Let’s be clear about what just happened.

A U.S. Army veteran and American citizen was detained by ICE for three days in California. He was tear-gassed, handcuffed, pepper-sprayed, and transported across county lines like a fugitive—not because he committed a crime, but because he “looked undocumented.”

His name is George Retes. He’s 25 years old. He has two kids. He served this country. And when he told officers he was a citizen, they ignored him. When he showed ID, they dismissed it. When his wife begged them to stop, they gassed her too.

And what is DHS talking about?

Not George. Not the abuse. Not the failure.
They’re whining that people are calling them the Gestapo.

“It is absolutely sickening to compare ICE law enforcement agents to the Gestapo,” said DHS in a May 2025 press release, citing a 413% rise in assaults on ICE agents.

Cry me a fucking river.

You detained an American citizen for being brown on a farm. You brutalized his wife. You threw the Constitution in a ditch. And now you want sympathy because people are angry enough to call you names?

Here’s what’s sickening:
That this isn’t new. That ICE and CBP have repeatedly detained U.S. citizens—Black, Brown, Indigenous—because they fit a racist profile. That federal agencies can’t tell the difference between due process and domestic terrorism, because the uniforms changed but the ideology didn’t.

You don’t want to be called fascists?
Then stop acting like fascists.

Stop raiding workplaces like paramilitary thugs.
Stop ghosting people into detention without charges.
Stop using citizenship as a cudgel, and stop assuming you’re above the law because your badge says “Homeland.”

Because this isn’t about feelings, it’s about function.
If your agency behaves like the Gestapo—detaining people without cause, ignoring ID, disappearing citizens—you don’t get to rewrite the script and demand polite language.

George Retes could have died in custody.
What if he had?
Would we still be parsing tone?

Until ICE and DHS clean house from top to bottom, the comparisons will keep coming—and they’ll be deserved.

References:

Link:
https://endfascism.xyz