They wear black masks covering all but their eyes. They carry guns but no visible identification. They drive unmarked vehicles.
In California, they took a grandfather who was dropping off his granddaughter at her church school. In Boston, they grabbed a young Turkish exchange student off the street in front of her apartment. In Pennsylvania, they deported an 82-year-old man who had lived in the U.S. for nearly 40 years.
If these secret seizures by the thousands across the country were the work of an international gang we would call it terrorism and sound a national alarm. But the masked faces are not gang members. They are agents of ICE, the federal immigration police.
Shoving terrified people into unmarked vans is no accident. It is done on the orders of President Donald Trump. The president likes big numbers, so ICE has a goal of grabbing and jailing at least 3,000 people every day.
But finding that many immigrants to grab goes beyond what Trump said he was going to do.
He told us he was initially only going after those undocumented migrants who are dangerous and violent criminals. Then ICE started going after those who have never committed any crime.
He told us he was only going after bad people in the U.S. illegally. Then he dispatched ICE agents to grab and jail immigrants here legally as well.
He told us he was going after freeloaders milking the system and not those necessary to the agriculture and hospitality sectors. Then he sent ICE into those workplaces: Dairy farms in New York, meatpacking plants in Nebraska, restaurants and hotels in California. Places where migrants work long shifts in support of their families.
All of this is just a preview of coming attractions.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” massively increases ICE’s yearly budget, from $3.5 billion to $30 billion. On top of that, it adds another $45 billion for new immigration prisons. ICE will soon be one of the most lavishly funded police forces on the planet, bigger than the armies of most nations.
To justify spending all that money from taxpayers, you can bet the quotas for shoving people into unmarked vans and deporting them will increase as well.
Trump’s deportation czar, Thomas Holman, says ICE agents only detain people based on a “reasonable suspicion” they are in the U.S. illegally. When asked what constitutes reasonable suspicion his list included “physical appearance.”
This is now official U.S. policy. Just having brown skin is grounds for suspicion and arrest, heightening fear and anxiety across the country. A Catholic Archbishop in Southern California recently gave the faithful permission to skip Sunday mass because churches have also become a place where ICE looks for people to grab.
I’ve seen this before. When I lived in Bolivia, the government’s special anti-drug police operated with a similar arrest quota handed down by a despotic leader. To meet that demand they threw anyone they wanted into jails with no evidence. This included a young mother I knew who spent more than two years in a Bolivian cell, separated from her children and convicted of nothing.
This is what Trump is building now, Bolivian despotism, American style.
How on Earth is this America, when millions of people (including citizens) are afraid to go to church or to work because the color of their skin might land them in an immigration prison? How did we become a nation where people are just grabbed off the street in the light of day with no due process? Where many end up deported to a country where they have never been, or just get lost in the system altogether?
Many of you reading this voted for Donald Trump last November. I think you voted to make our borders more secure and to deport immigrants who are dangerous or violent. I do not think that you voted for a secret police force of masked agents shoving thousands of law-abiding, terrified people into unmarked vans.
This is not liberty and justice for all. And it is not America.