Escalating Authoritarianism on American Streets

We’re in it, folks. I say that with no pleasure, but what no reasonable person would describe as anything other than obvious authoritarianism has arrived in the form of secret police on American streets and military involvement in domestic matters. The system is failing. Much of the mainstream press continues to bury its head in the sand over this reality, so if you have the ability, please consider throwing a few dollars our way for a paid subscription to American Doom or our coffee fund. Your support keeps this newsletter free for everyone out there trying to stay on top of the madness. - jg

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In one video, agents tackle a man in downtown Los Angeles, pinning him to the ground. An agent then puts the business end of a taser to the man’s head before turning it on a woman filming the scene with her phone. The agent points the taser at the woman’s face.

In another video, agents break the window of a box truck to nab a woman sitting behind the wheel. The man behind the camera — his phone — says, “Are you serious, bro?” and is then taken down by agents. The woman in the truck was a tamales vendor who has been in the United States for 25 years. The man behind the camera was a U.S. citizen who was detained and then released.

Another tamales vendor, an elderly woman named Matilde, had a heart attack when masked agents ripped her from a van. Immigration agents then arrested a U.S. citizen who was filming the incident, telling him that he was “never getting out” and that he had “better get a good lawyer.”

Of course, you have probably seen the video of Narciso Barranco, a landscaper and father of three Marines, being pinned to the ground and punched in the face by immigration agents.

These are just a few examples of the campaign of terror that immigration agents are carrying out on American streets. You can see more at a piece I have out today at Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice newsletter. Gone is any pretense that the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan has anything to do with undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Instead, agents wearing masks to conceal their faces and bulletproof vests, tactical gear and bearing assault rifles, are taking down elderly tamales vendors, landscapers, construction workers and apparently any brown person they feel like stopping on a given day.

If you support my work in tracking all of these troubling developments, please consider a paid subscription to American Doom. I’m an independent journalist and your support helps me pay the bills.

In some cases, it’s not even clear who these agents are. LA Mayor Karen Bass noted this week that some agents are wearing generic bulletproof vests that can be purchased online. Concern that DHS has deputized corrections officers and even bounty hunters to carry out immigration enforcement is growing. In a photo released by DHS a few weeks back, an agent is seen wearing a hat with the logo of the U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations division.

I don’t know of a more clear example of authoritarianism than masked agents — secret police, effectively — rounding up people based on their ethnicity, and then threatening, arresting or detaining even U.S. citizens who try to get in the way. After all these years covering the growing extremism of the American right, police brutality, and civil unrest, it seems like we have finally arrived: authoritarianism is here, and the only question that remains is what we are going to do about it.

I’m not saying anyone should attack a cop or an immigration agent. I’m saying that if you see these actions taking place, you should document the incident. Each day, Americans with backbones and morals should be publicly shaming any immigration agent or member of law enforcement involved with these actions.

Preventing American authoritarianism from going any further requires us to make the men and women carrying out these actions pay a societal cost for them. They should be ostracized from their friends and families. They should be made to feel ashamed for what they are doing, because what they are doing is quite simply wrong. They should not be allowed to get jobs in local law enforcement when they leave their work as immigration agents. They should be forced into the fringes of society, and perhaps even have no choice but to work the same low-paying, thankless jobs that immigrants hold. The time for excuses — they’re just following orders; they have bills to pay and families to feed — has passed. Put simply: anyone who is working on behalf of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan, from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on down to the agents on the ground inflicting fear and chaos on the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere, can no longer have a place in our society until they repent for their actions.

This is already happening in LA and elsewhere, where everyday citizens are standing up to agents as they violently detain harmless immigrants. Each day, a new round of videos emerges showing Americans doing the right thing — shaming the agents on the ground and in some cases preventing them from carrying out the often illegal detainments in which they’re engaged. More of this peaceful resistance will be required.

More on authoritarianism from American Doom

* Autocratization in action

* New American fascism and competitive authoritarianism, with Steven Monacelli

* Authoritarian sirens from Day One

* How we live now - What the beginnings of authoritarianism feel like

Those of us who grew up in the aftermath of 9/11 will remember the “See something, say something” mindset that required all of us to keep our eyes open for anyone wanting to do harm to our fellow countrymen. That same mindset is required of us now, but unfortunately must be applied to many of our fellow Americans, who have lost their way and are engaged in an unconstitutional and immoral campaign of terror against immigrants.

Courts ceding power, military involvement in domestic law enforcement

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It’s certainly distressing that it’s gotten to this point. For a while, I thought the systems were holding relatively well, but I no longer believe that’s the case. In recent weeks, the Trump administration’s attacks on the independence of the judicial branch and the failure of the courts to act as a check against the regime’s authoritarian assault on democracy have made it clear that street-level resistance and electoral upheaval are the only ways out of this mess.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has been responsible for three unsigned orders in recent months that grant the president more power and discretion over removing immigrants than the constitution allows. In the most recent of these unsigned orders — which are supposed to be used only in emergency cases but seem to be increasing — the court’s conservative majority essentially did away with the due process rights of noncitizens. Now, the Trump administration is free to send immigrants its agents detain to whatever country it pleases — even if the immigrant has no connection to that country. This includes sending immigrants from south and central America to places like Libya and South Sudan, countries in the midst of government upheaval and civil war.

To give a real-world example of why this matters, one of the immigrants at the center of the dispute over what’s known as third-country removals, a gay man, was locked in a room and repeatedly raped by other men in Guatemala. He was only released when his sister paid a ransom. After detaining the man, the Trump administration then facilitated his deportation back to Guatemala.

The court’s Republican appointees granted this sweeping power to the Trump administration to deport immigrants wherever it likes despite the fact that Justice Department lawyers had clearly violated lower court orders. The New York Times has reported that DOJ officials purposefully defied judges by sending immigrants to third countries and elsewhere via deportation flights, but the Supreme Court’s conservative justices let it slide.

The court also recently granted sweeping immunity to immigration agents like those terrorizing American streets from being sued for violating the constitutional rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. This removes another mechanism for holding the Trump administration and its agents accountable for their actions. In early June, the court also sided with the Trump administration — thus giving the president more power over immigration matters — in allowing the administration to remove protections for Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Haitians fleeing unrest and government oppression in those countries.

While the Supreme Court has been busy granting Trump more and more power over everything from immigration to blanket immunity for any crimes he or his administration may commit while in office, the creep of the administration’s foot soldiers into everyday American life has continued. Masked immigration agents are showing up not just in Los Angeles, but in cities and towns across the country. The expansion of the military to deal with domestic matters is also increasing — and not just in the form of U.S. Marines guarding the federal building in downtown LA, where many immigrants are being held in cramped conditions, and immigration lawyers are often prevented from seeing their clients for hours on end.

Members of Trump’s federalized California National Guard — which a three-judge panel in federal court determined the president was within his rights to do — is now helping the DEA with drug busts. So, in addition to masked, secret police roaming American streets, we now have members of the military involved with both immigration and domestic law enforcement operations. It’s hard to imagine a more troubling sign of the arrival of authoritarianism than that.

But in case you’re still on the fence, just look up “ICE raids” on any given social media platform for more evidence of the moment at which we have arrived.

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