Recently there has been a certain amount of pushback in our discourse against those of us on the left who call ICE the Gestapo and demand the immediate abolishment of the Department of Homeland Security that runs it; even in the wake of the Trump regime's ongoing, openly ethno-nationalist mass deportation scheme and the flagrant civil rights violations ICE and by extension DHS are brazenly engaging in, to conduct it. While the position is hardly universal, a significant portion of people in our political and media classes seem to feel more sympathy towards DHS officials and ICE agents being called nazis in public for doing nazi shit, than the mostly-brown, mostly-poor, mostly-undocumented victims of their fascist repression.

The reason for this of course, is the latent white supremacy of American discourse and the Very Serious People TM in our society who conduct it. Behind every argument about "securing the border," or the need for "law and order" that emanates from our ruling classes and the media that serves them, lies the same racialized us-and them logic that fuels Trump's white nationalist administration and its fascist agenda; even if many of the folks making those arguments find the open nazification of US society in pursuit of that "order" appalling.

Yet as the Gestapo begins to creep deeper into American civic life, this distinction between the presumed "us" and the othered "them" is already starting to blur. The Trump regime is arresting judges, mayors, and Congressional representatives now, and it is clear that the fascist order behind this vast deportation machine has an entirely different definition of "us" and "them" than the one espoused, covertly or overtly, by polite society. Doesn't abolishing a DHS that has grown into Trump's private police state goon squad seem more reasonable now that DHS murderpigs are marching into Jerry Nadler's office in New York without a warrant to accuse congressional staffers of "harboring rioters?"

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/homeland-security-cops-invade-ny-congressmans-office-handcuff-aide/

Homeland Security Cops Invade NY Congressman’s Office, Handcuff Aide

"Last month, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka outside an immigration detention facility, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said on CNN that there would “likely be more arrests coming.”

DHS police came close to delivering on that threat this past week when they invaded the Manhattan offices of Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and briefly handcuffed one of his staffers.

“They’re behaving like fascists,” Nadler told the New York Times in an interview about the incident this weekend. On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), told host Dana Bash: “I think the administration is clearly trying to intimidate Democrats, in the same way that they’re trying to intimidate the country.”

The incident, first reported by the New York City news site Gothamist, occurred Wednesday after DHS agents accused staffers of “harboring rioters” in their offices, which is located in the same building as a federal immigration courthouse. A partial video of the incident obtained by Gothamist shows one officer handcuffing a crying woman while another Nadler staffer demands that agents provide a warrant before entering."

There will be those who accuse me of overreacting, because as Nadler noted on social media nobody was arrested, and the situation was ultimately deescalated. But an outcome based analysis seems hardly appropriate here given the openly fascist nature of the activities DHS cops were conducting. Storming into a Democrat Congressman's office and roughing up the staff because you think they're harboring dissenters who filmed ICE agents is basically a scene out of a movie about the literal Nazi Party in interwar Germany, and yet it's playing out here in America to little or no broader impact on the social discourse. I'm not exactly the world's biggest Jerry Nadler fan, but the Congressman is absolutely correct when he says this alarming incident is part of a broader pattern playing out across the country.

“If this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone—and it is happening,” Nadler said."

Indeed. Which brings us back to the open question of the hour; how much longer are the American people who aren't open nazis, going to tolerate an expanding fascist police state forcing us all to live out Trump's unhinged vision of a whiter, more violent, and far less free America? This *is* how it happens here my friends; do we intend to let it?

#Fascism #USPol #Trump #DHS #Gestapo #MassDeporations #Protest #CivilRights #JerryNadler #IdeologicalPolicing #PoliceState #USPol

After Trump won the 2016 election, a few analysts, mostly on the actual left, immediately noted that Trump was now in possession of a vast federal surveillance panopticon, and if the new President was serious about his openly stated authoritarian fantasies, he had a fully-operational modern police state that would make the Stasi green with envy with which to enforce that agenda. In perhaps one of the few lucky breaks Americans who don't want a fascist dictatorship have caught during Trump's time in politics however, Downmarket Mussolini and his minions weren't clued in to the full range of possibilities the pre-existing American security state's digital panopticon had to offer. Trump is after all an aging billionaire nazi who recently admitted that he probably can't drive the Tesla he bought from his "first buddy" Elon Musk because "everything's computer" now.

Unfortunately in a second Trump era bought into being by not only Musk but other "AI" obsessed billionaire broligarch defense contractors as well, it looks like our luck has run out; fueled by automated systems the Trump regime is already engaging in targeted ideological policing in the government, in our universities, and on our social media platforms. Similar forms of data collection and surveillance technology are being employed to identify and hunt down migrants, critics of America's support for Israel, and anti-genocide activists; with ominous signs Americans with disabilities, and trans people may well be next. At an administrative level, the regime has worked toward routing all government data at every possible level to Trump's Gestapo; the government has forced agencies like the IRS and the Social Security Administration to share data with ICE, and the Justice Department under nazi sycophant Pam Bondi has openly threatened Democrat State and Municipal governments that don't put their law enforcement agencies and surveillance system data at the Department of Homeland Security's disposal as the government conducts a racist, immoral, and almost certainly illegal mass depuration scheme nationwide.

