Kidnappers or ICE

We can all appreciate the dark humor of this short video posted by @philcomedy on TikTok:

While the video makes fun of kidnappers who don't want to be confused with ICE, I wonder to what extent criminals have benefited from civilians mistaking them for ICE. I would think that ICE enforcement actions have enabled criminals to be more successful with, say, carjacking, given that everyday citizens might assume a masked and armed assailant to be ICE. Civilians might be more compliant with just stopping when told to on the street, leaving them vulnerable to mugging. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope someone out there is studying the issue, though admittedly it seems hard to pin down empirically.