Imagine stepping off a plane in the United States, fully expecting to enter the country without issue, only to be surrounded by armed agents, handcuffed, and thrown into a freezing detention center. No trial. No lawyer. No contact with the outside world.
In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or freedom—because now, it takes nothing more than an ICE agent’s “suspicion” to make you disappear.
This isn’t a mistake. It’s part of an expanding system of cruelty, where ICE—once an agency tasked with immigration enforcement—is now operating like an unchecked police force, targeting legal residents, visitors, and even US citizens with impunity.
They have become—since the days when Trump sent them here into Portland without ID to kidnap citizens off the streets and torment them in 2020—the Führer’s private police force. His very own “protection squads” or Schutzstaffel.
People who follow every rule, complete all the required paperwork, and obey every regulation are still finding themselves locked away, held in horrific conditions, and stripped of their rights—all based on the whims of an agent who doesn’t even need evidence to justify an arrest.
A U.S. citizen from Chicago was among 22 people recently subjected to unlawful arrests and detention by ICE. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that during Trump’s first term, immigration authorities asked to hold approximately 600 likely citizens and actually deported about 70 likely citizens.
But now, in part because of the Laken Riley Act, it’s getting worse. Forty-two Democrats in the House and fourteen in the Senate voted to pass this execrable GOP bill last month; it was named after a young woman murdered by an undocumented alien whose story was relentlessly promoted by Fox “News” and other rightwing hate media.
That law, recently signed by Trump, says that ICE now has the authority to detain anybody — anybody — for an indefinite period of time — no time limit whatsoever — if an ICE agent simply says that he or she “suspects” the person is in the country illegally or without documentation.
Did you think, “It can’t happen here”?
Wake up: Trump has already begun putting it into effect, although our media seem curiously silent about its application.
Fabian Schmidt, a German-born engineer, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades, legally working, paying taxes, and contributing to his community. None of that mattered when he returned home from a trip abroad. As soon as he landed at Logan Airport in Boston, ICE agents pulled him aside. His green card renewal was “flagged” for some unknown reason—no explanation, no opportunity to clarify, just a red mark in a government system.
That was all it took. ICE stripped him of his clothes, subjected him to hours of aggressive questioning, and locked him in a detention center. They threw him into an ice-cold shower and left him shivering on the concrete floor, humiliated and terrified.
For days, his mother, Astrid, desperately tried to find him. She called ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and any agency that might give her an answer. They either ignored her or outright lied, claiming they had no record of her son. When she finally learned where he was, Fabian was barely holding himself together. “They treat us like animals,” he told her.
And why was he there? Because of a supposed “bureaucratic error.” ICE used a minor paperwork issue as an excuse to detain a legal resident of the United States without due process, a tactic that’s becoming frighteningly common.
For Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, her visit to the United States was supposed to be brief—just a trip to see friends and enjoy the country. She had a valid passport, a return ticket, and legal permission to enter under the Visa Waiver Program. Yet, ICE decided that she might try to work while visiting, a baseless assumption that required no proof and no justification.
Just “suspicion.” That was enough to detain her indefinitely.
Once inside, the nightmare deepened. They threw her into a cell with no bed and no access to legal assistance. For eight straight days, they kept her in solitary confinement. The lights never dimmed, and the sounds of other detainees screaming in despair echoed through the walls. She started hallucinating, her grip on reality slipping. Desperate to feel something, anything real, she punched the walls until her knuckles bled.
Meanwhile, her best friend, Amelia, searched frantically for her. ICE refused to confirm her location or even acknowledge that they had detained her. No charges, no trial, no legal recourse—just silence.
Jessica’s case isn’t unique. People who follow all immigration rules are being detained under vague suspicions, often disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. And once they’re inside the system, their rights mean nothing.
Consider Jasmine Mooney, the actor who starred in the American Pie franchise anda Canadian businesswoman who played by the rules. She secured a job offer, completed all visa paperwork, and followed every U.S. immigration law to the letter. But that didn’t stop ICE from shackling her, chaining her wrists, ankles, and waist as if she were a violent offender.
For days, she was trapped in a brutal private, for-profit detention facility, laying on the bare floor with nothing but a crinkled foil sheet for warmth. Then, in the dead of night, ICE dragged her from her cell, bound her in chains again, and forced her onto a bus with dozens of other women. They drove for hours, denying them food, water, or bathroom breaks. By the time she arrived at another facility, she had been awake for 24 hours and was too weak to stand.
To this day, ICE refuses to explain why she was detained. And why would they? They don’t have to. The agency operates with absolute power, detaining people for as long as they want, answering to no one.
Moody tells her horrifying story to The Guardian, writing:
“I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet. …
“There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.”
