Brownshirts and ICE
Two of my uncles were victims of the Holocaust: one was killed and the other was rescued by British Quakers from imprisonment by the Nazis. So, of course, I ask myself whether ICE and CBP are just contemporary versions of the Sturmabteilung, aka “brownshirts” or “stormtroopers.”
Well, not exactly. Brownshirts were a private party militia, whereas ICE and CBP are two branches of the Department of Homeland Security, statutorily created to provide law enforcement within a legal framework of federal regulations.
But under the current federal administration, ICE and CBP activity has been converted into brownshirt-like terrorism: mass arrests (not targeting criminals) and brutality against individual citizens. This campaign of terrorism is designed, like that of the brownshirts’ campaign, to destroy communities with particular characteristics. In the case of the brownshirts, those communities were primarily Jews and trade unionists. In the case of ICE and CBP, the communities are immigrants and the people supporting them.
People across the country are beginning to see that the sole purpose of destroying these communities is to protect the political prospects and wealth of a single power-hungry man and his increasingly smaller group of political allies. They see that they must resist the terrorism of ICE and CBP in every way they can. And they see that ICE and CBP must be defunded and thoroughly overhauled.