Throughout the United States, group chats and community forums have begun to be filled with warnings. It is not just the typical alerts about traffic or subway stations out of service, but where and when a raid for the customs immigration and control service (ICE) has been seen. They report on the places to avoid or on the appearance of the agents dressed in the countryman.
“Hello everyone,” he wrote last week a resident of the Brooklyn neighborhood, in New York, in a private chat with his neighbors: “A little bird just told me that there are ICE agents around our streets.” Another person soon followed his example: “A witness affirms that he has seen two agents with vests with the ICE logo stop three people.” They also provided details about the place where arrests and the appearance of camouflaged vehicles occurred: “If someone sees an ICE agent or some activity from this agency, they can send a description through this link so that the people in charge of the local rapid response can act.”
These types of conversations are now common in the US. There have been ICE raids before Trump's arrival, but it is striking that a police agency has carried out such a successful campaign to instill fear at the national level.
Border crossings are in historical minimums. Fans have avoided attending the Soccer Club World Cup, in which the most important teams in the world and world superstars participate, for fear of immigration agents. They are being stopped to taco stall workers. Some farms have such a shortage of labor that crops are rotting in the sun.
Even a four -year -old, American citizen with the right to reside in the country and a cancer sick, was deported to Honduras with his family. In one Appearance on the CBS News channelTrump's border tsar, Tom Homan, showed indifference to the case. In statements to justify deportation, he defended: “When you enter illegally in the country and you know that you are in a situation that is illegal and decide to have a American citizen child (…) is your responsibility, not from the government.”
In the public imaginary, ICE has become an agency that skip the law to obey Trump's personal agenda. Its agents have become a kind of internal executors of the ideas of the extreme right of the Make America Great Again (Make the US regains its greatness or magician, for its acronym in English). They stop “illegal” and deport those who consider “criminals” to El Salvador, to face justice without procedural guarantees. Trump promised “punishments” with a view to his second term. Human rights activists and defenders point out that ICE agents are the soldiers who execute it.
Many people wonder: is the mandate of the Department of National Security (DHS) and ICE legal? The answers to this question are varied, and some aspects are being discussed in the courts, but, in theory, the union of a national police force with the local police should have limits.
“While ICE, the Department of National Security and other federal agencies maintain a limited approach to migratory issues, local police forces can – and must be left out,” says Jeffrey Fagan, a professor of law at Columbia University. “But, as we have seen (in Los Angeles) during recent protests, these borders are blurred when civilians organize to protest and raise issues that affect the function of protecting the public security of the local police,” he adds.
The protests for the massive raids of ICE in Los Angeles led Trump to send 4,000 national guard members (against the wishes of the California government) and to deploy 700 Marines. California has denounced Trump's government in court so he considers an illegal deployment of the National Guard to suppress the protests, despite the fact that the Los Angeles Police Department had indicated that they were “mostly under control.”
“The concerns that Azuzar the protest against the federal government's proceeding will inevitably extend to the Local Police when there are demonstrations,” says Fagan, who adds: “Keeping them separate will be once more difficult as the federal campaign against immigration extends.”
Although the ICE does not carry out the arrests, its actions have sown chaos and have given rise to unprecedented use of state power. The FBI arrested a Wisconsin judge at the end of April and accused her of preventing immigration staff from stopping a man in his court.
Facing ICE has also become a cry of the Democrats and the left. Through the United States, citizen opposition has grown to raids. Some surveys show that deportations have become a poisonous show for Trump and the Republican party.
Political rivals have also taken advantage of this juncture to show their resistance: California senator Alex Padilla was arrested and handcuffed while trying to interrogate the head of the DHS, Kristi Noem, at a press conference. In another dystopian scene in an immigration court, the New York municipal auditor and mayor candidate, Brad Lander, was arrested in public by masked agents who took him out.
“I do not know that there are public information about who these masked men are exactly,” says Heidi Beirich, co -founder of the global project against hatred and extremism, which teaches a course on police at the University of Southern California. The expert indicates that it is known that “Finance Agents and other executive departments have been destined for this work”, but that “everything is a bit opaque.”
“The fact that they do not identify in many cases that have been denounced makes all this even more disturbing. It is part of Trump's authoritarian strategy to make agents arrest people without giving their names or those of their agencies and simply take them from the street in vehicles without badges,” Beirich concludes.
DHS propaganda has also become a weapon at the service of Trump's government. Intimidant and promotes delation. Imitating the posters of World War II that asked citizens who were attentive to what was then the real threat of enemy espionage, the DHS published a similar image in X. “Help their country to locate and arrest illegal foreigners,” the agency published, with a cartoon of Uncle Sam and a number of the DHs to call to report sightings.
Beirich states that, for some, it is difficult to discern the diffuse line that separates what a federal agency is responsible for enforcing the law and what is the private militia of Trump himself. In this regard, he states that “it is evident that ICE and DHS have become much more sinister and are wrapped in a great mystery, and it is evident that they are weapons of the Trump regime to violate rights and literally make people disappear.”
