Purge, Merge, and Surge
Trump is creating a omniforce of armed loyalists to establish his police state
As Trump deploys a combination of ICE, National Guard troops and other paramilitary forces to multiple American cities, he is implementing a three-step plan. The plan involves different parts of the national security state, immigration enforcement, and the military:
Purge - eliminating those deemed not to be aligned with Trump.
Merge - combine different components into a single omniforce.
Surge - impose Trump’s control over Democratic cities; instigate enough unrest to justify escalation; find examples to brutalize and tamp down any dissent.
Radley Balko describes as this new entity as:
an amalgamation of border cops, ICE agents, Homeland Security, sheriff’s deputies, Guardsmen, and military (and probably soon, militia and extremist groups). This force is fiercely loyal to Trump, they operate in masks and unmarked vehicles, and they’re wholly unaccountable.
Purging the Disloyal
Military or paramilitary forces have some common qualities. Most obviously, they depend on hierarchy. In other respects, they vary. America’s military has historically been marked by a commitment to constitutional values, conditioned on a separation of civilian-military sphere of responsibilities. Other units, such as ICE or CBP, are distinctly less professional, disciplined, and more willing to explicitly align themselves with a political candidate, specifically with Trump.
Trump’s goal is to make ICE the model and heartbeat of the omniforce, which requires realigning other units to ICE’s values. For units marked by professionalism and dedication to constitutional values, e.g. the Department of Defense and the FBI, this means purging leaders.
His purge of the American military is ongoing. Recently. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency was fired, amongst other high profile military firings, after intelligence assessments failed to match Trump’s proclamations about the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Having demonstrated the willingness to violate civilian-military norms, Trump now seeks to imprint his values. The military now serves the Department of War, not Defense. And where, precisely, is this war? Trump encouraged generals to brutalize “the enemy within” and to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” Secretary Pete Hegseth’s brother and senior DOD official wrote a memo about the need for the US military leadership to align more closely with the Department of Homeland Security for “homeland defense mission.”
Trump sent Marines were to LA, the first time active military were sent to an American city since the LA riots in 1992, but now opposed by state and local elected officials. Think about National Guard being deployed from Texas to Illinois. They have left their jobs, and now face a local population that does not welcome them. They are there not at the invitation of state officials, but despite their opposition. Faced with an opponent, members of armed services tend to set aside differences and unite. Trump is hoping that by making American citizens and protestors the enemy, the omniforce will choose to serve him.
Or look at the FBI. At the same time that the FBI is purging decorated agents, it is also lowering recruitment standards to select non-college graduates. This fits with Kash Patel’s vision of the FBI not as an elite investigation unit, but as street cops, allowing him to draw law enforcement from other agencies with lower recruitment standards. It also means that recruits will be less likely to question the debasement of the FBI, and go along with Trump’s orders.
It is not just law enforcement that are being purged. So are other parts of the legal system such as immigration judges who might delay Trump’s mass deportations.
Merge
Immigration enforcement has become a black hole consuming resources from other agencies.
According to an analysis by the Cato Institute, more than 28,000 law enforcement officials have been sucked into performing ICE’s mission. ICE has trained or is training more than 10,500 state and local police who are part of a task force that allows them to make arrests. In addition, “one in five US marshals (650 of 3,892), one in five FBI agents (2,840 of 13,700), half of DEA agents (2,181 of 4,620), over two-thirds of the ATF (1,778 of 2,572), and nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security Investigations (6,198 of 7,100).”
More recent data suggests that these numbers are increasing, with nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices, and about one-quarter of all FBI agents, now working on immigration enforcement.
And to put all of this in context, the FBI is smaller than it was due to resignations and firings. It is already less able to take on it’s core tasks. Nevertheless it has to reallocate a huge proportion of its staff to support the only part of government that is growing rapidly (immigration enforcement), and to serve what is now the largest federal law enforcement agency (ICE).
To give you a sense of scale here, $170 billion was allocated to border and immigration enforcement over the next four years.
