Donald
Trump is not the first president to unleash the
terror of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) officers on immigrant communities across the
United States. But he’s the most blatant in his
use of a federal armed unit as a tool of terror,
fulfilling multiple goals at once: to reinforce
white supremacy, to undermine his political
opponents, to uphold policing as a means of order,
and to wield raw, unchecked power.
Before
June 2025, analysts were warning against the
slide into fascism. Now, full-blown fascism is
here. And, it’s not only Trump’s doing, but also
a result of our society’s constant reliance on
armed agents of state power as a means of
control. If we want to end ICE terror and
reverse the fascist tide, we need to rethink
policing altogether.
Today’s
ICE raids aren’t about rounding up violent
criminals as Trump and his supporters claim.
People caught in the dragnet include a Texas
Army sergeant’s Latina wife,
who had started the paperwork to acquire
citizenship, and several other nonwhite
U.S. citizens.
As of early June, more than 50,000
people were
being held in various detention centers around
the U.S. on immigration-related charges. Of
those arrested in 2025 alone, at least
three-quarters have no known criminal
convictions.
(And even if it were about crime, Trump is
Exhibit A in double standards on
criminality.)
ICE
raids are clearly targeting areas where
low-income communities of color work and reside,
such as the racially diverse area of north
Pasadena where
I live and where people are still reeling from
the fallout of the Eaton Fire in January 2025.
ICE forces raided a swap
meet in
LA County’s Santa Fe Springs popular among
Latinos, a garment
factory in
downtown Los Angeles, and Home
Depot parking lots where
undocumented day laborers are known to
congregate.
In
spite of claims that immigration enforcement is
about ensuring people follow
the law,
the facts demonstrate it’s about preserving
white domination. Under both Democratic and
Republican administrations, Haitians, Mexicans, Central
Americans, Venezuelans, Chinese,
and other nonwhite immigrants have been
terrorized, arrested, detained, and deported. In
contrast, white immigrants from Ukraine and South
Africa have
been welcomed, housed, and integrated.
If
only past Democratic presidents had understood
that immigration enforcement is about race,
racial hierarchy, and the violent enforcement of
white supremacy, and chosen the moral high
ground. Instead, they laid the groundwork for
Trump’s crusade.
Former
President Barack Obama leaned
heavily on
immigration policy, spending billions of tax
dollars on rounding people up. According to
a Migration
Policy Institute report from
2013, under Obama, “enforcement first… de
facto… [became] the nation’s
singular policy response to illegal
immigration.” Obama earned the moniker “deporter-in-chief” despite ushering in the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
program.
Joe
Biden left behind a similarly complicated
legacy on
immigration, undoing some of Trump’s most
draconian first-term orders while continuing
Trump’s inflammatory
border rhetoric and extending
his attacks on
asylum seekers. There was no greater indictment
of Biden’s failure on the issue than the shocking
images of
Haitian migrants at the U.S.–Mexico border being
violently rounded up by border patrol agents on
horseback—a macabre modern-day reenactment of
slave catchers.
Both
Obama and Biden likely felt caught between
strong pressure from pro-immigrant advocates in
their party’s base and right-wing and
anti-immigrant sentiments. This failure to link
immigrant justice to racial justice and draw a
line in the sand in defense of Black and Brown
people, immigrants and non-immigrants, paved the
way for Trump’s deployment of ICE as Gestapo
today.
Now,
Trump is aiming the same forces Obama and Biden
relied on to attack the Democratic Party.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during
the now-infamous press conference on June 12 in
Los Angeles that saw ICE agents violently
arrested California Senator Alex Padilla, said,
“We are staying here [in Los Angeles] to
liberate this city from the socialist and the
burdensome leadership that this governor and
that this mayor have placed on this country.”
She made it crystal clear: ICE raids were a form
of political violence.
Days
later, Trump echoed this logic, saying in
a Truth
Social post,
“ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of
this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve
the very important goal of delivering the single
largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
He
added, “In order to achieve this, we must expand
efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in
America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles,
Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon
Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and
other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat
Power Center.”
In
openly admitting that ICE raids are about
attacking Democratic Party strongholds, Trump is
abiding by the dictionary definition of fascism,
which, according to Merriam-Webster,
“refers to a way of organizing society with an
emphasis on autocratic government, dictatorial
leadership, and the suppression
of opposition.”
The
ICE raids also allow Trump to bring the entire
nation to its knees. This sort of raw, unchecked
power is what he lives for. Think of the
economic mayhem he unleashed with his impulsive “flip-flopping”
on tariffs, forcing other governments,
corporations, and Wall Street to wonder what he
might do next. Or, his back-and-forth on
whether the U.S. would join Israel’s war on
Iran, with him saying to reporters on June 19,
“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody
knows what I’m going to do.”
Trump’s
moves have less to do with policy than power.
And his use of ICE raids is the same.
Newspapers speculate what
his next step will be, whether he will throw the
food system into a tailspin by targeting
undocumented farmworkers or not.
