History Repeating Itself: Is ICE America's Reich Police Battalion 101?

Soon ICE goon squads will be raiding a Home Depot near you, tearing babies from their mothers and arresting American citizens for good measure. Just like Reserve Police Battalion 101.

Flush with $75 billion in new money, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched an aggressive campaign to recruit 10,000 additional personnel. Recruitment posters feature such slogans as “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.” “Remove the worst of the worst. Join ICE.” and “Defend the Homeland!”

The agency is offering a bonus of up to $50,000 for new recruits and benefits such as student loan forgiveness and generous overtime for deportation officers.

Sorry to indulge again in Godwin’s Law (“in any lengthy online debate, someone will eventually invoke Nazi comparisons”), but ICE’s evolution from classic immigration law enforcement operating under the juridical parameters of democratic government to America’s own unfettered, jackbooted, masked Sturmabteilung in service to a dictator is striking — as is the current crew in charge of government, who appear super comfortable in the fascist space.

Compare the recruitment posters above. Top left is an ICE poster featuring a muscular, ICE-capped Uncle Sam declaring, “AMERICA NEEDS YOU. JOIN ICE NOW.” The top right poster is from the Third Reich and calls on Germans to “SIGN UP FOR VOLUNTARY MILITARY SERVICE.” Lower left is another ICE recruitment poster. “NO AGE CAP. JOIN ICE NOW.” Lower right, a Nazi poster advertises, “FROM HITLER YOUTH TO ARMY OFFICER - YOUR WAY!”

ICE’s calls for removing “predators” and the “worst of the worst” echoes Nazi screeds proclaiming, “The Jew is the enemy!” “Combat Treason against the German Nation,” and “Hate and Destruction for Our Enemies!” Trump’s bellowing, “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” curiously copies Hitler’s “Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?” and “We must overthrow Marxism, so that for the future National Socialism will be master of the street, just as it will one day become master of the State.”

ICE has eliminated age restrictions on recruitment. Anyone over 18 can now apply. An ICE poster of a young man and an older man, both clad in military-style tactical gear and holding weapons states, “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level.”

Furthermore, ICE is emailing government retirees: “On behalf of a grateful nation, we proudly call upon you to RETURN TO MISSION and claim your vital role among the courageous men and women of ICE.” Seems like the perfect fit for the hundreds of microbiologists and epidemiologists summarily cashiered from HHS, or the nuclear arms negotiators suddenly evicted from the State Department. I confess that I was tempted — for a nanosecond. But I’m sure, given my public anti-Trump polemics, I wouldn’t pass a security screening. Besides, being a writer is safer — I think.

At first blush, I thought, “The new ICE sounds like the Volksturm,” Hitler’s cadre of graying potbellied geezers dragooned in the final months of World War II to defend the Fatherland after squandering the lives of millions of Germany’s youth in a futile and needless war,

In any case, as I wrote in my recent essay, “The Building of a Police State: Trump's Blueprint for Control,” the administration is laying the foundation for a police state, with the rapid and robust expansion of ICE to be their sword and shield, our very own MAGAstapo.

What I fear, continuing with the Third Reich analogies, is that ICE is also becoming America’s Reserve Police Battalion 101.

Reserve Police Battalion 101 was a unit of the German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei or Orpo) which played a key role in ethnic cleansing and the Final Solution. The battalion participated in the round-up and expulsion of Jews, Poles and Gypsies, the guarding and liquidation of ghettos, the deportations to concentration camps and the mass shooting of tens of thousands of civilians, including infants with their mothers. Its expulsion of Poles was euphemistically called “resettlement actions.” Too old for military service, its 500 men massacred at least 83,000 Jews. RPB 101 men were not ardent Nazis but rather ordinary working class schlubs who were — you guessed it — “following orders.” Only a handful met justice after the war.

As with SS Einsatzgruppen soldiers, they were given the choice to opt out of killing civilians. Only about a dozen chose this option. Many of those who carried out the massacres resorted to heavy drinking to cope; many suffered from PTSD and, as with some of their SS counterparts, experienced mental breakdowns. But, by and large, they resumed normal lives after the war.

Journalist (and my former editor at POLITICO) Garrett Graff cautions that “no healthy law enforcement agency can grow quickly.” With the surge in ICE’s funding and mass hiring, expect major problems, not least of which being recruiting unqualified people and cutting corners on training. He warns:

If you’re excited to dress up like you’re taking Fallujah for a raid of hard-working roofers in the Home Depot parking lot, working ICE or CBP shouldn’t be for you.

That ICE has gone so quickly to masked operations in unmarked vehicles with no clear law enforcement identification makes clear how unhealthy and fundamentally undemocratic its core culture now is. It’s a resounding indictment of the current leadership at ICE and a warning sign of what’s to come.

The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff reports low morale already among many ICE employees. One ICE agent said, “Morale is in the crapper. Even those that are gung ho about the mission aren’t happy with how they are asking to execute it — the quotas and the shift to the low-hanging fruit to make the numbers.” Another told Miroff that he was thinking about quitting rather than having to continue “arresting gardeners.” Some ICE attorneys “are only waiting until their student loans are forgiven, and then they’re leaving,” said one of the agency’s lawyers.

Meanwhile, their psycho-puppyslayer chief, HHS Secretary Kristi Noem, prances around with an M16, cosplaying an overcosmeticized Barbie-stormtrooper before caged Latinos, while the driver behind the policy to round up and deport a million untermenschen each year, Reinhard Heydrich doppelganger and White House aide Stephen Miller, browbeats ICE to corral yet more brown bodies for deportation to banana republic El Salvador, failed state Libya and war-wracked South Sudan. Family separation has returned as official policy.

What’s wrong with this picture? Everything. Americans haven’t seen anything yet. Soon ICE goon squads will be raiding a Home Depot near you, tearing babies from their mothers and arresting American citizens for good measure. Just like Reserve Police Battalion 101. Sieg Heil, y’all!