ICE tripled its budget to over $28 billion per year, allowing it to hire 10,000 new agents. It’s new annual budget is larger than the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons combined.
The DHS now has a $10 billion unrestricted slush fund — larger than the previous ICE budget — to pay contractors, other parts of DHS, state or local law enforcement, to join the omniforce.
This is utterly utterly transformative. See this chart from Stephen Semler, which I think is a good faith effort to provide a sense of scale involved, though it acknowledges it is likely an underestimate, especially once we start counting other parts of the omniforce consumed by ICE
Executive Orders are pushing the merge of law enforcement and the military. Trump signed an executive order calling “each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances.”
Another executive order tells law enforcement to coordinate efforts against political violence, which it argues is motivated by “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Right-wing political violence, historically more frequent, is not a target of these efforts.
Surge
If you are old enough to remember the Iraq war, you will remember the surge. The idea was to to throw more troops into key parts of Iraq to establish a baseline level of security for normal politics to take hold.
Right now, Trump is treating US cities as akin to Baghdad in 2007. His legal justification for the use of the National Guard is literally that America faces a foreign invasion and that local conditions are so chaotic that the US must mount it’s own counter-invasion.
Look at Trump’s rhetoric about these cities:
Los Angeles is “invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals” and “would have been completely obliterated” without his intervention.
Portland is a “hellhole” that is “burning to the ground.”
Chicago is a “war zone” where state and local elected officials should be arrested. “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR” warned Trump.
Memphis is so “deeply troubled” that people cannot travel without armored vehicles.
Washington DC needed a “liberation day” from “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
The language here is unmistakably militaristic, presenting the President as the liberator of cities where society has collapsed because of corrupt political leadership.
The omniforce has it’s own propaganda unit recording raids and then posting Sicario-like sizzle reels to demonstrate domination and control. DHS recruitment ads boast of sweeping up “terrorists” in Portland and Chicago, offering new hires the chance to “block communists, terrorists, and globalists from ever entering our country.”
What type of potential recruit sees these videos and the $50,000 recruitment bonuses, and decides to sign up? Are they the type of people you want policing your neighborhood?
The propaganda is deeply out of touch with reality to the point that we pass into the surreal. The defining images of Portland or Kristi Noem having a staredown with a man in a chicken outfit…
…and officers firing at a gyrating inflatable frog.
The performances of the ridiculous had a point. The right wing media ecosystem does not mention that the protests and conflict are limited to a one block area.
The chicken suit guy noted how the right wing social media influencers accompanying Noem described Portland, and affluent foodie town, as “looking like a third-world country. It’s just clearly not.” The Frog guy said “I’m worried about my community…I’m out here in a frog costume to show how ridiculous the notion that we’re violent terrorists is, and showcase how that narrative is wrong.”
But the invading force remains.
You can be arrested if you look like an immigrant — the term Kavanaugh stop has now been added to the lexicon of American politics. Or if you don’t have your papers. Or if you record ICE officers. Or if you get too close to the officers. Or if you look scared when a masked man points a gun at you.
Residents in Chicago and Portland are living in a police state where masked armed forces kidnap who they want to kidnap, where they have to listen to public officials routinely lie about what is happening in their neighborhoods. Where they have to choose whether to hide their neighbors vulnerable to military raids that detained children and US citizens:
Amid the smoke bombs and screams that ricocheted throughout a South Shore building last month during a massive military-style immigration raid, one man heard a knock on his door.
On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
“I wasn’t planning on letting her stay, but I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed. “I didn’t want them to take her,” said the man, who didn’t want to be named because he fears he’ll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
The Omniforce is unaccountable to anyone but Trump
To be clear: this is now and this is the future. Trump is both creating a test run for our police state, and providing the resources for it to become stronger over time, when he utilizes other authorities, such as the Insurrection Act. Underlining the centrality of the military to their vision of societal control, senior Trump officials who have directed the immigration enforcement policies (Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem) now live on military bases rather than in civilian neighborhoods.
