I’ve been reading some analysis of ICE’s behavior and it resurrected memories from my military service and the counterinsurgency training we received. It struck me that ICE is acting in a way that would get them killed in a hurry if they were operating in a city filled with insurgents instead of protestors.

There are two ways to go about pacification: 1) win over the hearts and minds of the civilian population, or 2) murder everyone and burn the city to the ground. But ICE is stuck in the middle, where they are alienating the population with their brutality without fully pacifying them with extreme violence. By doing a mixture of the two, ICE is actually putting their personal in grave danger. A lot of ICE personnel are a bunch of barely trained yahoos dressing up like Delta Force, yet armed to the teeth and kidnapping, beating, injuring and murdering innocent civilians. But Americans are heavily-armed too and ICE, by roaming around in plain sight in small groups, routinely surrounded by residents, is setting themselves up for an ambush or attack.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is failing to hold the officers accountable for their blatant murders and thereby signaling that the only way there will be any punishment for what happened is if someone takes the law into their own hands.

And that raises the possibility that ICE is seeding the ground for a red/blue conflict that gives the Trump Administration, and advisers like Stephen Miller, the pretext to cancel the 2026 elections. I think the Trump administration is intentionally sending in their paramilitary goons to create chaos, manufacture a few martyrs, and ideally touch off a riot, to provide an excuse for further violent escalation: Invoking the Insurrection Act, attempting to federalize the National Guard, and eventually moving up to installing Trump as president-for-life.

There’s every reason to expect an acceleration of violence up to the November midterms. Maintaining our humanity through resistance in the face of such threats will require fortitude from both leaders and ordinary people. 

Update: The threatened attack on Iran demonstrates that ICE’s para-military rampages are simply one aspect of the crazy-pants Trump administration.