At the very beginning of Donald Trump’s second term, this magazine warned that his mass deportation plan wouldn’t just affect immigrants, but that it was a direct threat to the safety and civil liberties of all Americans. As cases piled up in the months that followed of US citizens being arrested, questioned, detained, and even deported from the country, we warned again that the operation was menacing law-abiding Americans and trampling their constitutional rights.
It’s now been nearly nine months, and it could not be clearer that the administration’s aggressive and indiscriminate approach to deportations, coupled with the impunity granted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents to carry it out, is a profound danger to every US citizen.
The most recent incident took place last week in Chicago, where federal agents rappelled (needlessly) from helicopters into a residential building in the city’s lower-income South Shore neighborhood, indiscriminately broke down apartment doors, threw flash-bang grenades, and zip-tied and dragged out residents while ransacking their property. That includes several US citizens, children among them, who were detained for hours without access to a lawyer.
Yet there seems to be remarkably little urgency around this issue from the political class.
The Chicago raid is being bitterly criticized by officials in Illinois but not much beyond the state. The national attention it has drawn is mostly because of news reporting, and even that has not exactly placed it center stage. It’s an issue that, like the Kilmar Ábrego Garcia case, could become a throbbing political weak spot for the administration on what is meant to be its signature issue — if only someone would champion it.
The Chicago incident is not even remotely the first time this has happened. The New York Times recently counted, based on public records, at least fifteen US citizens who have been arrested and…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
