Trump And Stephen Miller Have Created A Secret Police Force In Plain Sight

WASHINGTON – Not quite a full year since his return to the White House, Donald Trump has created a de facto “papers please” secret police force evocative of autocracies past, which he is now using to terrorize cities where he is unpopular, experts warn.

“Trump has created his own police force,” said Jason Stanley, an American studies professor at the University of Toronto and a scholar of fascism. “It looks like Trump is organizing a militia beholden only to him, with an enormous budget, reminiscent of the ‘Sturmabteilung’ in 1930s Germany. They seem to lack any kind of legal accountability.”

Fiona Hill, who served on the National Security Council in Trump’s first term, said he seems to be emulating Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

“In Russia, you have a whole host of forces, including the OMON and the National Guard and the president’s protection service,” she said. “Trump is clearly looking for forces he can deploy federally that don’t have the same checks and balances as the National Guard and the military.”

Trump, during his campaign to regain the presidency, spoke frequently about empowering the agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol to ramp up deportations of illegal immigrants — but also claimed he would focus on those with criminal records.

Instead, and thanks to massive funding increases approved by Republican lawmakers last summer, Trump and top aide Stephen Miller have deployed literal armies to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and, now, Minneapolis, where much of their time appears to be spent using overt violence to intimidate the local communities. Unlike normal police officers across the country, these agents do not wear name tags, do not identify themselves when approaching people, and often wear masks to conceal their identities.

The expedition to Minnesota has led to countless videotaped encounters of agents, often unprovoked, pushing, punching, pepper-spraying and otherwise assaulting locals. On Jan. 7, a 37-year-old woman was fatally shot in the face three times when ICE agents escalated a traffic dispute. Administration officials from Trump on down have defended the homicide as justified, claiming that Renee Good had tried to run over the agent who shot her — even though the agent had violated basic police protocol by walking in front of her car.

“Hitler had the SS and Gestapo, Trump and Vance have Noem, Bagman Homan and DHS and ICE,” said Ty Cobb, a former federal prosecutor and a White House lawyer in Trump’s first term, referring to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance and White House aide Tom Homan.

DHS failed to respond to numerous HuffPost questions over several days about ICE and Border Patrol actions. Miller likewise did not respond to queries, and Trump’s White House press office, rather than respond to the questions HuffPost asked, blamed Democrats for criticizing ICE.

“Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals is simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.

Miller, in a Fox News appearance on Tuesday that was soon reposted on social media by DHS, encouraged agents to continue behaving as they have and promised them “immunity.”

“To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties,” Miller said. “And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.”

Trump’s use of ICE and Border Patrol does differ in one respect from the secret police forces of previous autocratic regimes. Rather than operate in the dead of night, disappearing dissidents with little public footprint, Trump’s force is intentionally making a spectacle.

“East Germans did not know who worked for the Stasi. Even without name badges, the sheer visibility of ICE suggests that they are not hidden and working in the background as was the Stasi’s preferred method,” said Gary Bruce, an expert on East Germany at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

Indeed, videos taken by protesters and bystanders in Minneapolis have flooded social media in recent weeks and show officers engaging in behavior that appears designed to demonstrate dominance.

ICE agents can be seen marching in large groups, wearing military gear similar to what U.S. soldiers wore in Iraq and Afghanistan, at times knocking aside protesters who do not get out of their way. Others are stopping people who appear to be of Somali descent and demanding identification, just as they did to Hispanic-looking people in Los Angeles and other cities previously.

Other agents are asking protesters why they haven’t learned their lesson from Good’s shooting death and stopped their activity. “Did you not learn from what just happened? Go home,” one told a motorist.

Sometimes, they are using their government SUVs as weapons, crashing into the cars of residents. On Monday afternoon, ICE officers ran into a South Minneapolis man’s Subaru, then demanded he show ID. Protesters and even average citizens who do not want ICE in their community who verbally abuse officers are getting assaulted and detained — which is in clear violation of policing standards. One person who was merely filming officers interrogate someone at a Speedway gas station on Sunday was assaulted, handcuffed and taken away.

And on Tuesday, apparently angry that protesters were following them, agents stopped their car at an intersection, set off tear gas and then continued driving.

“They are doing it in plain sight,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who, like hundreds of his colleagues, was assaulted by Trump followers trying to help his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt. “This is brazen and in plain sight and reeks of, ‘the rules don’t apply to us.’”

Actual police officers like Dunn ― who typically must have at least a community college certificate in law enforcement and then receive a year or more of total training prior to starting work; in contrast to the approximately seven weeks that ICE officers are reportedly now getting — say that the behavior on display by Trump’s immigration agents would have gotten them disciplined, if not fired.

“They just go out there, en masse, and march through neighborhoods interacting with random people based on God-knows-what justification,” said Michael Fanone, a former Washington, D.C., police officer who was also assaulted by Trump’s mob on Jan. 6. “It goes against everything I was trained and was taught in 20 years of law enforcement…. Their loyalty is to Trump and not to the American people and the Constitution, which they trample on every time they put on boots and hit the streets.”

Adding to the parallels with past autocracies is the administration’s use of slogans and tropes, either unintentionally or by design, that harken to the worst periods in modern history.

The Department of Labor, which months ago began displaying a massive Stalin-esque portrait of a scowling Trump on its building, on Jan. 10 posted on social media: “One homeland. One people. One heritage.” — a slogan that mirrored one from Nazi Germany, “Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuhrer!”

DHS on Jan. 9 posted the slogan “We’ll have our home again,” which happens to be a white nationalist anthem popular with the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.

And that was just the latest in a string of posts that appear designed to appeal to those who dislike immigrants and ethnic minorities, including one that imagined a country after 100 million people — nearly a third of the entire U.S. population — are deported and another that blames everything from health care insurance costs to food inflation on illegal immigrants.

“As this week shows, they will cover up any crimes, including murder, committed on Trump’s behalf or during the execution of his demented, narcissistic, racist and revenge-based policies,” Cobb said. “Fascists all.”