There is not much that can still shock about Donald Trump’s second administration. But the killing of Renee Good earlier this month by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, as well as the regular, often violent confrontations that ICE stages on US streets, show so much that is unravelling in plain sight. The rule of law, the freedom to protest, and even the right to walk or drive in the streets safely without being assaulted by the state, seems to exist no longer in the towns and cities where ICE has made its presence felt. The most disturbing aspect of all this is how quickly it has happened. But for a government agency such as ICE to become the powerful paramilitary force that it is, several factors need to be in play first. Only one of them is Donald Trump.
ICE may look as if it came out of nowhere, but the sort of authoritarianism that results in these crackdowns never does. It takes shape slowly, in plain sight, in a way that is clearly traceable over time. First, there needs to be a merging of immigration and security concerns, both institutionally and in the political culture. Established in the wake of 9/11, ICE was part of a government restructuring under President George W Bush. It was granted a large budget, wide investigative powers and a partnership with the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce. The work of enforcing immigration law became inextricably linked to the business of keeping Americans safe after the largest attack on US soil. That then extended into a wider emphasis, under Barack Obama, beyond those who posed national security threats, and on to immigrants apprehended at the border, gang members and non-citizens convicted of felonies or misdemeanours.
The dragnet became wider, the budgets became bigger, and due process started to wither. Trump then grew ICE into the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country, with a budget surpassing most of the world’s militaries. And he imbued the agency with a supreme mandate of saving the US from existential threat, a sort of praetorian guard vested with his executive power.
To get where the US is today, you also need an unhinged rightwing media to do the work of scaremongering and priming the public, relentlessly banging the drum on illegal immigration and the threat of demographic overwhelm. And, relatedly, of course, the US immigration crackdowns are sustained by a culture of plain old racism. One that hides behind concerns for public safety, but is in fact a way to channel discontent about the reality of a country that is far less white than many would like.
Next up is a long history and engrained culture of military supremacy. The scenes of ICE officers entering neighbourhoods, heavily armed, looked almost indistinguishable from scenes of US soldiers abroad. So much of the mythology of the American soldier, who has infinite mandate to use violence overseas in defence of freedom and American values, can be seen in the propaganda around ICE. The merging of military and policing functions can be seen in the absurd arsenals of domestic police forces, with their drones, weapons, explosives, armoured personnel carriers and masked faces. And it can be seen in the personnel who move between overseas and domestic forces. The New York Times has reported that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, served in Iraq.
I have been thinking about what it was about the ICE phenomenon that felt chillingly familiar to someone who grew up under repressive regimes. It wasn’t the deployment of huge numbers of forces, nor was it even the violence. It was the sense that anything could happen to anyone, not just those expressly identified as the legitimate targets of crackdown. The abiding experience of living with authoritarianism is the sense not of imminent assault, but of the constant possibility that suddenly, you could be in trouble. At a traffic incident where the officer didn’t like your tone, at a gathering that was deemed to violate a curfew and then forcibly dismantled, or even on social media where a mindless post could affect your ability to leave the country. It is a state of effacement of all civil rights, and a swelling of government into a volatile, capricious overlord, as safe or scary as the single enforcer in front of you who happens to be vested with its power.
The US has passed through that veil. But there are warning signs in the UK. The relentless portrayal of immigrants as a threat to safety and social cohesion. The same glamorisation of the imagery of crackdown, now a feature of government propaganda as ministers attend Home Office immigration raids. The same expansion of powers and discretion to the police to include ever wider definitions of what a public order infraction is, such as factoring in the “cumulative impact” of pro-Palestine rallies. The transformation of protest into dissidence. The empowerment of the UK Border Force, which now has the right to seize someone’s mobile phone even when they are not under arrest. The swirl of nativism that underpins it all. Throw in one charismatic and mendacious political leader, and a rightwing press amplifying all the necessary fever dreams of a country in crisis, and you are on a path to passing through that veil. It can happen in Britain too, just with fewer guns.
Curated by James Chen
