Who are these guys? Is America becoming a police state? Trump is using national guard units and a politicized military to advance federal control of law enforcement over blue urban areas. Daily ICE agents detain people suspected of being illegal aliens. You may view the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as stars or thugs or something else. A rational case can be made for several conclusions. They are, as we all know, well-trained officers paid by the federal government. They carry weapons, usually SIG Sauer P320C 9mm pistols and often use ballistic body armor, tactical gear and helmets. But here’s the rub, these officers do not wear uniforms, they often wear masks or balaclavas, and do not need a judicial warrant to make an arrest. On first glance they could be mistaken for bounty hunters or for an organized gang of thieves. But, of course, they are law enforcement officers. They come with an air of surprise. A lack of accountability attends an officer whose face is covered and may not have a visible identifying badge or insignia. Hard not to think that these incognito agents have disturbing similarities to the Sturmabteilung, also known as the Brownshirts, a paramilitary organization which helped Hitler come to power in Germany. The Brownshirts carried out unchecked intimidation against Nazi challengers and Jews. Benito Mussolini also had a paramilitary group of dogmatic nationalists labeled Blackshirts. General Francisco Franco had an even more powerful grip on policing in fascist Spain. He used the Political-Social Brigade as a secret police to persecute and repress all opposition groups. Franco used death squads and military trails to subject citizens to imprisonment and executions.
Now in America we are witnessing strikingly similar heavy-handed, even cruel, immigration activities by ICE agents under the direction of Trump’s administration, employing what looks like a gang of vigilantes lying in wait for unsuspecting immigration targets. What they are doing is legal, perhaps, but far from what we expect from civil policing in a democratic society.
Thugs or not, these are Trump’s enforcers fulfilling Trump’s brand of justice. Unlike the Proud Boys and the gathering mob who unlawfully, treasonably, stormed the capitol on January 6th, 2021, ICE agents are paid officials of our government charged with rounding up people from Home Depot parking lots, from hallways in courthouses, from factories and airports, from church basements, and agricultural producing locations.
According to the American Immigration Council report in early 2025, a little more than 14% of our nation’s population is foreign-born, almost half of whom are naturized citizens. Just under 4.9% of America’s workforce is undocumented and could be detained and eventually deported. Overall, 8.3 million people are classified as illegal immigrants. Culling them from our population will take time, probably decades, and more money than one can logically calculate (one estimate guesses 355 billion per year to process one million deportations). Realistically, what Trump wants to do is something like emptying water from an Olympic size pool with a teaspoon. Besides being formidable, that solution won’t work long term. Walls and fences and squads of ICE agents may disrupt but will not stop people wanting to live in America. Short of turning America into a police state, the direction we are presently slowly heading, the answer to lasting and balanced immigration policy lies in the hands of problem-solvers, not in MAGA officials and their allies who have been making harsh, anti-American, unethical decisions. Direct pressures against civil liberties and to the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures are now firmly in play. Also, ICE policies have sapped community trust in law enforcement. Hard to root for these guys who hide their faces while detaining mostly struggling and poor people of color from the streets. The problems in dealing with undocumented people within US borders will not be solved by the present whack-a-mole strategy. Logistical and financial challenges arise immediately considering the magnitude of removing the millions of people who do not have the legal status. Add to the heap of impediments in removing millions of people from our shores are Constitutional due process matters, which to date are being flouted by Trump and his allies.
Even if the MAGA forces come close to their goal of removing a million immigrants over the course of Trump’s second term, they will still be foolishly short of solving the crisis they engineered and then bungled.