https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/editorial/unchecked-power-tactics-ice-trump-earned-comparisons-secret-police/

Why the unchecked power and tactics of ICE under Trump have earned comparisons to secret police
Posted by Noria Doyle | April 16, 2025

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not a secret police force, not yet. But recent actions taken by ICE under Donald Trump’s regime raise urgent and unavoidable parallels.

In just the span of two weeks, ICE unlawfully deported a Maryland father with legal protection from removal and detained a Turkish Fulbright scholar without due process. Both actions undermine judicial authority, sidestep legal protections, and expose the agency’s increasing willingness to act as an unaccountable enforcement arm of the executive.

The Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany, did not begin as an omnipotent terror machine. It evolved into one. Formed in 1933 and consolidated under Heinrich Himmler by 1936, the Gestapo operated outside judicial oversight.

It detained “enemies of the state” without warrants, held people in “protective custody” with no legal recourse, and enforced political conformity through fear. It became the spearpoint of Nazi totalitarianism not solely through brutality, but through the systematic erosion of legal constraints and the normalization of exceptional authority.

The alarming direction of ICE in 2025, at the very start of Trump’s second term, bears a critical resemblance to this historical model. In mid-March, ICE agents deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who had been legally protected from removal since 2019. His protected status had been granted by an immigration judge who acknowledged the danger he faced in El Salvador. That ruling should have remained binding.

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