It is important to not overstate the coherence of the omniforce. Authoritarians have found value having a hodgepodge of aligned military forces, some private and some public. But the overarching intent is clear. These omniforce will be structured to serve Trump’s issues, to challenge his political opponents, and in doing so, the constitution. They will identify with and become identified with Trump. They are accountable to no-one else. This creates a basic conflict between the purpose of the omniforce and the values of a democracy.
The aesthetics of the omniforce underlines their lack of accountability. Uniforms are often replaced by informal clothing or generic camo. They wear tactical vests that will identify them as police, even if they are not police. Individual badges are absent. The look is topped by face masks. Forget about knowing the identity of the official. Now you may not know which agency he works for, or even if he is an agent of the state.
The aesthetic is not one of a government employee accountable to the public. It is that of a paramilitary. The volume of weaponry make it seems like these officials are about to go assassinate Osama Bin Ladin rather than deport a guy trying to get work at Home Depot.
Look at the picture above. One of these is a member of a private militia that supports the President and was involved in an violent effort to overturn the election, the other is an agent of the state. Can you tell the difference?
The officials refuse to recognize local or court authority. A judge says you can’t arrest journalists. Watch us. A judge says we have to wear badges. No. State law says we can’t drive around in unmarked vans? Too bad. Elected officials who want to see what is going on should prepare to be arrested.
The Omniforce makes us less safe
The allocation of federal resources is not going to the most violent cities. They are being deployed to cities run by Democrats. Because the purpose of the omniforce is not public safety. The purpose is to control spaces of political dissent. It is to instigate an excuse for violent reprisals. To create the props of an “insurrection” that Stephen Miller is desperate to act upon. To label any pushback as “terrorism.” The more protests they see, the more troops will arrive.
Now, if your views are fiercely anti-immigrant, maybe you support all of this. But lets be honest, the omniforce is worsening public safety. ICE has a quota, and it is not limited to violent criminals. It is any undocumented immigrant they can grab. As of September 21, 71.5% of those held in ICE detention have no criminal conviction.
If you think law enforcement mostly spends its time productively chasing down criminals, you should be very concerned about the opportunity costs of the omniforce. Within the FBI, the pursuit of child predators, domestic terrorism, corruption, fraud, corporate investigations, foreign influence are now all secondary to immigration enforcement. Within DHS, units previously dedicated to tracking human trafficking, terrorism, child exploitation, training, and search and rescue have been similarly repurposed.
Money laundering charges have dropped by a quarter, and drug charges by 10%. “It’s a good time to be an American-born criminal,” says a former ICE chief of staff. “When the FBI, DEA, ATF are all doing checkpoints in [Chicago’s] Little Italy tomorrow, the human trafficking, the sex trafficking, the Jeffrey Epsteins, the fentanyl traffickers — they don’t quit.”
Trust in military and law enforcement will collapse
Effective law enforcement depends upon trust with the community they police. We are seeing the opposite. Masked man who refuse to reveal their identity, but reserve the right to brutalize anyone in their way. The images that document this brutalization, and the lies told to cover it up, dramatically weaken the legitimacy of uniformed officials.
If you truly “back the blue” or “support our troops” this is a terrible pattern. The more the omniforce extends beyond ICE, the worse it becomes for trust in other law enforcement or the military. The military has historically avoided being involved in domestic policing, such as the Reagan-era drug war, precisely because they know their hallowed status in American society would erode once they started invading American cities.
The Trump administration does not want a government characterized by legitimacy and trust. It wants a government that rules by fear, where we cannot even question the masked and armed gunman that invade our neighborhoods. That is what is at stake.
I urge you to stop using the term “immigration enforcement” since real law enforcement has ceased. “Illegality” is being created after the fact by T dropping TPS from groups of people who came legally and work legally and pay taxes legally (but as noncitizens, do not draw benefits from most programs they help pay for). “Kavanagh stops” have included people of color who are off duty cops or citizens in other responsible jobs. What term you use should reflect the situation on the ground. Immigration suppression? Anti-immigrant violence? Assaults on perceived immigrants?