These aren’t isolated cases. ICE has transformed itself into an authoritarian force that detains people indefinitely on suspicion alone. No evidence? No trial? No problem.
And the for-profit prison industry that’s holding many if not most of them has no incentive to help these people; the more they detail and the longer they stay, the more money the prison companies make (which they then share as campaign donations with Republican politicians).
ICE agents don’t need proof. They only need the power to act—and Trump has given it to them.
And, while these three cases from the last few weeks have leaked into the press, it’s possible there are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of others. And if there aren’t now, there probably will be soon.
Canadians — and people all over the world — have to be reconsidering ever visiting or even passing through the United States.
We have become one of those dangerous, lawless nations you see movies about where the biggest threat isn’t the criminal element but are the guys in uniform who can do anything they want to you, any time they want, with no fear of consequences.
Meanwhile, these agents of the Trump administration are turning their focus on American citizens who have offended them.
ProPublica documented yesterday how a 21-year-old US citizen born in Philadelphia was dragged off to detention; a 10-year-old American citizen girl was deported, interrupting her chemo for brain cancer; and an estimated 600 US citizens were detained during Trump’s first term.
They noted in their report:
“In Utah, agents pulled over and detained a 20-year-old American after he honked at them. In New Mexico, a member of the Mescalero Apache nation more than two hours from the border was questioned by agents who demanded to see their passport. Earlier this month, a Trump voter in Virginia was pulled over and handcuffed by gun-wielding immigration agents. …
“The government does not release figures on citizens who have been held by immigration authorities. Neither Border Patrol nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior immigration enforcement, would provide numbers to ProPublica on how many Americans have been mistakenly detained.”
“Mistakenly”? Like the people “detained” Portland in 2020?
Worse, ICE and Trump’s lawyers are actively defying court orders that might restrain them.
High-ranking ICE officials have made it clear they don’t care what judges say, what laws dictate, or even what the Constitution requires. As Tom Homan, Trump’s “Border Czar,” told Fox “News”:
“We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the Left thinks. We’re coming.’
When a federal court ordered them to halt a mass deportation flight last week, ICE ignored the ruling and sent over 250 immigrants—mostly asylum seekers—back into danger. According to Reuters, many are not even remotely affiliated with a Venezuelan gang:
“Anyelo had told his sister on Friday night that he would be deported to Venezuela, she said in a phone interview with Reuters from Texas.
“Solanyer said her brother had been detained on January 31 after an appointment at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. He had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally with Solanyer and another sister in November 2023 and had been released to pursue a claim for asylum.
“Solanyer said an ICE officer told her that her brother was detained because of a tattoo that linked him to Tren de Aragua, a violent gang with Venezuelan prison origins that has spread through the Americas. She said the tattoo depicted a rose and that he had gotten it in a tattoo parlor in Dallas.
“‘He thought it looked cool, looked nice, it didn't have any other significance,’ she said, stressing that he is not a gang member.”
As FPWellman notes on the excellent On Democracy Substack newsletter, also quoting Reuters:
“Johanny Sanchez, 22, suspects her husband Franco Caraballo, 26, who was detained in Texas, could now be in El Salvador, but does not know for sure.
“Caraballo had multiple tattoos including ones of roses, a clock with this daughter’s birth time, a lion and a shaving razor, said his wife.
“‘I’ve never seen him without hair, so I haven't recognized him in the photos,’ she said. ‘I just suspect he’s there because of the tattoos that he has and right now any Venezuelan man with tattoos is assumed to be a gang member,’ she added, citing also the fact that he has effectively gone missing.
“Sanchez said her husband has never been a member of Tren de Aragua.”
But all of these young men were forbidden the right to hear their charges, face their accusers, hire an attorney, plead before a judge or jury, or enjoy the speedy trial that our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee to “every person” within the United States, citizen or not. They were simply arrested and sent to a foreign hellhole to be tortured at your and my expense.
The Trump administration apparently doesn’t have any intention of following the Constitution and 240+ years of the rule of law. Instead, they’re going full dictator.
And they’re proud of it.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ridiculing the judge’s order to stop the illegal, no-due-process deportation flights to El Salvador, retweeted “Oopsie … Too late,” with a smirking emoji.
A president who can deport anyone, even in defiance of a judge’s order, is a president who can arrest anyone. ICE is no longer just violating human rights—it is dismantling the American legal system itself with the explicit approval of nearly every Republican and forty-six weak-kneed Democrats in Congress.
This is no longer about immigration. It’s about control. About unrestrained police power. How long will it be before Trump reprises his sending ICE into cities to kidnap and terrorize US citizen protestors like he did five years ago?
A judge stopped him then; today, it appears, he’ll just laugh at any order a judge issues.
If this continues, the question isn’t who the ICE “protection squads” and other federal police agencies will target next—it’s who will be left to stop them.