By: Maya Lakhani
Edited by: Natalie Cowan
Not all deaths caused by the state provoke the same public reaction. Some killings lead to widespread outrage, protests, and sustained media attention, while others are overlooked with little public notice. This uneven response is especially visible in cases involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where certain deaths spark more activism, while many others are sidelined or normalized. This pattern reflects the idea of selective justice, which is the unequal distribution of attention and moral concern across different people and communities. While selective justice is often discussed in terms of unequal law enforcement, it also operates within public discourse. The level of outrage a death receives is shaped by race, immigration status, media visibility, political climate, and place. As a result, some lives are publicly recognized as victims of injustice, while others are treated as less deserving of recognition.
Selective justice extends beyond formal legal systems and shapes how state violence is publicly interpreted. It is not only about accountability after harm occurs, but about whose suffering is recognized as an injustice in the first place. In this way, selective justice reflects political priorities by influencing which crimes and perpetrators receive attention from the public and international institutions. Public outrage and media attention are not distributed equally; instead, they are influenced by social hierarchies tied to citizenship, race, and perceived belonging. Deaths that fit dominant political or national narratives are treated as tragic, while deaths of marginalized groups are often normalized or justified, revealing selective moral concern in public discourse. This unequal recognition determines whose lives are considered somewhat acceptable by the public.
This pattern is particularly evident in cases involving ICE. Immigration enforcement largely takes place outside highly visible spaces associated with traditional policing. Deaths connected to ICE often occur away from cameras, inside detention centers, or during deportation operations, making them less likely to be documented or widely circulated. This creates what scholars call a “violence of invisibility” that obscures deaths and other harms from widespread documentation and awareness. One’s immigration status contributes to the invisibility of migrants in public narratives because migrants are often socially constructed as “illegal” or outside the national community. This framing can distance them from public sympathy. When victims are portrayed as outsiders rather than members of society, their deaths are more easily dismissed as administrative outcomes rather than acts of state violence.
Public framing also plays a crucial role in shaping these responses. Through official statements and media releases, ICE often presents its actions as necessary for public safety and national security, emphasizing the removal of “dangerous” individuals while downplaying harm. For example, many articles and media frame enforcement as protective which leaves little room to question who is being targeted, under what conditions, and at what human cost. This narrative contributes to a public discourse in which suffering tied to immigration enforcement is easier to justify or ignore, reinforcing selective justice at the level of public perception.
Despite this, public outrage does occur in some cases. For example, deaths of migrants in ICE detention that were widely reported by national media have, at times, led to protests outside detention centers and calls for accountability from advocacy groups. These moments demonstrate that public outrage can challenge state violence and disrupt official narratives surrounding immigration enforcement. However, such responses are inconsistent and rare. They tend to emerge only when deaths are highly visible or align with broader movements around racial justice. Most ICE-related deaths do not receive sustained attention.
This pattern has important implications for democratic accountability and public oversight of state power. In democratic societies, public outrage often serves as a mechanism through which state violence is challenged and constrained. When deaths provoke widespread attention, they can lead to investigations, policy debates, and institutional reform. However, when selective justice limits which deaths are recognized as unjust, many forms of state violence are rarely scrutinized. The invisibility of most ICE-related deaths weakens the capacity of the public to demand accountability, allowing harmful practices to continue with minimal political cost. In this way, selective justice does not merely reflect inequality; it actively reproduces it by determining which forms of violence are seen as worthy of response.
The uneven distribution of outrage highlights deeper hierarchies of whose lives are valued within public discourse. Deaths tied to ICE are often treated as administrative consequences rather than moral injustices, particularly when victims are framed as outsiders. When suffering is normalized in this way, selective justice becomes embedded in public response itself. Examining which deaths provoke outrage and which do not reveals that public justice mirrors broader social inequalities related to race, citizenship, and belonging.
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