Given this integration of multiple enforcement arms of the government towards objectively white nationalist and unconstitutional programs, a recent report that law enforcement officials across the country are sharing AI-powered license lookups with ICE goons is at once predictable, and yet extremely alarming all the same.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-license-plate-reader

Report: State and Local Cops Doing License Plate Lookups for ICE

"Data reviewed by 404 Media found that state and local police are using an artificial-intelligence-powered automatic license plate reader (ALPR) system made by Atlanta-based Flock Safety to perform immigration-related lookups and other actions in service of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigations, "giving federal law enforcement side-door access to a tool that it currently does not have a formal contract for," according to report authors Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox.

Koebler and Cox found that Flock Safety's ALRP systems are being used in more than 5,000 communities from coast to coast, where law enforcement agencies have conducted over 4,000 lookups "either at the behest of the federal government or as an 'informal' favor to federal law enforcement."

I think it's important to understand the backstory behind Trump's attempts to recruit US police to enact his fascist agenda in order to really grasp what's going on here; otherwise what is a clear step by step program to integrate the larger American police state into Trump's domestic ethno-nationalist ethnic cleansing project, can look like an ad-hoc informal practice between the feds and local muderpigs who broadly share a duty to uphold white supremacy. As the article notes, Trump issued a day one executive order empowering cops to conduct operations traditional reserved for ICE under the direction of DHS, and the regime has encouraged further cooperation from local law enforcement under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act; cooperation that has allowed the Gestapo to hover up massive amounts of data about migrants from even designated sanctuary cities.

Finally, the broader context surrounding this story takes us well beyond a question of privacy rights for migrants in America. I have noted in the past that Trump needs to recruit an army for at least two of his clearly identifiable goals; ICE isn't big enough to accomplish mass deportations or police state suppression of Trump's political enemies and its increasingly looking like Pete Hegseth won't be able to deliver the actual army at Der Führer's whim. That makes police the most logical target for collaboration with the regime and the ICE Gestapo, to accomplish those goals. That's why Trump wants to "unleash the police" to enforce martial law, and if this story is any indication, those tendrils of collaboration are growing.

#Fascism #Trump #ICE #Police #Panopticon #PoliceState #MassDeporations

Because the Pork Reich is maniacally dedicated to ensuring I never have a calm Friday evening again, Trump's unofficial minister of blatantly nazi shit, Stephen Miller, just threatened to suspend the writ of habeas corpus unless courts start ruling in favor of Trump's mass deportation schemes, during a press briefing in front of the White House.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/09/trump-deportation-habeas-corpus-miller.html

Trump administration ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus for migrants, Stephen Miller says

"White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller said Friday that the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus — the constitutional right to challenge in court the legality of a person’s detention by the government — for migrants.

Miller’s comment came in response to a White House reporter who asked about President Donald Trump entertaining the idea of suspending the writ to deal with the problem of illegal immigration into the United States.

Asked when that might happen, Miller responded: “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion.”

“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” he said."

Let me start by saying that I am consistently surprised at how much mind-blowingly disingenuous fascist bullshit noted hate-goblin Stephen Miller is capable of cramming into a few short sentences. What Miller is arguing by implication here, is that Trump can use the absolutely fake "invasion" he's trying to use to justify invoking the Alien and Enemies Act, a justification that has already been called into question in one court with more likely to follow, to also justify suspending the legal right to challenge your detention by authorizes, in a court of law. In what is not at all a coincidence, a number of the "deportation" (read: kidnapping) cases the Trump regime keeps losing in court, including those against foreign anti-genocide student protestors, revolve around the violation of the writ of habeas corpus. Furthermore, while Miller is clearly threatening this clear act of authoritarian bullshit in regards to the regime's various plots to mass deport migrants, the fact of the matter is there's only one writ of habeas corpus; if Trump can suspend it to traffic migrants to foreign torture prisons, he'll be suspending the right to challenge state detention for everybody so long as the "invasion" the regime completely made up, remains "ongoing." In other words, migrant or otherwise, this how you start herding people who won't obey a fascist dictator into American prisons or concentration camps.

Furthermore, the rest of Miller's comments make it clear that the regime is at least threatening to usurp the American judiciary, unless they start giving Trump favorable rulings in cases against his mass deportation efforts.

"Miller said that Congress had stripped federal courts of jurisdiction over immigration cases with the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“The courts aren’t just at war with the executive branch, the courts are at war, these radical rogue judges, with the legislative branch as well,” Miller said.

“So all of that will inform the choices the president ultimately makes.”

