Masha Gessen, author of “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”, wrote an op-ed for the NYT April 2, 2025 titled “Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.”
Gessen writes “Those
of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t
shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity”, then quotes a friend Marianne
Hirsch: “I never realized until this moment how much fear I carried with me
from my childhood in Communist Romania. Arrests were arbitrary and every time
the doorbell rang, I started to shiver.”
The police state has
arrived in the United States of America in 2025.
The Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) was created in 2001 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was designed
as a secret police force. One of its first uses was in July 2020 to arrest
Black Lives Matter protestors in Portland Oregon. The officers were dressed in
black, masked, and drove unmarked vans.
This year under the
Trump regime they have been rounding up and disappearing (that’s a verb) people
suspected of being undocumented criminal immigrants. And they don’t much care
if they are a criminal and don’t even care if they have documents. There are
plenty examples in the news of both.
The most chilling aspect
of the current arrests is the lack of due process. The Riley Laken Act was
signed by President Trump on January 29, 2025. It requires the DHS to detain
undocumented immigrants for: “admitting to, charged with, or convicted of”,
crimes as minor as shoplifting. In practice DHS is expanding the list to include
“suspected of”. There is no hearing, no legal representation, and no chance to
defend themselves. People arrested under this act can be held indefinitely
without a formal charge.
Then there is the use of foreign prisons to “detain” these people. Hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants were sent to a prison in El Salvador. This is against the law prohibiting the US government from housing prisoners in other countries. There is a reason for that. DHS admitted in court on Monday April 1 that one of the men was sent to El Salvador due to a “clerical error”. Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a 2019 court order protecting him from being deported to El Salvador because he had sought asylum in the US from gang violence in that country. Now however the Trump administration says that there is nothing they can do about it because he is no longer in their jurisdiction. That is a lie, they just don’t want to bother. But this is the reason for the law requiring American prisoners to stay in America.
The Venezuelan deportation is an example of stretching the Riley Laken Act to include mere suspicion. Many of those deported were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a gang for no other reason than they had a tattoo. Some are no doubt not guilty of committing any crime and had tattoos for some other benign reason. (Somebody should tip ICE about a criminal gang member with tattoos named Pete Hegseth, and have him sent to El Salvador).
Here is a partial list
compiled by Mary Trump, published in her The Good in Us Morning Dispatch, April
3, and titled “Disappeared”.
Here's an incomplete list of some of the men who have been
wrongfully detained and illegally transported to the notorious CECOT
mega-prison:
·
Franco Tiapa, 26, from Venezuela who was simply deported for having
the wrong kind of tattoo.
·
Daniel Camargo, a 20 year old asylum seeker deported for a
tattoo of his daughter’s name and praying hands.
·
Neri Borges, a Dallas man, who was arrested and deported because
of an autism awareness tattoo he got in honor of his brother.
·
Luis Carlos Jose Marcano Silva, a 26-year-old barber who was
detained at an immigration hearing in Miami last month because he has a tattoo
of Jesus of Nazareth and one of his daughters name.
·
Jerse Reyes Barrios, a former professional footballer who was
deported based on a tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown on top of it, in honor
of his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid.
·
Francisco Casique, who was deported for having tattoos that say
“Live in the Moment” and “Family” in Spanish. Casique’s family has published
evidence that he has no criminal background whatsoever.
The reasons for
arresting them keep changing. First it was undocumented immigrants who
committed a crime. Then immigrants with work or student visas who protested the
slaughter of civilians in Gaza (suddenly the “Party of Nazis” is concerned
about anti-Semitism?). Visiting scientists detained or turned back at the
border for anti-Trump comments. Then anyone who made a social media post
critical of the Trump regime (that could fill a lot of prisons).
Thom Hartmann wrote in
his April 4 substack post: “the Trump
regime is now claiming that they can arrest, detain, and even deport anybody
they want, any time they want, regardless of the law or the courts.”
Hartmann quotes from the
first ten Constitutional Amendments, sometimes called the Bill of Rights, that
applies to every person in the United States, whether good or bad, whether a
citizen or not, whether in the country legally or not. And there is no clause
giving the President the ability to override these rights.
·
Police can’t
break into your home to arrest you without a warrant. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”
(4th Amendment)
·
You cannot
be charged with a serious crime without an indictment of a Grand Jury… “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law…” (5th Amendment)
·
The
accused has the right to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury. They must “be informed of nature and cause of the
accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of
Counsel for his defense.” (6th Amendment)
·
They
have the right to trial by jury (7th Amendment)
·
Bail
and punishment must be reasonable. “Excessive
bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
punishments inflicted.” (8th Amendment)
These rights have been
wilfully ignored by the Trump regime in the “detaining” (they can’t call them “arrests”)
of these people. ICE officers are not above these laws; ignoring them is itself
a crime.
American citizens may
not care much about the arrests of these “criminal immigrants”, thinking it
doesn’t affect them. But it does in many ways. One commenter to this article said
that his MAGA neighbor, whose gardener was abducted by ICE, is “beyond upset”.
(Now he’ll have to mow his own lawn! Awww!!!)
Another commenter
contributed this quote from German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller
speaking about the rise of Nazism:
"First
they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out-
Because
I was not a Communist.
Then
they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because
I was not a Socialist.
Then
they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because
I was not a trade unionist.
Then
they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because
I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there
was no one left to speak for me.”
And don’t think the
secret police will stop at immigrants. If they get away with what they are
doing now, they will come after citizens next, still with no due process. And
it won’t take much to get your name on the secret list.
The ultimate goal of
this is to create fear. Fear to say anything to anyone because you don’t know
who might be an informer – your neighbor, a co-worker, a relative. Even your children could repeat something to
their friends who tell their parents. This is how authoritarian regimes
maintain control. Fear.
The police state has
arrived in America. They are coming for you next.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-ice-immigrants.html
https://hartmannreport.com/p/criminals-always-gonna-crime-but-bd4
Disappeared – Mary L Trump from the Good in Us, April 3, 2025
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