The chaos is the point. Having an entire nation
hanging on his every word, on his ability to
call off ICE raids one day and resume them the
next, is what feeds his power. And, as
president, the armed forces are his best weapon.
It
has always been the job of enforcement agents of
the state—whether it’s slave catchers, police,
sheriffs, ICE agents, the Armed Forces, the
National Guard, drug enforcement agents, or
others—to enforce white supremacy in a nation
built on white power. With a few exceptions,
most of the armed forces have spent a majority
of their energy targeting nonwhite bodies. It’s
hardly surprising that the Los Angeles Police
Department is currently working in parallel with
ICE agents in rounding up and violently arresting pro-immigrant
protesters and attacking
journalists.
As
I began writing this, my 17-year-old
brown-skinned son biked to a friend’s house,
just hours after ICE agents kidnapped six men
from a bus stop about a mile from my home. I
made him carry his U.S. passport and tracked his
every move on my phone, breathing a sigh of
relief when he reached his friend’s house. My
white neighbors need not feel such fear—yet.
This
is the same sort of fear a Black parent feels
when their child leaves home late in the
evening, praying they will remain out of the
clutches of racist cops.
Or
what Muslim Americans felt when the Department
of Homeland Security terrorized
their people after the 9/11 attacks.
Or
what people in Afghanistan and Iraq felt,
in the early 2000s when U.S. soldiers raped and
tortured them.
Or
what starving Palestinians feel when they
become target
practice for
U.S.-armed and trained Israeli soldiers at food
distribution sites.
In
this context, the call made by Black activists
in 2020 to “defund
the police” appears as imminently
reasonable as the current call to “abolish
ICE,”
and the long-standing demand by anti-war
activists to ensure there is “Money
for Schools, Not for War.”
There is a unifying through line in these
parallel yet linked movements that ought to be a
minimum standard for justice.
Already,
ICE has spent
billions and
is over budget in carrying out its terror in
communities of color. And if Republicans have
their way, they plan to set aside nearly
$1 trillion of
our tax dollars for mass deportations. Police
budgets,
in most cities, eat up between a quarter and a
third of municipal budgets. The U.S.
military sucks
up hundreds of billions of dollars a year—more
than China, a much bigger nation.
Imagine
all that money being freed up to actually keep
people safe, to reduce
inequality—arguably the biggest driver of
crime—to ensure free health care for all, to
address educational disparities, including
making higher education free, to provide a
universal basic income, and to end the wars
that drive migration.
Donald
Trump is not the first president to unleash the
terror of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) officers on immigrant communities across
the United States. But he’s the most blatant in
his use of a federal armed unit as a tool of
terror, fulfilling multiple goals at once: to
reinforce white supremacy, to undermine his
political opponents, to uphold policing as a
means of order, and to wield raw, unchecked
power.
Before
June 2025, analysts were warning against the
slide into fascism. Now, full-blown fascism is
here. And, it’s not only Trump’s doing, but also
a result of our society’s constant reliance on
armed agents of state power as a means of
control. If we want to end ICE terror and
reverse the fascist tide, we need to rethink
policing altogether.
Today’s
ICE raids aren’t about rounding up violent
criminals as Trump and his supporters claim.
People caught in the dragnet include a Texas
Army sergeant’s Latina wife,
who had started the paperwork to acquire
citizenship, and several other nonwhite
U.S. citizens.
As of early June, more than 50,000
people were
being held in various detention centers around
the U.S. on immigration-related charges. Of
those arrested in 2025 alone, at least
three-quarters have no known criminal
convictions.
(And even if it were about crime, Trump is
Exhibit A in double standards on
criminality.)
ICE
raids are clearly targeting areas where
low-income communities of color work and reside,
such as the racially diverse area of north
Pasadena where
I live and where people are still reeling from
the fallout of the Eaton Fire in January 2025.
ICE forces raided a swap
meet in
LA County’s Santa Fe Springs popular among
Latinos, a garment
factory in
downtown Los Angeles, and Home
Depot parking lots where
undocumented day laborers are known to
congregate.
In
spite of claims that immigration enforcement is
about ensuring people follow
the law,
the facts demonstrate it’s about preserving
white domination. Under both Democratic and
Republican administrations, Haitians, Mexicans, Central
Americans, Venezuelans, Chinese,
and other nonwhite immigrants have been
terrorized, arrested, detained, and deported. In
contrast, white immigrants from Ukraine and South
Africa have
been welcomed, housed, and integrated.
If
only past Democratic presidents had understood
that immigration enforcement is about race,
racial hierarchy, and the violent enforcement of
white supremacy, and chosen the moral high
ground. Instead, they laid the groundwork for
Trump’s crusade.
Former
President Barack Obama leaned
heavily on
immigration policy, spending billions of tax
dollars on rounding people up. According to
a Migration
Policy Institute report from
2013, under Obama, “enforcement first… de
facto… [became] the nation’s
singular policy response to illegal
immigration.” Obama earned the moniker “deporter-in-chief” despite ushering in the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
program.
