Portside

Trump’s violent ICE agency is about to escalate its war against any or all “illegals” in a dramatic fashion while engaging local law enforcement in its repression. And this should come as no surprise to us.

Every authoritarian regime in recent history has formed its own elite corps of feared special police and/or military units to suppress dissent and act as the spearhead of state repression.

The Revolutionary Guard and the Morality Police in Iran. The GRU and the Spetsnaz in Russia. Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. The GOPE in Mexico. DINA in Chile. The AAA and the Federal Police during the Argentine dictatorship were inseparable from the horrific death squads. And, of course, the SS in Nazi Germany.

All these elite special forces had or have one thing in common – though they were created as relatively small special elites under the command of the central state, they eventually and progressively grew to influence and even dominate the broader, more common local law enforcement units.

The SS is the most singular example of this. Originally a small corps described as Hitler’s bodyguards, the black-uniformed agents came to control all law enforcement in Germany and even expanded into fully formed fighting units inside the German Army.

No, I am not about to declare that Donald Trump’s ICE are the new SS – not yet. But its heavily armed unaccountable tactical units are unquestionably starting down this same path and are becoming Trump’s special hammer in his domestic repression campaign.

And the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner crusade is becoming the central prong in Trump’s power base as his economic policies flounder and his popular support weakens. A weaker Trump is more likely to ratchet up his repression rather than begin to back down. The most violent dictators, especially rock stupid ones like Trump, are never wildly popular and they all eventually wind up clinging to power through intimidation, fear and violence.

As Trump loses popularity, and as his garbage-ridden domestic policies continue to falter in confrontations with the courts and public opinion, his grip on Federal power and on myriad civil institutions has only tightened. Be it within the Justice and State Departments, the DHS and the FBI, he now has total personal dominance.

And out in front of this parade now marches the shock troops of ICE. And it’s going to get worse.

We have all seen the video clips of machine gun-toting masked agents in full tactical gear swarming completely harmless suspected “illegals” and foreign students as if they were engaging the SS itself. But how many of these detentions have not been video-taped? ICE has become one of the least transparent agencies in the Trump regime. When its street agents are masked and wearing no badges or ID, what sort of accountability can we expect from their superiors?

ICE has ceased posting daily arrest counts but on social media it claims about 350 arrests between May 26 and June 2, eons away from the White House goal.

Those numbers are likely to zoom upward as ICE is opening a new repressive front.

NBC News has broken an exclusive story on Wednesday, detailing how under pressure from the White House, ICE has incorporated some 5,000 officers from other agencies and 21,000 National Guard to undertake the massive “Operation At Large” already underway.

This comes on the heels of Deputy Chief of Staff, and top Trump toady Stephen Miller chewing out senior ICE officials that if they did not meet certain detention quotas they would be fired. Miller is demanding at least 3,000 detentions per day, more as much as ten times of more the current level.

Some officials from these other agencies are privately complaining that their being swept into the ICE campaign is preventing them from working on other more important criminal activities traditionally in their purview.

Like the crazed Air Force general in Catch-22 who was only interested in the symmetry of post-op bombing patterns and photos, Miller is focused only on the ICE arrest body count, no matter how strategic or how pointless the arrests are. So much for “getting the worst of the worst.” It’s now grab anyone you can.

Operation At Large, according to NBC, is a sprawling multi-agency push concentrating enormous power in the masked rangers of ICE and boosting the arrest count.

“The plan calls for using 3,000 ICE agents, including 1,800 from Homeland Security Investigations, which generally investigates transnational crimes and is not typically involved in arresting noncriminal immigrants; 2,000 Justice Department employees from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration; and 500 employees from Customs and Border Protection. It also includes 250 IRS agents, some of whom may be used to provide information on the whereabouts of immigrants using tax information, while others would have the authority to make arrests, according to the operation plan.

The Department of Homeland Security has also requested the use of 21,000 National Guard members to provide support in ICE operations, according to two additional sources familiar with the request, though that number has yet to be approved by the Defense Department or by governors who would be deploying their state’s units, multiple sources cautioned.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, responding to the Miller meeting, said, “Keeping President Trump’s promise to deport illegal aliens is something the Administration takes seriously. We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so. The safety of the American people depends upon it.”

Immigration status has now become Priority One in vast swaths of daily law enforcement agencies as their work is being progressively folded into ICE campaigns. FBI agents who should be investigating white collar crime and domestic terrorism are being taken off routine and forced to accompany ICE agents on their field raids, adding nothing to the enforcement process except for a greater factor of intimidation.

