If We’re Not Careful, True Blue ICE Agents Could Soon Be Brutalising Australians

A shift is occurring right across Australia in terms of law enforcement, which involves an array of “protective” or “safety” officers empowered to enforce certain laws. These types of officers are often derogatively referred to as “pseudo-cops”, as their appearance and duties reflect those of police, but without the advanced training. And as this process expedites, so too does the danger to the public.

Protective Service Officers, or PSOs, attached to certain police forces aren’t new. They provide more of a security-type role than the policing that regular officers undertake. Yet, the mandates of PSOs are expanding, and new forms are appearing, like the City of Melbourne’s Community Safety Officers, and now the Liberals are set on establishing immigration cops, or the Joint Agency Taskforce.

One of the most extreme examples of what’s occurring is that the Northern Territory government has taken steps to turn transit safety officers and public housing safety officers into the new Police Public Safety Officers (PPSOs). So, as of June 2026, armed officers will be patrolling Darwin’s bus network, after only four months training. So, in the NT, guns on buses now equal public safety.

This use of enforcement officers without enough training to investigate crime but with enough power to apply force against the public is being sold as a means to better protect us all. Yet, as the presence of these pseudo cops becomes more ubiquitous, questions need to be asked around who is being protected and from whom, and who ultimately benefits from all pervasive securitisation.

A key example of why civil society should be questioning what is occurring here is now playing out in the United States, as the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement was established to enforce migration laws and protect national security in 2003, but since the second coming of the Trump administration, ICE agents have been empowered to brutalise and harass the public into submission.

Just saying

Australian Protective Services officers were established in 1984 to provide security at federal sites, like airports. But the APS was then incorporated into the Australian federal police as Protective Service Officers (PSOs) in 2004, post 9/11 to heighten counterterrorism efforts. And while the APS was partly armed, AFP PSOs are all armed first responders and operate continentwide.

Established in 2012, Victoria’s PSOs were initially connected to the public transport network to patrol stations statically, and this has extended over time to include shopping centres, sports precincts and other public areas. During COVID, PSOs became more important, as they were deployed to enforce lockdowns.

And just this week, it’s been announced that Victoria’s armed PSOs will now be riding the rail network, packing guns alongside commuters.

With less training and responsibilities, PSOs are a lot more cost-effective way for the state to apply force in public. There are South Australian PSOs and Queensland PSOs, while Western Australia has Police Auxiliary Officers, and all these operations are being expanded. As for constituents in New South Wales, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, these jurisdictions rely on AFP PSOs.

The City of Melbourne has also rolled out its own enforcement officers, which are unarmed Community Service Officers (CSOs), who are employed to enforce bylaws on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung land in the CBD. And CSOs have all been in the press of late, as these bylaw enforcers are being told “not to be afraid to use force”, whilst removing homeless people from public areas.

Melbourne city council is not the only Victorian local government area to employ CSOs, but they don’t all play a pseudo cop role, and neither are they all being encouraged to apply force to civilians.

Public space liaison officers are operating on Gadigal land in the City of Sydney LGA, yet their mandate stresses compassion and not enforcement, with applying force still restricted to the NSW police.

A precedent set

ICE agents had been enforcing laws in the US for decades. But when the Trump administration launched a mass deportation drive against undocumented migrants in January 2025, the agency’s powers to search, arrest and detain undocumented migrants was heightened, and the extralegal manner in which this was done has allowed agents to harass, detain and brutalise all civilians.

This is a key plank in the Trump White House’s shift to authoritarian governance. ICE agents have been set on communities to ostracise and detain undocumented migrants but also to demoralise and brutalise civil society in general. Largescale ICE operations have targeted communities that oppose Trump’s policies. And this has all served to consolidate the administration’s power.

The ICE enforcement agency had operated for decades, prior to the current US administration’s transformation of it into an extralegal enforcement entity. ICE is often likened to the German Nazi Party’s Gestapo that was established in 1933. The Gestapo was the Nazis’ secret extralegal police agency that murdered political opponents, helped consolidate power and demoralised the public.

Australian Liberal leader Angus Taylor unleashed his party’s vision for this country’s immigration system last week, which was Trumpian to say the least. It includes establishing “a Joint Agency Taskforce to kick unlawful overstayers out”. And as NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Timothy Roberts pointed out, what Taylor is hinting at is establishing a true-blue “ICE-like taskforce”.

The idea that our government would create an extralegal force to hunt down asylum-seekers and refugees without the right documents sounds a bit far-fetched, but so too would the ICE scenario underway now in the US if considered in 2023.

And the Trump administration has been actively pressurising our government to mimic its policies in a number of ways, and the US is already monitoring Australian migrant crime from its local embassy.

Authoritarian creeps down under

Another idea that appears absurd to many locals is that authoritarianism could take root here. But in 2024, both the NT Finocchiaro government and the Queensland Crisafulli government were elected into office, and both ministries have since been passing multiple tough-on-crime laws and other measures eroding civil liberties, and in particular, both governments are targeting Indigenous youth.

But attacks on First Nations youth are happening nationwide, whilst another multistate pastime has become stamping out protests, as well as new laws banning using certain phrases in public, a whole-of-government combating antisemitism overhaul is underway, which serves to deflect criticism of Israeli atrocities, and this nation’s top ministers can no longer honestly address world affairs.

These oppressive shifts in the public sphere, however, are a far cry from the nation unleashing a domestic force to replicate Trump’s ICE agenda and again, not many could imagine Australian governments extralegally unleashing enforcement officers on the public to demoralise and brutalise people without a legitimate reason, or to consolidate their own power.

Yet, this has already occurred in NSW. On 9 February 2026, NSW authorities greenlighted 3,000 NSW police officers to apply excessive force to around 20,000 civilians who were not posing a violent threat but were rather seeking to conduct a protest march. The officers involved punched, wrestled, bashed and liberally pepper-sprayed a mass of people that it had kettled in before attacking it.

The proof that this violence was state-sanctioned was the manner in which 3,000 police officers all at the same moment turned on the crowd that was demonstrating the official visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog, which was further supported by the NSW premier, police minister and the NSW police commissioner, who all repeatedly refused to apologise and rather said officers did as they were told.

As for ministers shifting towards the authoritarian, not only did NSW premier Chris Minns praise the police for their actions, but when a NSW court struck down a law that prevented those protesters from marching as it was unconstitutional, he went on to trash the ruling as illegitimate, which saw him undermining the judiciary and attempting to uphold the executive’s rule as absolute.

And as for consolidating power and support in the leadup to the 2027 NSW state election, Minns this week told the Murdoch press that the chief issue for him is the “half a million migrants in the immediate aftermath of Covid” being “way too much”, and the state’s top minister has also raised concerns about the “mix” of migrants coming into this state as another important area of concern.