Joe
Biden left behind a similarly complicated
legacy on
immigration, undoing some of Trump’s most
draconian first-term orders while continuing
Trump’s inflammatory
border rhetoric and extending
his attacks on
asylum seekers. There was no greater indictment
of Biden’s failure on the issue than the shocking
images of
Haitian migrants at the U.S.–Mexico border being
violently rounded up by border patrol agents on
horseback—a macabre modern-day reenactment of
slave catchers.
Both
Obama and Biden likely felt caught between
strong pressure from pro-immigrant advocates in
their party’s base and right-wing and
anti-immigrant sentiments. This failure to link
immigrant justice to racial justice and draw a
line in the sand in defense of Black and Brown
people, immigrants and non-immigrants, paved the
way for Trump’s deployment of ICE as Gestapo
today.
Now,
Trump is aiming the same forces Obama and Biden
relied on to attack the Democratic Party.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, during
the now-infamous press conference on June 12 in
Los Angeles that saw ICE agents violently
arrested California Senator Alex Padilla, said,
“We are staying here [in Los Angeles] to
liberate this city from the socialist and the
burdensome leadership that this governor and
that this mayor have placed on this country.”
She made it crystal clear: ICE raids were a form
of political violence.
Days
later, Trump echoed this logic, saying in
a Truth
Social post,
“ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of
this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve
the very important goal of delivering the single
largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
He
added, “In order to achieve this, we must expand
efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in
America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles,
Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon
Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and
other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat
Power Center.”
In
openly admitting that ICE raids are about
attacking Democratic Party strongholds, Trump is
abiding by the dictionary definition of fascism,
which, according to Merriam-Webster,
“refers to a way of organizing society with an
emphasis on autocratic government, dictatorial
leadership, and the suppression
of opposition.”
The
ICE raids also allow Trump to bring the entire
nation to its knees. This sort of raw, unchecked
power is what he lives for. Think of the
economic mayhem he unleashed with his impulsive “flip-flopping”
on tariffs, forcing other governments,
corporations, and Wall Street to wonder what he
might do next. Or, his back-and-forth on
whether the U.S. would join Israel’s war on
Iran, with him saying to reporters on June 19,
“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody
knows what I’m going to do.”
Trump’s
moves have less to do with policy than power.
And his use of ICE raids is the same.
Newspapers speculate what
his next step will be, whether he will throw the
food system into a tailspin by targeting
undocumented farmworkers or not.
The chaos is the point. Having an entire nation
hanging on his every word, on his ability to
call off ICE raids one day and resume them the
next, is what feeds his power. And, as
president, the armed forces are his best weapon.
It
has always been the job of enforcement agents of
the state—whether it’s slave catchers, police,
sheriffs, ICE agents, the Armed Forces, the
National Guard, drug enforcement agents, or
others—to enforce white supremacy in a nation
built on white power. With a few exceptions,
most of the armed forces have spent a majority
of their energy targeting nonwhite bodies. It’s
hardly surprising that the Los Angeles Police
Department is currently working in parallel with
ICE agents in rounding up and violently arresting pro-immigrant
protesters and attacking
journalists.
As
I began writing this, my 17-year-old
brown-skinned son biked to a friend’s house,
just hours after ICE agents kidnapped six men
from a bus stop about a mile from my home. I
made him carry his U.S. passport and tracked his
every move on my phone, breathing a sigh of
relief when he reached his friend’s house. My
white neighbors need not feel such fear—yet.
This
is the same sort of fear a Black parent feels
when their child leaves home late in the
evening, praying they will remain out of the
clutches of racist cops.
Or
what Muslim Americans felt when the Department
of Homeland Security terrorized
their people after the 9/11 attacks.
Or
what people in Afghanistan and Iraq felt,
in the early 2000s when U.S. soldiers raped and
tortured them.
Or
what starving Palestinians feel when they
become target
practice for
U.S.-armed and trained Israeli soldiers at food
distribution sites.
In
this context, the call made by Black activists
in 2020 to “defund
the police” appears as imminently
reasonable as the current call to “abolish
ICE,”
and the long-standing demand by anti-war
activists to ensure there is “Money
for Schools, Not for War.”
There is a unifying through line in these
parallel yet linked movements that ought to be a
minimum standard for justice.
Already,
ICE has spent
billions and
is over budget in carrying out its terror in
communities of color. And if Republicans have
their way, they plan to set aside nearly
$1 trillion of
our tax dollars for mass deportations. Police
budgets,
in most cities, eat up between a quarter and a
third of municipal budgets. The U.S.
military sucks
up hundreds of billions of dollars a year—more
than China, a much bigger nation.
Imagine
all that money being freed up to actually keep
people safe, to reduce
inequality—arguably the biggest driver of
crime—to ensure free health care for all, to
address educational disparities, including
making higher education free, to provide a
universal basic income, and to end the wars
that drive migration.
Just
as Trump’s use of ICE raids fulfills myriad
purposes in his display of demagoguery, a
rallying cry to defund and abolish all forms of
military, paramilitary, police, and law
enforcement forces can satisfy multiple aims:
democracy, collective safety, and prosperity.
This
commentary was produced by Economy
for All,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.
|
|
