Is the DHS America’s Gestapo?

There are two branches of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The latter is normally limited within a 100-mile zone adjacent to the American border. Within that 100-mile zone, Border Patrol agents have broad authority to interrogate people and conduct warrantless searches when there’s “reasonable suspicion” of immigration violations. ICE states its agents can “briefly detain” people who have “reasonable suspicion” of being in the country illegally. The agency can also “arrest people they believe are illegal aliens” and may “initiate consensual encounters and speak with people” on the street.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that cleared the way for ICE to use race, accents, and places of work as factors in deciding who to stop and potentially detain. And, under the second Trump administration, those distinctions have become rather murky as both DHS agencies have undergone sweeping changes. As a result, they increasingly work alongside one another to enact the President’s wide-reaching deportation campaign. The distinction between the arrest and deportation of border crossers and long-term residents is lost. Often these long-term residents are actual citizens or applicants for citizenship. Also, since most Americans rarely carry “proof of citizenship” while going to the market, school, or work, ICE agents can and have mugged, handcuffed, and jailed citizens or legal applicants for citizenship.

The ongoing immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota, for example, involves both branches of the DHS. And it uses a much wider net to cast over both current and long-term immigrants. As a result of these changes, the recent arrests, incarcerations, and deportations of these inhabitants of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Indianapolis can be indiscriminately justified as lawless border crossings. But Trump uses the DHS to punish and eradicate those he believes unfit to be citizens-or even residents-of the state. Hitler used the Gestapo in a similar way to rid Germany of those he believed to be enemies of the state to include all Jews and even some of his political rivals. Both Hitler and Trump built holding facilities i.e. concentration camps for Hitler’s scapegoats and converted or hastily constructed storage facilities for Trump’s victims. Whereas Hitler’s victims faced the gas chambers, Trump’s victims face beatings, unsafe holding facilities, and deportations to foreign countries where they may not be welcome or easily assimilated . . . especially after being separated from family, home, and their American jobs and careers. Both of these men assumed power over their alleged scapegoats to justify their personal bigotry and self-assumed right to wield such power.

Whereas Hitler’s Gestapo were sharply uniformed secret police, Trump’s DHS irregulars are often overweight and sloppily dressed masked marauders. If a German citizen were arrested by the Gestapo, he/she would be considered an enemy of the state and face a gruesome imprisonment and possibly death.  Those who fall prey to these DHS irregulars are often treated to a gang style beating before being whisked away to a poorly provisioned holding facility—often in a different state—and then removed to a distant country for imprisonment and/or permanent exile from their family and friends. Hitler’s victims were convicted of being Jews by birth or choice. Trump’s victims are considered guilty of illegal immigration, whether they escaped guards at the borders or entered America lawfully and requested legal citizenship. That legal request can take months or even years to be granted but allows prospective citizens to live and work alongside other American citizens. The visa, green card, and naturalization processes can be overwhelming and confusing. Nevertheless, immigrants seeking citizenship will obtain a green card, an immigrant visa, or a treaty or employment-based visa. During previous administrations, they may be required to report regularly to an immigration court where their progress towards citizenship is evaluated or even assisted. But in Trump’s America, a routine immigration court appearance can be met by DHS border guards who may beat litigants and then transfer them to an ill-equipped temporary facility before being airlifted to another country.

What Americans are witnessing in Los Angeles, Chicago and now Indianapolis only vaguely resembles the original purpose of DHS. Like the morphing of Germany’s Security Services (Sicherheitsdienst, often referred to as SS or SD) into a secret state police, (Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo, for short), the role of DHS in border security has evolved into a masked state police that purports its ability to operate above State law and answer only to the Federal Government and to its leader, the President of the United States. “As early as 1935 the Prussian Supreme Court of Administration, under Nazi pressure, had ruled that the orders and actions of the Gestapo were not subject to judicial review.”¹In like manner, America’s Supreme Court has given its President the freedom to enact the powers of his office without the restraints imposed upon other Americans. Both Hitler and President Trump have acted unconstrained by law or conscience to create, enable and defend an organization that imposes their power over benign citizens in order to eradicate their chosen scapegoats for all that is bad in the society they govern. For Hitler, his scapegoats were Jews. For Trump, it is immigrants.

What motivates such men to exert unlawful and inhuman pain upon fellow or prospective citizens? Well, Hitler explained his motivation in Mein Kampf: “I understand the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts . . . it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down . . . This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses . . . I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses . . . the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.”²

What we Americans have seen in Los Angeles, Chicago, and most especially in Indianapolis is Americans’ response to the Trump DHS’ physical terror tactics. In the face of DHS violence, protestors bring whistles, and cell phones. As DHS breaks car windows in the face of passengers – including children, shoots unarmed civilians, sprays chemicals on non-violent protesters, drags unarmed protestors into a crowd of DHS agents where they are kicked, punched, and sat upon, how do we fellow Americans respond? Do we cringe in terror or simply succumb in despair? Well, neither terror nor despair can or should be an option in a democratic polity. Instead, we believe in hope, as former President Obama reminded us on so many occasions. In fact, we hope and strive to form a more perfect union that assures justice, tranquility, a common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty for all Americans. But the DHS undermines these Constitutional goals, while President Donald Trump advances his power and control over America.

