This week's fresh hell
Recent immigration enforcement actions are both absurd and disturbing — and suggest we are on the path to bloodshed.
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This is one of those years where there is fresh hell every week.
Last Friday, the day my previous post went up, heavily armed federal agents raided two Italian restaurants in San Diego, California and arrested four people suspected of living in the country illegally. As locals caught wind of the activity, a crowd began to form, chanting “shame” and calling the agents “Nazis” and "fascists." Videos show some of the members of the crowd standing in front of unmarked SUVs. Federal agents then used a flash-bang grenade before leaving the scene.
The incident drew outrage from local elected officials. San Diego councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera called for collective action against what he described as “state-sponsored terrorism” and posted a photo on X of federal agents along with the word “terrorists.” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has a penchant for citing white supremacists, responded to the post with one of his own, stating: “We are living in the age of leftwing domestic terrorism. They are openly encouraging violence against law enforcement to aid and abet the invasion of America.”
(Note: multiple studies and sources indicate that we are in fact living in an age of rightwing terror: the majority of domestic terror attacks in the United States in recent history have come from far-right extremists. Even Grok agrees.)
What happened in San Diego was but one of a number of disturbing and sometimes absurd news items that broke over the last week. Let’s start with an absurd one.
According to a viral video shared online this week, a Southwest Airlines flight was reportedly diverted from Houston to Nashville to allow for federal agents to apprehend a person, with several posters claiming it was an ICE raid and the suspect was suspected of living in the United States illegally. Despite the rare mid-flight raid occurring during broad daylight, the agents appear to be wearing helmets equipped with night vision goggles — a choice that drew predictable ridicule on the internet.
In addition to making fun of the absurd scene, commenters online decried it as “gestapo tactics” and But it turns out the incident had nothing to do with immigration enforcement. Local reporting indicates it was related to a false bomb threat, not immigration enforcement.
Behind this case of misinformation — which I must admit initially even fooled me — there’s reason for Americans to be on edge and jump to conclusions.
Just days before that video went viral, senior immigration officials instructed rank-and-file officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11 and push the envelope” in order to increase apprehension and deportations, according to reporting in the Guardian.
One specific tactic suggested was the arrest of “collaterals” — undocumented people who are not specifically subject to an arrest warrant but happen to be encountered in the process of enforcement — without a warrant.
ICE has already bragged about arresting collaterals without warrants, and the new directive indicates we are likely to see more arrests without warrants.
This week, federal agents arrested two men in Chicago as a part of immigration enforcement and did not present warrants. The FBI, which has been participating in immigration enforcement, did not provide news outlets proof of warrants but defended the arrests in a statement that claims that “Every person that we arrested was breaking our immigration laws, but most of these individuals had significant criminality.”
The narrative of pervasive criminality among those caught up in deportation dragnets has not held up to scrutiny. An article this week from the Texas Tribune provided a crucial update on the status of 47 people of Venezuelan origin, including nine minors, who were arrested months ago and accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang. It details that many of them were arrested in a raid, which also featured the use of flashbangs, that occurred while they were gathered for a birthday party at a rental house in the Texas Hill Country. Two of them were also charged with drug possession.
In a press release that came shortly after the raid, authorities promised more details would be released.
Now, two months later, “authorities have yet to provide any evidence that the more than three dozen people they arrested that night have connections to the gang.”
One of the men who was arrested with his 24-year-old wife and their young kids told the Texas Tribune he “denied being associated with the gang and said an agent accused him of being a gang member because of two star-shaped tattoos on his shoulders.”
Experts on gangs and Venezuelan culture have pushed back on the Trump administration’s claims that tattoos can reliably be used to adjudicate gang affiliation. But that doesn’t matter. Those numbers need to be pumped up, and creative interpretation of a Nike Jumpman tattoo is one way to get there.
Besides, admitting they’ve done wrong would bring those numbers down, and that’s something they cannot abide. And even when they admit they’re wrong, such as in the case of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, sidestepping due process by sending people to a prison in a foreign jurisdiction allows them to avoid corrections to improper actions.
It’s not as if ICE has never apprehended or deported someone improperly. In the past, those errors tended to be corrected, even if it took a long time. But this has changed in Trump’s second term.
That’s one takeaway from a great piece this week in New York Magazine, which details the story of Davino Watson, a United States citizen who spent 1,237 days in ICE custody from 2008 to 2011. Watson faced a horrendous experience in which he tried and failed to get federal officials to believe he was an American citizen. Had Watson been deported to CECOT, it’s uncertain he would have ever gotten out.
As the federal government widens its deportation dragnet, it is sweeping up more than just criminal aliens. Noncriminal undocumented immigrants, legal residents, and even citizens have been caught up in immigration enforcement actions, with tenuous justifications. Enforcement actions have become increasingly militarized, ICE has rescinded a policy that courthouse arrests do not clash with state and local laws, and the Trump administration has repeatedly singled out local elected officials who have been critical of ICE activity in their communities, such as Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell. And as the dragnet has expanded, popular resistance to it has intensified.
Just yesterday, a taskforce of at least 30 federal agents, some heavily armed, descended on a taqueria in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A video from the scene shows law enforcement shoving and throwing protesters who had gathered in response, and local reporting cites police using pepper spray. But the incident was not related to immigration enforcement, according to statements from law enforcement officials, who said it was related to a Homeland Security Task Force investigation into drugs and money laundering. Nevertheless, the incident underscored the sharp resistance to efforts that even appear to be immigration enforcement, and how Trump’s immigration enforcement approach has all the makings of a powderkeg.
As historian Kevin Kruse put it in response to the aforementioned ICE raid in San Diego: “We’re speeding towards the moment when one of these ICE kidnappings ends in bloodshed.”
If our current trajectory doesn’t change, I don’t think it’s a matter of if that will happen. It’s a matter of when.
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POST SCRIPT: One additional story I didn't notice until after this was published is a development in a prior case I highlighted in my first post a few weeks ago regarding a statement DHS released a about a city councilmember in Worcester, Etel Haxhiaj, saying she “pulled a political stunt and incited chaos by trying to obstruct law enforcement” by participating in a protest against an ICE raid. Yesterday, Haxhiaj was accused of and charged with assaulting a police officer.
UPDATE: The featured image at the top the article has been changed and new details have been added to the article to clarify that the diverted flight was not an incident of immigration enforcement, despite being widely circulated as such.
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Thank you Steven for clarifying this mess.