U.S. Attorneys are also escalating charges against those detained and misdemeanor immigration violations are now flooding federal courts who have more important things to do.

“And prosecutors say cases without immigration components have stalled or are moving more slowly, according to documents seen by NBC News and conversations with six current and former prosecutors and a senior FBI official, who described how immigration is now a central part of discussions around whether to pursue cases.”

Other reports in the last few days say that Miller has told ICE that it need not worry about warrants in detaining immigrants and that arrests of so-called “collaterals” be encouraged. A collateral is an individual found in a place where ICE has a warrant for somebody else who is not there but the collateral is also undocumented and should be arrested.

No need, however, for ICE to bump into them. They are actively seeking them out by raiding the street corners around Home Depots and similar outlets where immigrants congregate looking for day jobs. Restaurant raids are also taking place, further underlining the falsehood that ICE is searching only for the worst of the worst.

Only last Friday, a squad of fully armed and masked ICE agents were met with a community uproar when they swarmed without warning a popular San Diego Italian restaurant. Witnesses say that initially ICE operatives, dressed in full battle attire, handcuffed the whole restaurant staff as they checked IDs. Of course, there is no word on how many were arrested.

As the heavy-duty raid drew neighborhood attention, locals came outdoors to protest in the faces of the ICE agents, yelling they were “fascists.” When one protester tried to block an ICE vehicle, the agents responded with smoke bombs and flash stun grenades.

This is but prelude to what is coming. And it certainly occurs to me that Trump opponents and human rights defenders should now begin targeting ICE with non-violent passive resistance. ICE is now a much more dangerous and worthy target than Tesla dealerships, given Musk’s waning influence in the administration – to put it politely.

ICE is the cutting edge now of the Trump Show. And while I might be wrong, it just might make the most political impact if it is focused on. Medicare cuts are pernicious and inhumane and must be opposed, but they cannot be seen or felt unless you are one of the victims.

Just like the televised murder of George Floyd had a much more galvanizing political effect than abstract slogans about White Privilege, the deployment of military force by masked operatives dragging away local service workers could possibly be one of the best ways to expose the immorality of the Trump gangster regime. Nobody, except the Truly Lost, are comfortable with armed troops violently snatching peaceful immigrants from our midst. Remember that immigration violations are a civil, not a criminal issue. And in the case of the San Diego restaurant, if there were suspicions of undocumented workers, it could have been handled by one or two civilian-dressed agents meeting privately with the owners to review employment records. Not that I think is a great idea either, but more humane then the militarized raid that too place.

Not de-escalating is no oversight. The use of brute force is intentional. The xenophobes and fascists who surround Trump know very well they will never be able to arrest or deport more than a tiny fraction of the millions of undocumented. They prefer high-profile intimidating militarized operations to primarily instill fear and then hope for “self-deportation.” And just as importantly, to at least create the impression of Trump keeping his mass deportation to the hard-core MAGA base, especially to those knuckle heads who have bought his lies that we are suffering a violent invasion by gardeners, dishwashers, maids and nannies.

In the weeks between the November election and the January inauguration of Trump, I heard a lot of well-meaning but naïve liberals saying we had to “offer help” to those unfortunates who will be arrested. A twinge of noblesse oblige ran through these convos.

That time, my friends, is over. It’s time to put your ass on the line and offer resistance to the fascist vanguard that ICE has become. It’s time for a national information campaign against ICE and for those physically able to come up with strategies to non-violently confront these jack-booted tin soldiers in their street operations. Neighborhood and workplace networks must be built and trained and ready to immediately respond to any ICE incursion. The demand to disband ICE must rise to the top of our wish list.

Might this entail some danger and sacrifice? You bet it will! Avoiding confrontation and repudiation of ICE at every level disqualifies you as an oppositionist. But fascist forces are never defeated with just slogans and thoughts and prayers. Time to get real.

I’ve been a journalist for 50 years having worked for everybody from The Nation to the Los Angeles Times and the Guardian, from The Progressive to Harper’s, and the New Yorker, to the L.A. Weekly and Village Voice among many other outlets. I have produced and reported radio and TV documentaries for Pacifica, the CBC, BBC, Christian Science Monitor Television, PBS Frontline and CBS News. As a younger man, I worked as translator to Chilean President Salvador Allende and escaped Chile 8 days after the 1973 coup under UN protection.

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