Trump ICE Raids Take Horrific Turn in Chicago, Handing Dems an Opening

Meanwhile, Trumpworld’s propagandistic rationales for its highest-profile operations are collapsing. After the recent massive raid on a Chicago apartment complex, complete with hovering helicopters, armored vehicles, and dozens of people getting dragged into the street, Stephen Miller declared that the complex had been “filled” with Tren de Aragua “terrorists.” But NBC News reports that the number of people DHS itself has linked to the gang is exactly one, and even that verification seems pretty shaky.

Incidents like these too give Democrats an opening: to vow that if given the power, they will impose a measure of accountability. One thing that’s poorly understood by the public is just how weak the guardrails are right now for DHS agents. Theoretically, internal offices like ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and DHS’s inspector general are supposed to scrutinize conduct.

But recently, when an ICE officer was suspended for shoving a woman to the ground, he was quickly reinstated. “The quick turnaround tells me that the bias is toward allowing officers freedom to do what they think they need to do, regardless of prior practice,” Deborah Fleischaker, a former acting ICE chief of staff, told me. Miller himself has shrieked joyously that law enforcement is “unleashed.”