Nia-Malika Henderson, Columnist

JD Vance Seems All Too Eager to Defend ICE

January 25, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC

Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and the Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.

Ready to carry ICE’s water
Photographer: Jim Watson/Getty Images

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Vice President JD Vance is full of contradictions.

Two weeks after he aimed incendiary words at a woman killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis, he visited the city on Thursday, claiming he was on a mission to “turn down the chaos.” The vice president met with ICE agents and later appeared at a press conference in an attempt to wrest the ICE narrative away from the viral images that have damaged the agency’s reputation. It was yet another example of Vance stepping awkwardly into the spotlight as the Republican most likely to succeed President Donald Trump in the White House.