Let’s not mince words. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is upset. Not about illegal deportations. Not about children held in cages. Not about the erosion of human rights or the everyday terror their agents inflict on marginalized communities. No, they’re upset because people are calling them the Gestapo.

According to a recent DHS press release, “It is absolutely sickening to compare ICE law enforcement agents to the Gestapo” (DHS, 2025). They’re pointing to a rise in threats against ICE agents, citing a 413% increase in assaults. That figure is intended to make us forget what ICE has become under Trump’s regime—and continues to be under his looming shadow: a tool of fascist control.

Here’s the real sickness—America is now a fascist state. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the measured assessment of scholars like Jason Stanley (2018), who identified fascism as a process, not a one-time coup. What we’re witnessing is the process. Donald Trump, a convicted felon who’s declared immigrants “vermin” and praised authoritarian regimes, remains the figurehead of a government where justice is no longer blind—it’s gagged and bound.

And law enforcement? It’s not above that rot. You don’t get to cry “rule of law” when the law is being weaponized for tyranny. You don’t get to drape yourself in the American flag while boot-stomping on the Fourth Amendment. You don’t get to play the victim when your paycheck is paid in suffering and silence.

This isn’t just some abstract moral stance. I’m living it.

My wife is dying of cancer in the Philippines. I’m an American citizen. I’ve done everything “right.” But because we’re poor, there’s no help. No humanitarian parole. No medical visas. No appeals to compassion. If you don’t have the right kind of insurance, if you’re not politically connected, if you can’t pay up front, then screw you—die quietly. America’s healthcare system has been engineered to maximize suffering and monetize death.

And the agents of that system—from ICE to DHS to the U.S. consular corps—are not neutral actors. They are enforcers of a two-tiered regime where the rich float above the law and the rest of us are crushed by it.

So no, I won’t apologize for calling ICE what it has become. The comparison to the Gestapo fits—not because history is repeating exactly, but because the modern blueprint has been updated. Today’s fascists don’t need swastikas. They’ve got body cams, biometric scanners, and cloud storage. They don’t need gas chambers. They have for-profit prisons and deportation pipelines. And they don’t need a dictator—just a demagogue with a rabid base and a spineless opposition.

If DHS wants to be seen differently, it needs to act differently. If ICE agents are offended, they can resign. This country is full of people who need jobs—jobs that don’t involve hunting down the vulnerable and tearing apart families. The fascist machine only works because people keep pushing the levers. Stop pushing.

Until then, wear the label. If it fits, it fits.


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References:

Department of Homeland Security. (2025, May 19). DHS hits back at Tim Walz’s dangerous rhetoric comparing ICE to Gestapo. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/19/dhs-hits-back-tim-walzs-dangerous-rhetoric-comparing-ice-gestapo

Stanley, J. (2018). How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House.


Link: https://endfascism.xyz