ICE is Trump's Gestapo
ICE is a chilling historical echo to Nazi Germany that we cannot ignore
“People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them … based on their physical appearance.”
The past doesn’t repeat itself note for note. But it rhymes. And the rhymes right now are singing loud and clear.
Donald Trump has made it clear that ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—is the key tool in his second-term playbook. Mass deportations. Camps. Indefinite detention. No due process. This isn’t speculation; it’s happening. And if we want to understand the danger we are currently facing, history has a ready-made lesson: Germany from 1933 to 1935.
That was the period when Adolf Hitler, newly appointed chancellor, began turning a democratic republic into a totalitarian state. And the instrument that helped him do it was the Gestapo.
What Was the Gestapo?
The Gestapo, short for Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police), was established in 1933 by Hermann Göring and quickly absorbed into the SS under Heinrich Himmler. Its mission was to hunt down and eliminate “enemies of the state.”
The Gestapo wasn’t just a secret police force. It was a surveillance and terror apparatus with unchecked power. It didn’t need warrants. It wasn’t bound by courts. It acted on suspicion. It deputized ordinary citizens to report on neighbors. And, critically, it served as an ideological enforcer, targeting Jews, communists, trade unionists, LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone who dared oppose Nazi rule.
From 1933 to 1935, the Gestapo was central to Hitler’s consolidation of power. It enforced the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties. It made mass arrests. It normalized detention without trial. And it laid the groundwork for what would become the concentration camp system.
ICE in 2025: Echoes of the Past
The federal government created ICE after 9/11. Its stated mission is to protect the United States from transnational crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.
Under Trump, however, ICE has morphed from an immigration enforcement agency into something much darker: a symbol of cruelty and fear. Arrests in schools, near churches, in courthouses, and in hospitals. Children separated from their parents. Unmarked vans detaining people off the street. Mass raids on farm workers. Neglect in detention facilities. No accountability. No due process.
And now, Trump promises to go further. He has already vowed to use the National Guard to round up millions of undocumented immigrants. His “big, beautiful bill” allocates $75 billion in extra funding for ICE, which includes the hiring of 10,000 new detention agents. He’s talked about deporting political enemies. He’s embraced language of “vermin” and “poison” to describe immigrants and dissenters alike.
In this context, ICE isn’t just an agency. It’s the muscle behind Trump’s new authoritarianism.
We’ve already seen what this looks like on the ground. In California and across the country, ICE has conducted aggressive raids on homes, schools, health care facilities, and workplaces, tearing families apart. Legal residents, even U.S. citizens, have been mistakenly or unlawfully detained. Some detainees have vanished into the shadows of America's growing network of immigration prisons. One such facility, located in the Everglades and known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” has drawn comparisons to concentration camps for its horrific conditions: spoiled food, lack of clean water, broken toilets, and medical neglect. Others have been rendered to foreign prisons, including a secretive facility in El Salvador where credible reports of torture have emerged.
This is no longer theoretical. It’s happening on American soil. And it will only escalate as Trump consolidates his power. Just look at Tom Homan’s statement about detaining people solely “based on their physical appearance.”
With this background, let’s examine both the similarities and (thankfully, for now) differences between Trump’s ICE and Hitler’s Gestapo.
Key Similarities Between ICE and the Gestapo
Unchecked Power: Both the Gestapo and ICE under Trump operate outside traditional legal restraints. Warrants? Judges? Rights? All optional when “enemies” are involved.
Ideological Enforcement: The Gestapo went after political dissent. ICE under Trump has done the same.
Fear and Surveillance: The Gestapo relied on denunciation and fear. Trump’s ICE built a culture of fear, too, where anyone who “looks undocumented” could be targeted.
Dehumanization: The Nazis called their enemies subhuman. Trump calls immigrants animals and invaders.
Key Differences (For Now)
Scale and Intent: The Gestapo existed to enforce a totalitarian ideology of racial purity. ICE hasn’t (yet) reached that level of ideological brutality, but the groundwork is being laid.
Public Pushback: In Germany, resistance was swiftly crushed. In the U.S., legal challenges and civil society still offer resistance—though these institutions are under attack.
Democracy Still Stands: Barely. But for now, we still have courts, elections, and a free press. The Gestapo eliminated all of that.
Why This Matters
It took the Nazis only two years to turn the Gestapo into a tool of mass oppression. Trump has already had four years to begin his transformation of ICE. With his return to power this year, the pace of the transformation will be quickened. We’ve already seen it.
We must remember that the Gestapo wasn’t initially a death squad. It was a bureaucracy with guns and political loyalty. Its crimes escalated as the regime’s power grew. The same pattern is possible here. The echoes are hard to ignore or dismiss.
If we wait until ICE fully becomes our Gestapo to act, it will be too late.
So we must speak. We must resist. We must vote.
History might rhyme. But we don’t have to sing the same chorus.
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Democracy dies when the people fall silent.
Democrat policy regarding labor has not altered one iota of a degree since the Civil War. They have shown who they are; now it is time to believe them.
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