Over the last few weeks, Minneapolis has looked like a city under siege. The Trump administration has sent roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has called the “largest immigration operation ever.”

This comes as protests have spread around Minneapolis and across the country demanding that ICE leave Minnesota and other states following the death of Renée Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and US citizen who was killed by an ICE officer as she observed federal agents. While the Trump administration has labeled her a “domestic terrorist” who tried to run over the agent with her car, multiple videos show Good appearing to drive away.

ICE and other immigration agents are operating in ways we’ve never seen before in this country. But their tactics and weapons are not entirely new. Investigative journalist Radley Balko is the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop and host of Collateral Damage, a podcast about America’s war on drugs. He’s been tracking police militarization for decades and how it’s tied to America’s long-running drug war. On this week’s More To The Story, Balko describes what he’s seeing today from law enforcement as one of his “worst fever dreams.”

“Law enforcement leaders around the country are horrified by what they’re seeing,” Balko says. “Nobody thinks that how Trump is using law enforcement right now is appropriate or consistent with the principles of a free society.”

  • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    “became” probably isn’t the right word.

    This is an organization founded specifically to be the domestic white supremacist enforcement arm of the American federal law enforcement before Trump ever got ahold of it. He used this tool for what it was intended to be used for, he just did so in a way that was so clumsy and stupid that it became obvious to even normal people what it was.

  • Paragone@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Poor fools:

    ICE’s REAL purpose is to be what “cleans America up” after all non-Republicans get “de-naturalized”, legally converting them all into “illegals”.

    The current situation is NOTHING like what it’s going to be after Trump uses the Insurrection Act to enforce insurrection against the US Constitution, or do some equivalent thing, probably in Feb.

    There is no chance, whatsoever, for the US to be a “free society” once the tipping-point is crossed.

    It will be exterminating-the-woke time, all-out WAR against lives of progressives, WHILE waging war on Canada to enforce annexation ( the REAL reason he “needs” Greenland: to snuff Canada’s EU-lifeline ) & waging war on EVERYBODY in Central & South America, for imperial-conquest ( Putin’s on the same page, re Europe ).

    This is all charades, compared with the phase-change’s situation.

    Making-believing that the Status Quo LORD will reassert “normal” … is a lethal delusion.

    Once the tipping-point is crossed, all in the US will either vow loyalty to Trump, or have no rights.

    & quite possibly no life.

    _ /\ _

      • ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca
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        2 days ago

        Sure, but since the SA preceded the SS I think my point still holds. You are more historically accurate though :-)

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          The SA (Brownshirts) were the generic rabble with no training or professional education as soldiers. Hitler invited them off the street and gave them a fancy uniform and a mandate to harass and kill those he didn’t like. Doesn’t that sound a lot like ICE today that will hire anyone with a pulse and a white supremacist attitude?

          The SA were replaced in a power by the SS, the professional soldiers, in an uprising initiated by Hitler that murdered the SA leadership.

          • ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca
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            2 days ago

            Correct, and exactly what I was referring to when talking about ICE.

            As for the exact history, the original SS were nothing but a bunch of untrained thugs too. Hitler has just grown distrustful of the SA and wanted his bodyguard to be loyal to him alone instead of the party. This is also what ultimately led to the night of the long knives and the execution of Ernst Röhm. It wasn’t until Himmler took control of the SS in 1929, and with the institution of military training in 1934, that they slowly formed into an actual military organization with properly trained soldiers.

  • NorthoftheBorder@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    This was obvious right out of the gate. Now how can be stopped. Apparently they have an annual budget just short of Canada’s entire military.

  • jim@lemmy.orgBanned from community
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    2 days ago

    This was the plan from the beginning. If they don’t let him declare martial law in October he will use the Trump Gestapo