Whereas Hitler secured his reign of terror following the burning of the Reichstag³—a pivotal event that allowed him to eliminate political opposition and centralize authority—Trump failed in his attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021. That uprising against the American capital did not result in his consolidation of power, and his term in office ended. The American system remained resilient against his bid to undermine constitutional governance. But now, in his second term, Trump has utilized the DHS to subject Americans to his will, that is, to accept his forced removal of people he seems to despise as unfit to be in America, to accept his authority to debase and deport them without question, and to believe he is making America better—in his words, “great  again.”

But the DHS role in Indianapolis is just the prelude to Trump’s plan to secure and extend his power over our government and its system of checks and balances. Consider his much-publicized use of tariffs to “restore “America’s global dominance and financial security. After well justified criticism, he stubbornly refuses to admit that tariffs are in fact taxes Americans must pay to buy goods and services imported from other countries. He hints that tariff income can reduce America’s growing debt. But he has not used this income for that purpose. Instead, he spends millions of Americans’ tax dollars to finance the American embargo on Venezuelan oil and America’s attack on Iran which he designed to topple its government.

While he expands the nation’s debt, he has ignored Congress’ authority to authorize government expenditures in lieu of his personal financial whims. He would rather propose to buy or occupy Greenland, pay Argentina 40 billion dollars to salvage the government of his friendly head of state there, or commit 150 planes and a third of America’s sea power to attack and overthrow the government of Venezuela. And now, he has committed America to a war against Iran, once again ignoring Article 1 or the Constitution that grants to Congress the exclusive power “to declare war.” He had also allocated American funds to Israel’s demolition of Gaza which he noted could now become a beautiful resort—which he undoubtedly could and would build as its private developer. He has already proposed to develop resorts in Saigon and several Muslim nations. The later have contributed billions of dollars to Trump’s crypto organization and even added a multi-billion-dollar airplane to his personal wealth. With his influence over tax dollars expenditures at his disposal, Trump has gained financial leverage over both financial, collegial, and legal institutions and even over other governments’ willingness to reward him for his “pay to play” schemes. No mob boss in American history has ever gained this much financial leverage. Remember: before he assumed his second term in office just one year ago, Trump had difficulty borrowing a $100,000 security instrument to pay part of the $500,000 penalty he owed New York State for his 33 fraud convictions. But now, after just one year in office, he is now approaching a net worth of over a trillion dollars. He better warrants the name of “robber baron” than the tycoons at the turn of the 20^th century. These robber barons used the manpower and resources of a vast nation to build new enterprises and create jobs and wealth for a growing nation. Donald Trump, by contrast, builds nothing that he cannot affix with his name and that benefits himself exclusively, if not primarily.

Hitler used the Gestapo to quell any and all opposition to his exercise of unrestrained power and control over the German government–thereby establishing the Third Reich. Trump uses the DHS to suppress opposition to his immigrant purge and justify his control over any citizen resistance, to include Governors and Mayors. He uses the Department of Justice to investigate and arrest anybody he identifies as a political opponent much as Hitler purged all who opposed him in governance. The Third Reich presents a case study on how to overthrow a democracy from within. But America is not yet primed to bow to Trump’s grasp of unhindered power. Nevertheless, he has won the Supreme Courts’ expansion of his authority. And he has won the indiscriminate obeisance of the Republican controlled Congress. At this very moment, he is planning to “federalize” or take control of our national elections. And part of that plan might well be the use of his DHS criminal police force to enforce his control of ballot submissions. After the January 6 insurrection, can there be any doubt of Donald Trump’s intent? Remember he absolved all those convicted of criminal conduct in their attempt to enthrone Trump as their President in an election he did not win. His obeisant enablers were treated as if they were above the law because Trump considers himself the final legal arbiter. Similarly, in the Third Reich “the Gestapo was also above the law and impowered so by Hitler who made himself the law.”⁴

If America follows the same path as Nazi Germany, is it inevitable that it too will create a similar upheaval in world affairs and the alienation of its people from its cultural roots. God help us, if we allow our democracy to crumble in the hands of a narcissistic sociopath.

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1. William L. Shirer, “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” p. 271.

2. Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf,” as quoted in “The Rise and Fall of the
   Third Reich,” pp. 22-23.
3. The Reichstag, as the parliament of the former German empire, was still central to government and a formidable obstacle to Hitler’s seizure of all power in Nazi Germany.
4. William L. Shirer, Ibid. pp. 270.