On Tuesday, masked members of the paramilitary wing of the MAGA movement—otherwise known as the federal agents carrying out Trump’s immigration raids—broadened their operations in Chicago. The result: more violence, more tumult, more Americans ferociously at one another’s throats. Exactly as President Trump and Stephen Miller intend.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that these federal agents undertook a dangerous car chase through a residential neighborhood, drawing onlookers, which prompted agents to deploy tear gas and smoke grenades. Though protesters may have thrown things, the response was extraordinary: The paper posted startling photos of heavily armed ICE agents pointing weapons in locals’ faces. And a dozen Chicago cops were “overcome by tear gas,” per the Sun-Times, after showing up to “deescalate tensions between protesters and federal agents.” Translation: They were standing between Americans and Trump’s security forces.
Scenes like these give Democrats an opening. Rather than merely criticize these operations, Democrats can stand for the proposition that all this fear, violence, and searing tension doesn’t have to be a perennially defining fixture in American life, as Trump and Miller want—that a brighter alternative is possible beyond the horizon. At the center of this case should be a promise of relief and a vow of accountability.
This is the next anti-Trump frontier for the Democratic opposition. And conversations are quietly underway among House Democrats over what they will do to limit ICE if they win the majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Some Democrats, for instance, are discussing tying future funding of ICE to legislation barring the use of masks by agents, says Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who has been in the middle of these discussions. “When we are in the majority, the masks are coming off,” Swalwell told me.
This would go further than a bill recently introduced by some congressional Democrats that would, with some exceptions, bar Homeland Security agents from wearing identity-obscuring face coverings and require the visible display of ID cards. Swalwell said he and other Democrats are discussing ways to make agency funding directly contingent on dispensing with masks.
“We cannot have a budget that allows them to wear masks,” Swalwell said. “We’re not going to fund a department that does that.”
The opening for Democrats to make such a case will only grow. Consider some recent horrors: an American citizen wrongly detained and treated with shocking brutality. A Mexican immigrant fatally shot by ICE officers for stated reasons that are falling apart under journalistic scrutiny. A minister shot in the head by a pepper ball while he had his arms raised in prayer. And in Tuesday’s raid in Chicago, teenagers were reportedly “slammed to the ground” by masked agents and one U.S. citizen may have been detained for five hours.
Meanwhile, Trumpworld’s propagandistic rationales for its highest-profile operations are collapsing. After the recent massive raid on a Chicago apartment complex complete with hovering helicopters, armored vehicles, and dozens of people getting dragged into the street, Stephen Miller declared that the complex had been “filled” with Tren de Aragua “terrorists.” But NBC News reports that the number of people DHS itself has linked to the gang is exactly one, and even that verification seems pretty shaky.
Incidents like these too give Democrats an opening: to vow that if given the power, they will impose a measure of accountability. One thing that’s poorly understood by the public is just how weak the guardrails are right now for DHS agents. Theoretically, internal offices like ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and DHS’s inspector general are supposed to scrutinize conduct.
But recently, when an ICE officer was suspended for shoving a woman to the ground, he was quickly reinstated. “The quick turnaround tells me that the bias is toward allowing officers freedom to do what they think they need to do, regardless of prior practice,” Deborah Fleischaker, a former acting ICE chief of staff, told me. Miller himself has shrieked joyously that law enforcement is “unleashed.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson recently declared that he hasn’t seen any federal agents “cross the line,” a remarkably derelict statement. While this stirred outrage, it should also get Democrats to promise oversight that Republicans will clearly not perform.
Indeed, Swalwell told me that he and other Democrats plan to amplify the case that if they win the House, ICE operations that abuse people’s rights will get officials hauled before highly publicized congressional hearings to testify under oath.
“We have to show them that there’s going to be consequences,” Swalwell told me. “Otherwise, they’re not going to be deterred at all.” One starting point might be Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who’s been swaggering around the most jackbooted of enforcement operations like Robert Duvall’s Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.
Democrats can also vow to put much more pressure on internal DHS oversight mechanisms to function and to reinvigorate them under a Democratic president. David Bier of the CATO Institute suggests calling for oversight bodies within DHS to have greater protections from presidential interference. The core principle, Bier says, should be that “Congress needs to ensure that these agencies adhere to our constitutional rights.”
Will Democrats running in swing or Trump-leaning areas be squeamish about representing such an agenda? Maybe. But Dems can be for increased border security or asylum reform while also opposing a federal law enforcement apparatus that is akin to an occupying army imposing military law on subjugated enemy territory inside the American nation.
Representative Daniel Goldman of New York says Democrats can also oppose violence against law enforcement while forcefully opposing law enforcement abuses. “We need to enforce the rule of law equally,” Goldman told me, adding that Democrats should not be “afraid to stand up to the lawlessness of this administration.”
Democrats often lament their struggle to reach deep into the culture and access less politically obsessive Americans. You know which issue is reaching into those spaces? This one is! Joe Rogan has pilloried ICE abuses. And it infuriated Trumpworld when country singer Zach Bryan released a musical snippet warning that “ICE is gonna come bust down your door” while lamenting the “fading of the red, white, and blue.” Their rage at Bryan showed Trumpists know much of the culture is turning against this.
Trumpworld and MAGA like to feign confidence that their all-powerful propaganda can successfully smear Democrats criticizing ICE as pro-criminal and anti-law enforcement. But Trumpworld is utterly failing to sleepwalk Americans into supporting their paramilitary wing’s violence and lawlessness. As Pablo Manriquez shows, public support for ICE has completely collapsed, including among independents.
ICE may be gaining something like pariah status. The masked agents are achieving saturation in our info spaces and may be activating many Americans’ instinctual revulsion at the trappings of totalitarian dictatorship. Rogan’s disgusted tone suggests this reaction might also be growing in the “Manosphere” that Democrats badly want to reach.
Along these lines, Swalwell gets a strongly positive response when he talks about accountability for ICE at town halls in swingy and suburban areas. “When I say that the masks are coming off, it’s one of the biggest applause lines,” he says.
The masks are coming off. It’s short, easy to understand, and will have broad support. And guess what: With DHS boasting that thousands more ICE agents remain to be hired and Miller getting more sociopathic at a rapid clip, this issue will only get more potent by the day.
The post Trump ICE Raids Take Horrific Turn in Chicago, Handing Dems an Opening appeared first on New Republic.
