GESTAPO TACTICS
ICE defies the law
A definite number of prisoners had to go with each transport. It did not really matter which, since each of them was nothing but a number…The list was the only thing that mattered…One literally became a number: dead or alive—that was unimportant.--Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents recently carried out an immigration raid at Buona Forchetta, a popular San Diego restaurant. They pushed the restaurant’s manager against a wall, handcuffed all of the restaurant’s employees and arrested three employees who could not produce identification. When people gathered outside to protest the raid, ICE agents set off smoke grenades to disperse the crowd.
In a recent commencement speech at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz compared ICE’s tactics to Hitler’s secret police.
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Walz said. "This is what the crumbling of the rule of law looks like in real time. And it's exactly what the founders of this nation feared − a tyrant abusing power to persecute scapegoats and enemies."
Across the country, ICE agents—often concealing their identity with masks--have been conducting arbitrary searches, arrests and interrogations and indefinitely imprisoning people in custody. They have raided primary schools searching for undocumented students and detained tourists and visa holders for weeks. Some U.S. citizens have vanished under ICE custody without due process. At least three people have died in ICE detention facilities since Trump’s inauguration.
“ICE is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism,” Alex Brandon of the Associated Press wrote in The Conversation in April.
In Medium, Dick Dowdell writes that ICE actions, are “disturbingly familiar to students of 20th-century totalitarianism.” Dowdell adds:
Federal courts have issued injunctions, habeas writs, and emergency orders, only to be defied by ICE or dismissed as irrelevant. This breakdown between the judiciary and the executive branch represents a constitutional crisis in miniature, one that erodes checks and balances. The comparisons to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police, are uncomfortable but illuminating. The Gestapo operated outside the judicial system. They conducted raids, arrests, and detentions without accountability, often relying on secrecy, intimidation, and the label of ‘enemy of the state’ to justify extrajudicial action.
Today, ICE employs tactics that mirror these methods: secret raids, targeting of specific populations, and arrests without judicial review. The fear instilled in immigrant communities — even among those with legal status — recalls the atmosphere of suspicion and terror the Gestapo cultivated.
Like the Gestapo, ICE has created a culture of impunity. Agents are rarely disciplined, and abuses are often downplayed or dismissed. Internal investigations rarely lead to meaningful reform. The use of black vans, nighttime arrests, and concealment of identity are not hallmarks of a transparent, democratic institution.
Alarmingly, there are increasing reports that individuals have been targeted not for any legal violation, but for speaking out against the current administration or for participating in protests and activism. Just as the Gestapo pursued political dissidents, today’s enforcement actions have shown signs of drifting toward suppression of dissent—a direct threat to the First Amendment and the fundamental freedom of political expression.
Trump administration officials have claimed immigrants do not have Constitutional rights. But legal experts and decades of court decisions agree that immigrants, regardless of how they entered the US, legally or illegally, have due process rights.
There has been some pushback against ICE and the Border Patrol. Federal judges have issued scathing rebukes. U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer L. Thurston noted in April that federal agents cannot carry out warrantless arrests unless they have probable cause that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. “You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,’” Judge Thurston said.
Pro Publica and other investigative reporters have documented ICE abuses. Law schools and nonprofit clinics have organized rapid-response teams to provide legal support to those arrested and detained.
More needs to be done. Demand that Congress reassert its authority to oversee federal agencies and require them to be transparent and accountable. Support organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center. Join the protests.
Sources:
“ICE agents conduct raid at Buona Forchetta, popular South Park restaurant,” Lori Weisberg and Alexandra Mendoza, San Diego Union-Tribune, May 31, 2025
“How ICE is becoming a secret police force under the Trump administration,” Alex Brandon, The Conversation, April 28, 2025
“When the Law Is Ignored: ICE tactics and echoes of the Gestapo,” Dick Dowdell, Medium, April14, 2025