant out for them can be imprisoned according to current migration laws).  The 16 that were found to be undocumented immigrants were ordered to regularize their status. None were deported, as it is not a criminal offence to be in Argentina without the proper documents. However, the nature of the operation is not the only thing that worries human rights organizations such as CELS. There are other reasons that lead many to suspect that the Milei government is following in the steps of Donald Trump in the United States, and creating Argentina’s own version of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the “immigration police” responsible for deporting irregular migrants. New agency In November, then-Security Minister Patricia Bullrich announced the creation of a new National Migration Agency, which will replace the current Directorate of Migration. The new agency “will optimize border coordination, policing, and migration intelligence to confront transnational threats,” such as organized crime and human trafficking, the ministry said in a statement.  “Given the region’s critical violence and criminal displacement, border protection becomes a national security objective, not merely an administrative one,” it stated, in reference to criminal groups such as Venezuelan Tren de Aragua, which have spread to countries including Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and neighboring Chile. However, in a post on X, Bullrich said the new agency would also target “illegal immigration” and provide “real migration control.” NUEVA AGENCIA NACIONAL DE MIGRACIONESDamos un paso histórico: al trabajo diario de Migraciones le sumamos la capacidad operativa de las Fuerzas Federales con una fuerza civil-policial migratoria, con estándares claros, firmes y modernos para controlar de verdad nuestras… pic.twitter.com/A5x6arNLKA— Patricia Bullrich (@PatoBullrich) November 25, 2025 Two weeks before, the migration office was transferred from the interior ministry to the security department, another key change of policy under Javier Milei’s leadership.  As a “decentralized body”, the new agency will be larger with a more senior rank. According to local media, the government is planning to publish the decree that will formally create the agency soon. Most outlets say it will have a different name: Immigration Security Agency. The Herald reached out to Diego Valenzuela, the Buenos Aires provincial senator for the ruling party, La Libertad Avanza, who will be heading the new agency, but his press office said he won’t give interviews until the decree is formalized. “We don’t have a specific date; the legal and technical teams are working on that,” they specified. Crucially, they were also unable to confirm something local media announces as a fact: that the agency will have its own immigration police, akin to ICE. “Diego Valenzuela will lead the agency, that we can confirm. Now, whether or not the government ultimately decides to create the Immigration Police, we don’t know,” they said. The Herald contacted the security ministry for more information but did not receive a reply. “Record number of expulsions” What is clear is that the government has decided to put the focus on undocumented immigrants, and that it equates them to criminals, much in the Trump spirit. Just four days after the Villa Celina raid, the new Security Minister, Alejandra Monteoliva, posted a video on social media in which she announced “a record number of expulsions, inadmissibility cases, captures, and extraditions” of foreigners during the last two months.  Monteoliva said that between December and January “almost 5,000 people were unable to enter the country or were expelled.”  “Summer is heating up,” she added in the video. According to CELS, a person can be rejected at the border or expelled for several reasons, but the main one is being a “fake tourist.” These are travellers who say they are going to enter as tourists, but cannot provide enough details, such as proof of funds, an itinerary, and accommodation, to satisfy the border official. The figure of the “fake tourist” was incorporated by the current government by decree in 2025. Shortly after Monteoliva’s post, one of the most famous libertarian influencers, Iñaki Gutiérrez — responsible for the successful social media campaign that helped Milei get elected —- also took to Instagram to ask people to “support the Milei government’s plan to expel all illegal immigrants on Argentine soil”. “Seventy percent of the inhabitants of Argentina’s slums are foreigners who entered the country illegally. They must be expelled immediately. Argentina cannot continue to be a haven for rapists and murderers,” he said to camera. Fact checking site Chequeado notes that his claim is false. Argentine ICE? Tufró says it’s too soon to worry about a possible Argentine immigration police. “On several issues the government tends to make announcements, and it can take a long time for them to materialize. Changes can occur… we’ll have to wait and see what real powers this new agency has,” he said. He also downplayed the possibility of having an Argentine ICE. “Today there are neither the resources nor the political situation to create it”, he said, explaining that — as opposed to the U.S. — in Argentina migration is not a major issue (“and the government knows this”). Yet, he said what concerns him and other human rights campaigners is that there is “a distortion of immigration law. Its spirit is the contrary of what they’re doing right now. The law currently does not focus on security, as this government does. Migrants are now seen as a threat, and the priority is control”. “They want to change the direction of immigration policy without changing the law. And this is very complicated because it begins to affect the rights of migrants, who are generally poor people,” he warned. “Once again they are focusing their attention on a group of people who are vulnerable, and using them as scapegoats.”