What Kind Of Nazi Shit Are We Tolerating In Our Midst— Trump Isn't The Only Criminal Here
- Howie Klein
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
ICE agents know what is expected of them from their bosses, Robert Hammer, Madison Sheahan, Benjamine Huffman, Kenneth Genalo, John Feere, Todd Lyons, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Spephen Miller and Adolf Trump. Watch the video of ICE agents with no arrest warrant violently attacking asylum seeker Juan Francisco Méndez and his wife Marilú in New Bedford last week as they waited for their lawyer in front of their home.
It’s far from the only example of xenophobic ICE agents using violence against migrants with no criminal records. The violence deployed by ICE agents is not an aberration— it’s a structural feature of the agency’s mission and culture. Numerous studies and investigations have found that immigration enforcement agencies, especially ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Protection), attract individuals who are predisposed toward authoritarian behavior and prone to use force disproportionately. A 2018 American Civil Liberties Union report documented widespread abuses by ICE officers, including assaults, intimidation, and unlawful detentions. Similarly, a 2020 study published in the Journal of Borderlands Studies found that ICE operates with “minimal oversight, maximum discretion,” and that such conditions tend to foster what scholars call “street-level authoritarianism”—where low-level agents carry out state violence as a form of personal empowerment and ideological expression.
Psychological studies on law enforcement more broadly point to a disturbing pattern: when agents operate in environments where discretion is broad and accountability is minimal, their behavior often mirrors that of petty tyrants. In a 2001 article titled “The Psychology of Tyranny,” researchers Reicher and Haslam drew from the Stanford Prison Experiment and real-world policing data to argue that individuals in hierarchical systems tend to conform to and even exceed perceived expectations of dominance, especially when the targets are dehumanized or cast as national threats. ICE officers, frequently trained in militarized tactics and operating in a climate of xenophobia encouraged by figures like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, often see themselves not as neutral enforcers of immigration law, but as front-line soldiers in a culture war.
This mindset is routinely reinforced by agency leadership. When ICE agents see political leaders like Kristi Noem celebrating violence— like her chilling anecdote of killing a puppy in front of her children— as a sign of “toughness,” or when Trump describes immigrants as "animals" and promises mass deportation camps, the message is unmistakable: brutality is not only acceptable, it’s desirable. The result is a paramilitary force that targets vulnerable people—like Méndez and his wife— with the implicit blessing of the state. And because these agents are rarely held accountable, they come to understand that their cruelty will be excused, ignored, or even rewarded.
Almost 19% of U.S. citizens are Hispanic and what makes this culture especially dangerous is that it doesn’t stop at the border, nor does it limit itself to undocumented migrants. Once state agents are granted sweeping discretion and a culture of impunity, the machinery of brutality inevitably turns inward. Hispanic Americans are already living under the weight of this threat. In communities across the country, citizens and legal residents alike have been detained, harassed, or assaulted by ICE and CBP officers operating under a racialized logic of suspicion.
These abuses don’t stem from a handful of rogue agents— they’re a logical product of a political project that defines belonging by whiteness and loyalty by submission. When state power is handed to agents with a mandate to punish and a license to act with impunity, it becomes a threat to everyone who doesn't fit the profile of “real” American. That includes the 60 million Latinos who call this country home— but also Black Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, and anyone else who might look like the “other” through the eyes of bigoted little men like Stephen Miller, Tom Homan and Trump. When ICE tears down someone else's door at dawn, they’re not just coming for the undocumented. They’re testing how far they can go before the rest of us look away.
It may be tempting to see ICE agents like these as rogue actors, or to dismiss their superiors as fringe ideologues. But history teaches us otherwise. The machinery of cruelty is rarely powered by monsters— it’s made operational by obedient bureaucrats, careerists and those who come to believe that violence in defense of the state is not just permitted, but righteous. Hannah Arendt’s insights into the “banality of evil” remain chillingly relevant here: authoritarian systems do not require mass sadism, only mass compliance. Many of the Trump regime’s immigration enforcers— Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Ken Cuccinelli, John Feere, and others— were not merely policy wonks or tough-on-border ideologues. They were functionaries in an ethno-nationalist project who relied on a willing army of ICE and CBP agents to carry it out. Like the mid-level Nazi officers who “were just following orders” while shepherding families onto trains bound for extermination camps, these men and women claim legal justification for their actions, insisting they are simply executing the law. But legality is no refuge from moral responsibility. History does not absolve those who participate in inhumanity— it indicts them.
And, by the way, this “just following orders” is not a legally viable defense when those orders amount to human rights abuses. Under international law— most famously articulated during the Nuremberg Trials following World War II— obedience to orders does not absolve individuals of responsibility when those orders are criminal. The Nuremberg Principle IV states explicitly: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” This principle remains a cornerstone of international humanitarian law and has been reaffirmed in numerous war crimes tribunals since.
Even under U.S. law, there is no blanket immunity for government agents who violate constitutional or statutory protections— especially in cases involving excessive force, unlawful detention or denial of due process. Federal officers are not permitted to violate clearly established rights just because their superiors tolerate or encourage it. While accountability mechanisms are weak and often toothless in practice, the legal standard is clear: brutality in service of state policy is not exempt from scrutiny or punishment. No badge, no uniform, and no chain of command absolves moral agency.
If we’ve learned anything from the darkest chapters of the 20th century, it’s that bureaucracy can be every bit as lethal as ideology— when armed with the tools of violence and unmoored from conscience. Today’s architects of cruelty may wear suits and speak in legalese, but they rely on foot soldiers who are willing to break bones, tear families apart, and look into the eyes of the innocent without flinching. That’s not law enforcement— it’s the banality of evil in an American uniform.
When agents of the state are permitted to operate with racialized suspicion, discretionary violence, and ideological zeal, it is not just migrants who are at risk. It is the future of a multiracial democracy. Those of us who fail to recognize these warning signs for what they are... we are not only complicit— we are ensuring that the machinery of cruelty will run faster, harder, and closer to home.
And what of the elected lawmakers who watch this brutality unfold and do nothing? Their silence is not neutral— it is a form of complicity. Elected officials who fund these agencies, who refuse to hold them accountable, who look away from videos of families being brutalized on their doorsteps, are not passive observers. They are enablers. Every senator who votes to increase ICE’s budget, every representative who parrots “border security” talking points while ignoring civil rights violations, is helping maintain a system of racialized violence. History will not look kindly on those who had the power to intervene and instead chose political convenience over moral courage. The question is no longer whether they know what’s happening; it’s why are they letting it continue.