The Trump Administration's Full-Throated Misogyny

Women are inevitable collateral damage in this toxic culture.

“Disrespectful. “Fucking bitch.” “AWFUL (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal).”

These are just a few of the insults hurled publicly at Minneapolis mother and wife Renee Nicole Good after immigration agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed her in broad daylight last week. In an effort to deflect and redirect blame, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are among the administration officials who took to the airwaves to degrade and ridicule Good, their claims ricocheting across the MAGA echo chamber.

The only civilized political response should have been a call for an independent investigation, but it seems like every MAGA with a mic is hellbent on making this a cautionary tale: Women who respond to and resist the authority of a man with a gun will get exactly what they deserve. “Fucking bitch,” possibly muttered by Ross as he let bullets fly (caught on air thanks to real-time video footage), is perhaps the most grotesque case in point.

Of course, name-calling and victim-blaming have long been the go-to for excusing men’s violence. Women and girls are used to being gaslit when it comes to heinous acts perpetrated against them. That’s old news.

But when it comes to the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement infiltration of U.S. cities, full-throated misogyny is fast becoming pattern and practice. Last October, a woman was accused of “ramming” a Border Patrol vehicle in Chicago, whose driver shot her multiple times; the woman survived and would likely have been charged with assaulting a federal officer had he not been caught bragging about the incident. (“I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”)

Guns are hardly the only weapons ICE wields against women. Among the other harms the agency has wrought:

Abuse of pregnant women in custody. A report issued by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) in July found more than 500 hundred reported cases of human rights abuses in immigration detention centers during the first six months of 2025, including mistreatment and medical neglect of pregnant women. The report details the case of one pregnant detainee who was told to “drink water” in response to a request for medical attention, and another left to bleed for days before DHS staff took her to a hospital, where she miscarried before receiving medical assistance. The ACLU published a letter it submitted to ICE officials similarly detailing the plight of women who miscarried while in shackles or who were denied prenatal and medical care.

Inability to flee domestic abuse. According to the Marshall Project, attorneys and advocates, even members of law enforcement, have sounded the alarm about women now more prone to remain in abusive relationships than risk ICE engagement. This is in part because the agency itself has few restrictions barring it from showing up at shelters, hospitals, and courthouses, inevitably causing women to forgo crisis services and legal support—a plight exacerbated by prior Trump administration policies that cut federal funding for support services otherwise engaged in DEI.

Violence and fear by ICE impersonators. Last summer, Ms. Magazine wrote about men facing arrest in at least three states for allegedly posing as ICE officers to perpetrate sexual violence against immigrant women, reporting: “ICE impersonators [are] arresting people without warrants, sometimes in plain clothes using unmarked vehicles. Nearly impossible to distinguish between real and fake agents, men have allegedly lied about their identities to intimidate, kidnap and rape women with precarious immigration statuses, according to survivors’ accounts.”

Chaos as protocol. The speed at which ICE personnel has expanded over the last year– as other federal agencies’ budgets and headcounts have been decimated—raises serious red flags about its recruiting and vetting processes. The latest batch of ads reek of hypermasculinity: a Washington Post investigative report revealed visuals that combine immigration raid footage with memes from violent video games, and target market placements to attract attendees of gun shows and UFC fights. As for the thousands of new agents, the standard 20+ weeks of training previously required has dwindled to a fraction of that, as little as 47 days (another Trump naming opportunity, apparently) by some reports. As for gaps in vetting, Ohio records show at least one ICE officer convicted of abusing women; another was recently arrested and charged with assault, domestic violence, and strangulation of his partner (reports show that over 18 months, police were dispatched to his house 23 times).

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Women are inevitable collateral damage in this toxic brew. Worse, the misogyny feels so deliberate—and ICE enablers so brazenly confident—all the running commentary smacks of a smug, cruel glee. Gone are the days when a president expressing how he hurts women is just “locker room talk.” Almost a whole decade and “Grab Them by the Pussy” later, it is now the official script of White House press conferences and ICE crime scene footage.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.

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