Analysis: ICE Exposes Deeply Ingrained Fascism In the U.S.
Many agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security have notorious reputations for operating outside the law
Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its tentacle agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and various other agencies under each of those, they have shown us glimpses of what they do when they snatched up protesters in 2020, trained border agents to subdue protesters violently, and created a program training civilians how to conduct immigration raids, just to name a few.
These agencies' reach has blurred the line between the separation of powers to conduct law enforcement activities, whether on the local level by federal agents or the federal level by local and state cops. This overreach has led to ICE agents posing as cops and using administrative warrants generated at will as legitimate warrants to search and detain people. Many are legally in the country, have permanent residency, or are U.S. citizens.
Also blurring lines is the concept of an “illegal” immigrant. Many, including high-ranking government officials in every administration since Bill Clinton, equate every migrant crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with being “illegal” despite the vast majority employing a legal process to seek asylum in the United States. This manufactured consent – that is, convincing voters that migrants are illegal and, therefore, criminals – is how they persuade the population to go along.
The Trump campaign did this by barking the same Latinophobic-centered xenophobia over and over during the election. They took the stage using large photos of Latino immigrants who had been arrested to demonize the most visible immigrant groups of the bunch. They targeted Black, Chinese, and Iranian immigrants pejoratively but to a lesser extent. Their goal was clear: villainize and criminalize Latinos above all else.
During Trump’s first term, we saw a lot of what ICE does be exposed. The still-in-use child detention centers, the overcrowded conditions, and the history of inhumanity inside some of the worst detention centers in the hemisphere. Now, we get to see just how brutal they can be to people, how they gleefully destroy families and send innocent people to inhumane prisons in other countries notorious for human rights abuses (like El Salvador).
The bias has never been more obvious. Disproportionately stopping Latinos just because they “look” like they might be an immigrant speaks for itself. The use of culturally relevant tattoos to target people also has a disastrous history of being used against nonwhite groups, in this case, Latinos, and sweeping whole groups of people up without verifying who is a citizen, who is in the country legally, or if anyone is “illegal” also highlight a Latinophobic bias.
Snatching up people for seemingly dubious claims of gang activity because someone exercised their right to freedom of expression with tattoos or simply exercising the right to free speech are both direct violations of the First Amendment. Yet, DHS, ICE, HSI, and other federal agencies are willingly doing these clearly unconstitutional and illegal detentions without question. Not a single agent has challenged the Trump administration or spoken out or dissented.
The question then becomes, what are law enforcement agencies that aren’t enforcing the law and are instead ignoring and blatantly shirking it? Defying court orders, violating civil liberties, ignoring the constitution – it doesn’t get much worse. This is Nazi-level stuff, whether you like it or not. The way the administration is operating, it’s only a matter of time before a citizen gets wrapped up in one of its highly dangerous half-cocked ideas.
They’re already designating speech and vandalism as domestic terrorism on social media, and there’s nothing to stop them from yanking someone’s citizenship away under those pretenses, especially with so many people supporting the administration’s recent actions. It could easily be you or me or them on their list for nothing more than criticism of Trump’s policies, Elon Musk’s shitty cars, or the blatant white nationalism in the administration, and that’s scary to think about.
ICE is showing us just how far our government can (and will) go with a single bad actor in the highest office in the land. Under the last administration, we saw attacks on free speech by trying to redefine what antisemitism is to silence dissent about a genocide. We saw a bipartisan attack on TikTok because they accused the platform of anti-Zionist propaganda but hid behind the fact that the app is Chinese-owned.
We also saw the bipartisan attack on seeking asylum, the bipartisan bill that gave ICE and CBP tens of billions of dollars, and the bipartisan effort to close the border with the far-right bill sold as a “bipartisan border bill.” These efforts to placate the far-right and appeal to more moderate conservatives was a miscalculation dwarfed only by Democrats bringing Republicans into the fold to attract conservatives during the last election.
Look, I know that criticizing Democrats might rub some people the wrong way, but we can’t have an honest conversation until we acknowledge the birpatisan nature of how we got to where we are today. Just look at how silent they are about the detentions of Mahmoud Khalil and other students who spoke out against the slaughter of Palestinian children. The Trump administration will see that silence as support for arresting innocent civilians for their speech.
While Democrats bear some of the blame in this, there is no question who is pushing fascism and the country to the brink of self-destruction. Trump has made it abundantly clear that he intends to pull off what Nayib Bukele did in El Salvador and Javier Milei in Argentina. He plans to cripple the government (Milei) and stay in power by any means necessary (Bukele). There is no question that he will try. However, I’m not sure anyone will stop him.
It’s safe to say that we’re no longer sliding into fascism. This is it.
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Noncitizens are the beta-testing ground for fascism. Everything they're doing to noncitizens today, they'll do to citizens tomorrow.