The feds are trying to provoke
ICE raids in Chicago and elsewhere seem intentionally designed to instigate a backlash
The best reading of the Trump administration’s aggressive ICE crackdowns in Los Angeles and now Chicago and Portland is that he’s trying to incite something. It makes little sense to target these cities. Yes, some areas have high crime, but this criminality isn’t associated with immigration, but rather the same poverty which makes certain neighborhoods affordable for minimum wage migrant workers. Chicago is a leading city in total murders a year and gun violence in general, but is not the deadliest per capita, and Los Angeles’s murder rate is relatively low by the standards of big American metropoles. Why is he targeting these cities? The most reasonable inference, as far as I can tell, is that he (or some of the ghouls around him like Steven Miller) wants to drive the residents of these cities to react aggressively and violently. These cities and the states they are within are governed by their rival political party, and Chicago and LA are two of the most powerful municipalities in the country. Portland is a smaller fish but also has a large base not only of leftwing democrats but socialists, anarchists, and other activists. Once they achieve the objective of inciting violent retaliation against ICE or other federal agents, there will be some performative rage from the administration and right-aligned media before an even more aggressive expansion of federal power, crackdown on “dangerous radicals” on the left, and further violation of these communities.
It is an understatement to call the actions of ICE excessive. Recent reports describe ICE storming a neighborhood at the middle of the night with rifles and helicopters to detain alleged Tren de Aragua, detaining and zip-tying all the residents for hours (including many US nationals including children, some allegedly unclothed), and arresting multiple people. Parading bound and unclothed children for hours at the middle of the night might be acceptable on Epstein Island, but this will only naturally produce considerable anger in the neighborhoods. They will inevitably come to see these raiders not only as an illegitimate arm of unaccountable state violence, but a potential risk to their safety. This is also coming at a time where the Supreme Court summarily decided that racial profiling is acceptable. If a US national Chicano or other Latino happens to not have their license on them, who knows where they might end up before the feds realize they made a “mistake”.
Moreover, Trump is calling for these same tactics to come to Portland, with armed federal agents coming to this supposed “battleground” to “protect” ICE facilities from unarmed protesters. Of course, anyone familiar with Portland knows its relatively leftwing by American standards but mostly peaceful. It is true that some protests there have gotten a bit violent, but by global and even historical American standards they’re still quite tame.
If such aggressive tactics continue, is only a matter of time before someone gets hurt or killed, and it is only a matter of time before this happens to an ICE agent. It may even happen when people in a high-crime neighborhood have masked agents burst into their home unannounced, and someone fires back because they suspect it’s a home invasion. Yet it could also come from angry residents, furious that the federal government is swooping in like some kind of occupying army. Already, the rightwing press is screaming in outrage at allegations some Chicago residents using their cars to “box in” and ram the vehicles of ICE agents (dashcam footage of what may be the incident tells a different story, but they clearly want people to think that they’re being attacked). It seems only logical to infer that producing a backlash like this is the intention. Someone (especially, someone like Steven Miller) probably wants there to be violence as a pretext for a further crackdown on the left or anyone else he’s decided is one of Trump’s many enemies.
My intention isn’t to moralize against anyone who decides to fight back, even if it might be akin to falling into a trap. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to stand in moral judgement of otherwise depoliticized people who retaliate to unaccountable state violence. King’s nonviolent protesters were political agents looking to bring state repression on themselves to expose the system and needed considerable training to handle it without punching back. These residents of cities like Chicago did nothing to ask for any of this, aside from having undocumented neighbors. Even if it’s not particularly prudent, I can empathize with someone who loses their cool when the state starts brutalizing them. Moreover, in any situation where the state begins violating its own laws about the rights of citizens in a systematic way, compliance has its own hazards. People know that if you keep complying, the state will simply claw away more of your freedoms. In fact, this country was created as a rebellious response to such a slippery slope, and this is a history our education system celebrates.
My point rather is simply a warning that the worst may be yet to come. We need to at least be psychologically ready when things begin to escalate and begin thinking of strategies to counteract the potential hazards. We should also consider where we live, and whether our own municipalities might come under similar federal “scrutiny”, or whether any political organizations we’re a part of might get caught up in it all. With the Trump administration targeting amorphous non-organizations like “Antifa”, many organizations could feasibly be targeted in various ways. The various federal powers granted under the war on terrorism and which were never lifted by our legislators in their infinite wisdom will become tools of political repression at home.
Even if people in our communities overreact, leftists and liberals ought to do their best to remain cool-headed, but we also must advocate for and defend the members of our communities that don’t do so. The most immediate task is setting the narrative. With Trump’s approval rating quite low and his legitimacy ebbing, and with the rightwing media succumbing to remarkable new levels of blatant cronyism, there’s a lot of opportunity to challenge their version of events. We must be firm in explaining to friends and neighbors that the federal government is inciting this and seems to be doing so intentionally.