ICE’s ‘Death Cards’ in Colorado Illustrate ‘Immigration Enforcement’ as Power Fantasy

It was never about “immigration enforcement.” None of us should need to hear that at this point; not after more than a year of ever-escalating brutality directed against not only the communities of anyone in the United States with a darker skin tone than white, but also any American citizens who have gotten close enough to object, or even merely observe or document. Still, there are no doubt people out there who need to hear it: Enforcement of the law is completely secondary to what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become in the course of the second Trump administration. And you’ll rarely come across a more perfect illustration of this than the sadistic recent actions of Colorado ICE agents, who left customized, ace of spades “death cards” behind at the scene of detainments, with no apparent goal beyond spreading terror and feeding their own misanthropic egos. ICE, especially in its current configuration, is not a law enforcement agency. It’s a collection of aggrieved men, weaponized and militarized by the Trump administration, living out their violent power fantasies in the place where those fantasies pose the least personal risk to themselves. It’s war LARPing for those too cowardly to actually fight in a war. Where else are you potentially going to get a chance to shoot someone with no consequences?

The existence of the “death cards” in question was first reported by Colorado-based immigrant rights group Voces Unidas, after the cards were discovered by family members after ICE detainments of 10 Latino community members. What they found is like something out of a horror film or serial killer thriller: The vehicles of their family members, doors open, hazard lights flashing and engines still running, sitting abandoned on the side of the road. Agents of ICE, effectively posing as local police, had reportedly pulled over the cars in both instances by deploying fake police lights to get the occupants to pull over, and then arrested those inside, without even bothering to shut off the engines. They did, however, take the time to leave behind customized ace of spades playing cards, complete with the address of the ICE Denver field office. The message was unmistakable: We’ve taken your loved ones, there’s nothing you can do about it, and we want you to know it was us.

The use of a literal calling card in such a scenario is almost comically fiendish, and further evidence that those recruited by ICE (training time has been cut in half) often seem to be basing their behavior on recycled movie tropes more than anything else. Are these DHS employees doubling as professional cat burglars? Leaving a calling card is something that a criminal does in fiction, but these men are supposed to be enforcing U.S. law as public servants. Instead, they’re dreaming up ways to employ psychological scare tactics against whoever comes across their scene of violence. Why not just leave a human skull behind as the calling card, at that point? How about a whole cobra, preserved in a jar of formaldehyde? That would get the point across even better, right?

“We are disgusted by ICE’s actions in Eagle County,” said Voces Unidas president Alex Sánchez to The Intercept. “Leaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is an act of intimidation. This is not about public safety. It is about fear and control. It’s rooted in a very long history of racial violence.”

The history that Sanchez refers to is especially tied to the Vietnam War, in which American servicemen frequently adorned the corpses of Vietnamese soldiers with “death cards” often bearing the ace of spades symbol, supposedly as a reference to some poorly cited superstition in the country involving the ace of spades, as a form of psychological warfare. There’s no shortage of imagery of this practice available via military photography, sometimes even involving the cards being inserted into the mouths of dead Vietnamese people. The practice was subsequently immortalized via its inclusion in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now, in which Robert Duvall’s iconic Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, he of the famous napalm-smell-enjoyment quote, employs custom cards reading “DEATH FROM ABOVE.” In the decades since, the symbol of the death card has increasingly been adopted by white power and neo-nazi communities, mixed with Nordic symbolism or skull iconography.

Suffice to say, it is extremely on brand that members of ICE would both idolize a character depicted as a monstrous, sociopathic military officer with zero respect for human life because he seems “cool,” and that they would take up a tactic designed to be employed against a wartime enemy and then seek to instead employ it against the family members of American residents, acting as if this is somehow anything less than pure psycho behavior. Shockingly—and I say this with all sincerity—the reports of the death cards were actually unequivocally condemned by an unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, rather than the more expected response of immediately defending ICE’s deployment of these kinds of sociopathic tactics.

“ICE is investigating this situation, but unequivocally condemns this type of action and/or officer conduct,” said the official statement from DHS. “Once notified, ICE supervisors acted swiftly to address the issue.”

I can only assume that the above statement must have come from someone other than professional DHS liar Tricia McLaughlin, or surely it would simply have led off with something along the lines of “CRY HARDER, LIBS.” That, or perhaps the ICE and Border Patrol slayings of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota have genuinely spooked even the propaganda wing of DHS to the point that it wants to be seen as at least pretending to rein in the most misanthropic impulses of its agents in the field.

Perhaps ironically, the shocking imagery of the death cards has a tendency to cover up what may be the most heinous part of the story: ICE agents impersonating police officers in Colorado in order to take advantage of the ability to pull over vehicles and detain their occupants more easily. In a letter sent this week to DHS Secretary Krisi Noem from Colorado members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, the members of Congress rightly hit on this point, although the feckless tone of “we’re sending a sternly worded letter” inevitably persists, as it typically does in the statements of left wing opposition lawmakers.

“We are deeply concerned by the allegations that the federal agents were utilizing sirens to falsely act as local law enforcement,” said the lawmakers in their statement, failing to go into any further detail about what they’d be doing in response. “This behavior leads individuals to believe they are lawfully required to pull over for a traffic violation when, in reality, the federal government has no authority over local or state traffic regulations. Federal agents acting in disguise as local law enforcement is misconduct and should be treated as such.”

These members of Congress likewise of course condemned the use of the death cards, oh-so-testily calling their use conduct that “falls far short of the professional standards expected of federal agents.” Gee, ya think? You’re saying that leaving threatening cards behind for family members to find is actually discouraged in the halls of federal law enforcement? Imagine that.

ICE agents leaving behind “death cards” in the cars of people who they’ve detained is cruel for the sake of being cruel. We need an immediate investigation and a total overhaul of this agency.

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— Senator John Hickenlooper (@hickenlooper.senate.gov) Feb 3, 2026 at 11:45 AM

Suffice to say, this is the kind of ambitious, self-starter misanthropic behavior from Colorado’s ICE agents that the Trump administration probably loves to see … right up until the moment it becomes a big news story with damaging public relations potential, when it then becomes a liability. It’s frankly surprising that any representative of DHS condemned this behavior at all, but whether they actually announce any kind of public punishment/reprimand for the agents involved is another level of accountability entirely; one we probably shouldn’t expect to see. The Trump administration has emboldened the type of disaffected, angry man who seeks out a position of power in order to be able to wield it against those who have been designated as fair targets by the state. Take away their playing cards, and they’ll just find another outlet for that latent hatred.