While it is indeed true that numerous American laws and statues give the President far too much authority over all immigration matters, Miller is openly lying when he implies federal courts have no jurisdiction over immigration cases; and even if he were correct, the right to due process comes from the US Constitution and is granted to everyone in the United States, citizen or otherwise. Miller knows this, he just doesn't fucking care and is prepared to drum up a fascist conspiracy about radical left wing judges (including Trump appointees) to justify imploding the rule of law if it can get him closer to his precious white ethnostate.

Needless to say, absolutely none of this is based on reality or is strictly-speaking, legal. Unfortunately, sending Stephen Miller out to threaten the writ of habeas corpus to leverage cooperation from a judicial branch consistently ruling that Trump's mass deportation schemes are illegal, or based on fascist conspiracy theories that have no foundation in reality, signals that the regime is growing tired of caring about the rule of law entirely. If Trump gets away with this, either through suspending habeas corpus or bullying judges into legitimizing his illegal mass deportation efforts, the framework Miller is using here will remain in place for as long as Trump wants it to; certainly long enough to start rounding up his political opposition and anyone else the regime doesn't like.

#Fascism #StephenMiller #Courts #CivilRights #USConstitution #HabeasCorpus #Dictatorship #ICE #DHS #MassDeporations #PoliceState #IdeoligicalPolicing #WhiteNationalism #USPol #Judiciary

Thanks to a Trump-appointed judge once again playing legal Simon Says, the Trumpenreich has taken yet another step towards a type of apartheid system and the mass deportation of migrants who overwhelmingly represent no threat to America. Ruling that the rights groups opposing the move have no standing to challenge it, Judge Trevor Neil McFadden has allowed the Trump regime to move forward with a requirement that all noncitizens register with a government hell bent on enacting mass deportations, and carry documentary proof of registration or suffer criminal consequences.

https://apnews.com/article/illegal-immigration-immigrant-registry-trump-homeland-security-329d9b1523792aaf5940f72948d8b48b

Judge allows requirement that everyone in the US illegally must register to move forward

"While questions remain about how the registration requirement will function, its impact is potentially far-reaching. The Trump administration — which has worked to make good on campaign promises of mass deportations — has said between 2.2 million and 3.2 million people could be affected.

One of the groups that sued, the National Immigration Law Center, called the Thursday ruling “disappointing” in a statement.

“This disappointing ruling unfortunately means that, for now, Trump’s scheme to force people into an impossible choice moves forward. As we weigh next steps in our case, we urge affected community members to consult with an immigration attorney to better understand the consequences of registering or not,” said Nicholas Espíritu, deputy legal director at National Immigration Law Center.

Homeland Security officials announced Feb. 25 that it was mandating that all people in the United States illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. Failure to register is considered a crime, and people will be required to carry registration documents with them or risk prison time and fines.

Registration will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older without legal status. People registering have to provide their fingerprints and address, and parents and guardians of anyone under age 14 must ensure they registered."

This one is a little complicated because the Trump administration has argued that this requirement has existed for decades, but just wasn't being enforced. As the article notes, there's some truth to that line of (motivated) reasoning, but the reality is that these rules haven't been enforced since almost immediately after they were introduced in the 1940's because by and large, migrants are *not* a criminal threat to the United States. Furthermore the requirement to provide fingerprints and carry documentation of registration or face *criminal* penalties is as far as I know, a new and disturbing wrinkle the regime has thrown in to make their arguments that they're only deporting "criminals" a de facto reality in retrospect. As any student of history can tell you, if law enforcement can demand "papers, please" and then lock you up for not producing them, what you're talking about is the criminalization of human beings in something akin to an apartheid system, and a racialized legal pretext to arbitrarily detain anyone who *looks like* (this is crucial) they might be a foreign national; since after all, the authorities won't know if you have "papers" until they ask, and not having papers will be treated as a crime until such a time as you can prove that you (even US citizens of the wrong complexion) aren't legally obligated to carry them.

Of course, none of this is happening in a vacuum, and the reality is that no matter what the rules say, this is an openly white nationalist government that has falsely argued migrants don't have *any* Constitutionally protected rights, and have already begun the process of revoking legal status for hundreds if not thousands of people lawfully residing in the United States, while brazenly deploying deportation to engage in fascist ideological policing to target its perceived enemies. This is a regime that hates migrants, does not care if they "follow the rules," is willing to play legal Calvinball to deport literally anyone who isn't white and a natural born citizen, and has overwhelmingly targeted immigrants following the legal process to remain in the US as a sort of "low hanging fruit" to easily generate big numbers of deportations to brag about to its deeply racist base of support. They *are* going to use this registration system to locate and detain migrants for mass deportation, and they know full well you'd have to be some kind of crazy to willingly turn over your location and identity to a nativist regime dead set on bleaching the American population demographics through the force of law. What the administration is doing here is purposely criminalizing migrants to justify more and more repressive crackdowns on folks it has now effectively made truly "illegal."

#Trump #Fascism #DHS #ICE #Apartheid #MassDeporations #PoliceState #IdeologicalPolicing #Panopticon #MigrantRights #WhiteNationalism #McFadden