We Know What This Is: ICE and a War Against the People

Now is a time of choosing. And we must choose to fight the authoritarian threat before it overtakes us

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The raid took place outside Camarillo, California. ICE searched farm sites for immigrants before battling with protesters in the roads. They were flanked by military vehicles, shot rubber bullets and dispensed gas in order to get away with their kidnapping victims. It was disturbing. Rattling. And it’s all becoming much too familiar.

To watch the footage - and we all should - is to be struck with a strange feeling. Every day now we are inundated with these battles. Clips of masked men in unmarked cars ramming drivers and stealing them away. Clips of an agent demolishing a window with a tactical axe. Stories of agents chasing men into medical facilities and terrorizing them and employees. Brutal glimpses into an emerging and sobering reality. Often, these stories are accompanied with new revelations. The people being taken have been misidentified, have no criminal records, or are simply citizens of the United States of America.

There is no oversight to this. No legal foundation. It is, for all intents and purposes, an all-out assault. A smash-and-grab operation hellbent on breaking the will of the people and seizing unparalleled and unchallengeable authority over every corner of the country. Stores and public spaces are having to shutter their doors. Religious leaders have started telling people not to come to service. From one moment to the next, we are watching open society twist, contort, and ultimately shrink from view.

We know what this is.

We see it. We feel it. We know it.

We have witnessed the creation of a secret police force engineered to crush our freedoms, terrorize us, beat us into submission, and lay the pathway for total control by a dictatorial regime. The duopolistic alignment on “illegal immigration as an existential crisis” set the foundation, allowing a system of mass deportation - Barack Obama deported record amounts and Joe Biden outpaced Trump - to take hold, but what Trump’s enablers have created, using those systems, is now a program of domestic terrorism. Add to that the looting of our wealth with the passage of a domestic bill that gifts $45 billion for the construction of concentration camps, $30 billion for expansion and support for ICE, and tens of billions in additional support, and what you have is the realization of an occupying army and a cemented authoritarian structure.

There are still those in denial. Calls to abolish ICE altogether still haven’t taken hold within the Democratic Party, coverage in the media still uses passive and obfuscating language to both-sides the damn thing, and we have yet to see a national movement materialize in opposition. And why? In some cases, you have to see cooperation. Walking and talking embarrassment John Fetterman continues his long slide into disgrace by calling for calls to dismantle ICE “outrageous.” Other Democrats are content to hedge their bets and express concern. Corporate media is corporate media and is either complicit or unwilling to draw the wrath of Trump and more accepting of simply doling out bribes to him.

The question of the national movement is another thing altogether, and something we must consider. Obviously normalcy bias is at play. People who are still caught in the trap of American mythology and exceptionalism see this as a momentary problem. They have been told, over and over, that Trump is an aberration and a passing blip. Surely, if we can just make it to the Midterms in 2026 and then the general election of 2028 some leader will arise and put things right. In their minds, America is a story that follows outdated and unproven directions. The moral arc of history and all that. Never mind that ICE and the occupying forces are evolutions of a system that has been in place for a long, long time and natural extensions of the carceral and law enforcement apparatus that has terrorized marginalized populations. Never mind that these scenes we are witnessing resemble the ones we have seen around the world during the War on Terror. It is hard, I think, for some to reconcile that the war has come home.

For the rest of us, those of us who see this for what it is, the question remains: what should we do? Shows of force are meant for more than those being crushed. We are meant to see the video above and imagine ourselves being gassed as we face down masked and heavily armed troops. We’re supposed to envision being in our cars as an agent crushes our window or driving to work when a car rams us and a swarm of masked men overtake us. Seeing a door knocked down or exploded, watching people in their workplace forced into combat with heavily-resourced secret police plants a seed in our imagination. We suddenly have a choice to make.

There are so many of them.

They have the full authority of the state behind them.

They have the weapons and the technology and the intent to do us harm.

What chance do we have?

And that calculation is a tough one. The natural understanding of placing ourselves in front of tank treads plays out expectedly. But the reality is something else altogether. Late last year, the citizens of South Korea took to the streets and ended a coup before it could take hold. In this moment, as the American Empire continues its precipitous fall, we should remember another empire collapsing: the Soviet Union. In 1991, in a last ditch effort to maintain power, hardliners carried out their own coup attempt and dispatched over 300 tanks to Moscow. What happened next changed history.

Despite the overwhelming force of state power, the people banded together. They met the tanks in the streets and defied them. It started with small crowds and developed into a blossoming show of solidarity, ending with huge crowds celebrating victory. Each of the individuals had decisions to make. They had lived their lives under a totalitarian regime that disappeared people to labor camps or unmarked graves. Their existences were defined by state-run propaganda and untouchable power. That germ of inevitability and helplessness had been implanted in their minds since the day of their birth, and yet they showed up.

The lesson here is that authoritarianism is weak and brittle and cowardly. Shows of force are designed to hide this, to keep us from believing there is any chance or any hope. Because when there is hope they fail. Authoritarianism cannot survive mass mobilization and solidarity. It wilts. It retreats. And it dies.

If you are reading this, it is likely you already understand what is happening. You see this for what it is. A bloody march toward something indescribably evil. These prisons and “detainment centers” can be called whatever they want, but they are obviously concentration camps. Revelations regarding starvation, torture, and the lack of treatment for medical conditions were expected, but so is the next evolution, which is mass killing and slave labor. When you see these videos of ICE your soul screams two words: secret police. Or, one: gestapo. Occasionally we see glimpses of the infrastructure being built. Palantir with the data. Cell and tech surveillance. These are moments where the groaning, bloody structure reveals itself. We have natural instincts to protect us from threats. Internal systems that tell us a predator is near. The growth of authoritarianism is possible because we override these instincts or because we succumb to them and withdrawal from the battle altogether.

The gas will be replaced by bullets. The tanks and armored vehicles will move from the background to the foreground. The attacks will continue and worsen and the cycle of violence will doubtlessly increase.

Now is a time of choice. The first choice is whether to see this thing for what it is. The second is to not turn away or assure ourselves someone else will take care of it. From there, a cascade of other choices. Choices to find yourself on a rural road in opposition to a sinister and violent faction of masked antagonists, the humming power of state violence on the perimeter or in the skies. Choices to barricade the doors and protect the innocent. Choices to refuse to surrender an inch of society to these monsters. And, to make it clear, opposition will invite more violence. More oppression. More funds and more weaponry and more authorization for escalating maneuvers and actions. I do not want to lie about that. Fighting this battle will leader to more and worse battles.

But listen to what your instincts are telling you. Hell, what your soul is telling you. It is communicating the threat and also what we must do. Do not turn away. Do not rationalize this or let the myths of what America is soothe you. What must happen now, where we must go, depends on continuing to listen to your morals and principles and those instincts. There is a growing threat and, unless we come together to oppose it, it will evolve and overtake us. We can defeat this. We can have a better future. But we will have to fight to get there.