For immigrants—particularly those whose skin color is brown, documented or undocumented—the U.S. is becoming a police state. Next year, it could be for the rest of us.
In Los Angeles, a city that’s more than 45% Latino, Trump ordered raids by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and then put the California National Guard and several hundred Marines into the street. Latinos, citizens as well as undocumented, are facing mass arrests by masked, heavily armed ICE agents intent on meeting quotas to “round up illegals.”
NO PLACE IS SAFE
In June, an informal group from a Chicago neighborhood set up a blockade of the parking lot ICE was using at a downtown courtroom to abduct immigrants. They used Divvy bikes as part of their blockade. They told News and Letters Committees that they came together ad hoc to protect their neighbors from the fascist actions of ICE. Photos for News & Letters by Franklin Dmitryev.
Recently, ICE, masked and armed, on foot and on horseback, swept through a popular park close to downtown to try and capture more so-called “illegals.” Enough with relaxing in a park with your kids! Schools, hospitals, shopping centers, carwashes and other employment places, as well as judges’ chambers, have become targets, not only in Los Angeles but nationwide. A favorite spot for ICE seems to be immigration courts, where, irony of irony, immigrants go to straighten out their immigration status but upon leaving are kidnapped by masked ICE thugs and sent to deportation holding prisons.
Rural California is another target area for deportation roundups. In July, ICE agents swarmed onto a couple of farms in Southern California arresting some 200 workers. In California’s Central Valley, a crucial breadbasket for the nation, where up to now ICE raids had not begun, The New York Times reports an estimated 80% of the farmworkers are undocumented. Manuel Cunha Jr., the president of the Nisei Farmers League, which represents 500 farmers and more than 75,000 farmworkers, is on edge. “If we get one Border Patrol raid, we’re screwed. Because no one is going to go to work in any field or packing house.” The “hope” is that Trump spares the farms of the Central Valley. But Trump faces pressure from his MAGA base and from high administration advisors like Stephen Miller to resume the crackdown on farmworkers after calling a brief pause on behalf of farmers.
How to save the industries that could be devastated when their workers are expelled? Whereas Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins proposed forcing people on Medicare to take those low-wage, hard labor jobs, what Trump proposed is a kind of semi-slavery where migrant farmworkers would be allowed temporarily, with no path to citizenship and excluded from social benefits, under the control of the employer. This is similar to what has often happened illegally, where an employer confiscates the workers’ passports and threatens them with deportation if they strike, ask for a raise, agitate for rights, or look for another job.
While California is certainly a testing ground for fascist police-state tactics, it is certainly not the only one. Anti-immigrant propaganda and this horrid reality are spreading, including internationally. Witness the depraved photo-op of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, posing at an infamous El Salvador prison in front of half-naked Venezuelans after the U.S. illegally deported them there with no due process. Now other deportees are being shipped, with Supreme Court approval, to South Sudan, a country experiencing a genocide with unthinkable brutality done to women and whose government can’t keep its own citizens safe!
CREATING A TOTALITARIAN ARMY…
But now it is in the U.S. where nationwide raids, kidnappings, detentions, imprisonments in filthy, inhuman conditions are occurring daily to men, women, and children. There are too many to keep track of. Moreover, one of the most horrendous results of Trump’s big monstrous bill will be a $170 billion budget boost for the Department of Homeland Security over four years. The $28 billion annual budget for ICE will make it the biggest domestic law enforcement agency in the U.S. It will be bigger than the armies of most countries.
Some 10,000 agents will be added to ICE to roam our streets unchecked. Detention centers will be newly constructed as well as expanded, a windfall for the private prison industry, to a total of 100,000 to 125,000 beds. Its already ominous surveillance capacity will be pumped up, including AI technologies, which Trump is trying to link with all the data in all government databases as well as data on individuals supplied by social media and other private corporate data aggregators—an abuse that was previously forbidden because of its totalitarian potential, although ICE has already been monitoring what people say online and while waiting at border crossings.
In addition, ICE and border operations have already been using funds, staff, or data from the National Guard, the Marines, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other branches, plus state and local police. “You’re going to see immigration enforcement on a level you’ve never seen it before,” bragged Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar.
These police-state tactics have already been used to stifle any dissent—including political. We have witnessed the attempt to deport international students and green-card holders who have spoken out for Palestinian human rights and against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. As well, farmworker activist Juarez Zeferino was seized by ICE agents in Washington State—“politically targeted.”
…FOR A NEOFASCIST AGENDA
In June an informal group from a Chicago neighborhood set up a blockade of the parking lot ICE was using at a downtown courtroom to abduct immigrants. Photo for News & Letters by Franklin Dmitryev.
Far from these being the rogue actions of a few, they are planned and implemented at the highest levels of the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, has been shaping racist and draconian immigration policies for Trump. It is a neofascist agenda.
ICE is the perfect place to start building a secret police force. It was already notorious for its abuses, including murder and torture, perpetrated with almost total impunity. It attracts sadistic agents who are thrilled to exercise power over brown people, although they are sad about being called “Gestapo” so frequently. Having seen Trump pardon all the rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021, coup, and the Supreme Court grant absolute immunity to him and almost complete immunity to police officers, agents can count on continuing to violate any laws and human rights without consequences. ICE has already abducted citizens because of the color of their skin. Homan justified grabbing people “based on their physical appearance” without “probable cause.” Once the surveillance/incarceration machine is so greatly expanded, there is no reason to assume that it could not be turned against all minorities, dissidents, protesters, and strikers.
While some Federal judges have put a few roadblocks to the administration’s illegal actions, the reactionary majority in the Supreme Court seems likely to allow Trump to do anything he wants.
The real opposition can only come from below, from citizens and non-citizens protesting and organizing, putting their minds and bodies against a growing police state.