technocrit

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the U.S.'s largest interior law enforcement agency with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

This figure is more than the annual military budget of Italy, which at $30.8 billion, is the world's 16th highest defense spender for this year according to tracker Global Fire Power.

It is also higher than military spending for Israel, ($30 billion), the Netherlands ($27 billion) and Brazil ($26.1 billion).

Immigrant advocates and civil rights lawyers say evidence is mounting that immigration agents carrying out the Trump administration's deportation crackdown in southern California are engaging in widespread racial profiling.

They've raided known hubs for Latino workers almost daily – hardware store parking lots, car washes, and street vendor corners. Videos of many of those operations, filmed by bystanders and posted to social media, have shown agents arresting people who appear to be Latino as they stand on sidewalks or wait at bus stops.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal groups filed a federal class action lawsuit alleging that immigration agents roving the streets are targeting people based on the color of their skin or their apparent occupation. They want a judge to declare the raids unconstitutional.

The first group of immigrants has arrived at a new detention center deep in the Florida Everglades that officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” a spokesperson for Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier told The Associated Press.

“People are there,” Press Secretary Jae Williams said, though he didn’t immediately provide further details on the number of detainees or when they arrived.

“Next stop: back to where they came from,” Uthmeier said on the X social media platform Wednesday. He’s been credited as the architect behind the Everglades proposal.

“Stood up in record time under @GovRonDeSantis ’ leadership & in coordination with @DHSgov & @ICEgov, Florida is proud to help facilitate @realDonaldTrump ’s mission to enforce immigration law,” the account for the Florida Division of Emergency Management posted to the social media site X on Thursday. Requests for additional information from the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and FDEM, which is building the site, were not returned early Thursday afternoon.

The facility, at an airport used for training, will have an initial capacity of about 3,000 detainees, DeSantis said. The center was built in eight days and features more than 200 security cameras, 28,000-plus feet (8,500 meters) of barbed wire and 400 security personnel

A Los Angeles school district is demanding an investigation of an incident last month, during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents gathered at a local high school before a raid and were seen publicly urinating on school grounds, not far from where elementary school students were attending summer classes.

According to a statement from El Rancho unified school district, which also released video evidence in the form of surveillance-camera footage, the incident took place on the morning of 17 June at Ruben Salazar high school in Pico Rivera, in south-eastern LA county.

The school has since written to Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, to request an inquiry. “At no time was a legal or legitimate reason offered or provided as to why ICE agents entered and remained on school grounds, nor did they provide any judicial warrant,” the school district said in the statement.

In just the span of two weeks, ICE unlawfully deported a Maryland father with legal protection from removal and detained a Turkish Fulbright scholar without due process. Both actions undermine judicial authority, sidestep legal protections, and expose the agency’s increasing willingness to act as an unaccountable enforcement arm of the executive.

The Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany, did not begin as an omnipotent terror machine. It evolved into one. Formed in 1933 and consolidated under Heinrich Himmler by 1936, the Gestapo operated outside judicial oversight.

It detained “enemies of the state” without warrants, held people in “protective custody” with no legal recourse, and enforced political conformity through fear. It became the spearpoint of Nazi totalitarianism not solely through brutality, but through the systematic erosion of legal constraints and the normalization of exceptional authority.

The alarming direction of ICE in 2025, at the very start of Trump’s second term, bears a critical resemblance to this historical model.

Whenever anyone mentions either Hitler, Nazi Germany, the Gestapo and SS, etc., there are many people who claim to be outraged by the comparison! Some claim doing this is either dishonest, untrue, or an overreaction, while others who have horrible family memories from the Holocaust and associated events, and seem to feel any comparison, in some way, minimizes their loss! Although, one could probably do a thesis on the comparison between President Trump (and some of his closest advisors) and Hitler (and his), the purpose of this article is rather, to consider, examine, review and discuss some eerie, horrific similarities between today’s ICE (and its behavior and actions) and those of the 1930’s to early 1940’s Gestapo and so-called Brown Shirts (used in Nazi Germany to refer to the SA or Sturmabtilung, which was the Nazi Party’s paramilitary organization , often referred to as “Storm Troopers” in England). Please beware it does not mean ICE is a Nazi group, but rather some of its actions and activities are eerily similar!

When combined with a potential shift towards targeting US citizens for dissent and disobedience, ICE is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism.

A delegation of relatives and friends of Venezuelans deported from the United States and imprisoned in Nayib Bukele’s mega-prison arrived in El Salvador on Monday to demand “proof of life” and to enquire about the detainees’ health status. Members of the delegation include Lisbeth Johana Sanguino, aunt of Widmer Sanguino, who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee, and Reina Cárdenas, a friend of Andry Hernández Romero, a renowned stylist who was processing his asylum application at the time of his deportation.