It is generally accepted that, historically, a common survival strategy for autocratic leaders includes forming a personal paramilitary support group. These groups serve to counterbalance the regular military, strengthen security services and provide an armed force loyal directly to the leaders, rather than the state or constitution.
The difference between military and paramilitary is that the military consists of a nation’s official state-run armed forces for external defense, while a paramilitary is a civilian force with military-like structure and training, typically focused on internal security, law enforcement, or border patrol, often under a different ministry like Homeland Security (DHS), or even operating independently. While these support groups generally engage in official functions, their purpose over time may transition into focused enforcement of the doctrine of a ruling faction or individual.
Examples are plentiful. Hitler’s ‘Schutzstaffel’ (Protection Squadron or S.S.) became the most powerful and feared entity in Nazi Germany, responsible for enforcing the party’s racial policy.
Mussolini’s ‘Black Shirts,’ the paramilitary wing of his Italian Fascist Party, morphed from internal security to being used for widely-feared political terror and implementing genocide. ‘Fedayeen Saddam’ in Iraq, ‘Janjaweed’ in Darfur, the ‘Staci’ in East Germany, Soviet/Russian ‘Spetsnaz’ and others are among an overwhelming number of examples.
Many of these have been credibly accused of maintaining political control by instilling fear and carrying out campaigns of ethnic cleansing. These often amount to forcibly removing unwanted ethnic or religious groups from a given territory through a combination of violence, terror and displacement.
Given the political turmoil and upheaval emanating from our federal government—and the egocentric decision making process emerging from the president’s cabinet—have raised the question whether Donald Trump is a wannabe dictator.
His rhetoric, challenge of democratic norms, public threats to opponents, praise for foreign autocrats and determined pursuit of replacing non-partisan public servants with personal loyalists have many political analysts convinced that he, in fact, is.
Just as important is the question whether ICE (the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency) is being groomed to become Mr. Trump’s personal paramilitary group.
ICE was created in March of 2003, as part of the new DHS following the 9/11 attacks. Its purpose was to better secure the nation by consolidating enforcement, identifying security vulnerabilities, and promoting public safety through the enforcement of immigration and trade laws. It is not an independent paramilitary group. However, under the Trump administration, ICE tactics, a significant increase in funding and manpower, and a perceived shift in mission, have led critics, including civil rights organizations and media commentators, to describe the agency as operating with paramilitary behavior and function as a de facto secret police or a personal paramilitary force.
Secret police are a quintessential feature of an authoritarian regime. From Azerbaijan’s State Security Service to Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization, these agencies typically target political opponents and dissidents through covert surveillance, imprisonment and physical violence. Since President Trump assumed power in January, ICE has become a far more visible and fearsome force on American streets, and, although it is ostensibly still bound by constitutional restraints, the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making.
ICE members are now targeting political opponents and dissidents. Even though the agency does not report directly to Trump, ICE is controlled by people who have shown intense loyalty to him, like DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Czar Tom Homan. ICE agents operate in secret. They have procured increasingly more sophisticated intelligence capabilities. They conduct arbitrary searches. And while it does not yet resemble history’s most feared secret police force, there have been very few constraints on how it operates.
The question of whether ICE actions related to the removal of immigrants amount to ethnic cleansing is a subject of significant debate, political rhetoric and legal challenges. Critics argue that mass deportations and racial profiling disproportionately affect Latino and non-white communities regardless of their legal status. In effect, Latinos make up 90% of ICE arrests. Donald Trump has made it clear that he prefers immigrants from western European countries, like Norway. He referred to immigrants from other countries—like Somalia and Haiti—as “garbage,” oming from “s_thole countries” who he does not want in our country. His administration appears to slant towards favoring a white population as its “master race.”
According to the DHS, as of Dec. 10, more than 2.5 million {“illegal aliens” have left the U.S. A reported 1.9 million have voluntarily self-deported. ICE operations have resulted in 605,000 deportations. The organization is operating a network of over 200 major detention facilities, including jails, private prisons and other temporary holding areas. Critics have compared some of the larger detention centers in Florida, Texas and Arizona to notorious concentration camps, because of overcrowding, poor conditions and family separations. Moreover, human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases where inmates have disappeared from tracking systems, making their location essentially unknown.
These statistics, countless cases of abuse, excessive force, deporting migrants back to countries they had fled for security reasons, or transferring individuals to countries where they have never been, or never even heard of, would make us believe that we are gradually descending into a totalitarian abyss. When combined with its obvious shift towards targeting U.S. citizens for dissent and disobedience, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that ICE has become a tool in support of a creeping autocracy.
