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“They’re assaulting basic democratic ideals on all fronts,” said Dana Marks,
an immigration judge who retired in 2021. “It’s really just classic authoritarianism. It always starts with the minorities. It always starts with the immigrants. If we don’t stop them, it will be American citizens. Congress, the courts, the people,
we should all be jumping up and down and screaming about this. We need to be screaming that this isn’t America—that this isn’t who we are.” ...
We’ve seen rapid
normalization of abuses we once associated with authoritarian regimes or the old Iron Curtain countries. It’s now routine for masked, unidentifiable government agents to sweep people off the street and whisk them away in unmarked vehicles. Some of those arrested have been quickly shuttled off to detention facilities in other parts of the country without any notification to their families or attorneys. ...
The administration is also
shredding due process. ...
Most alarmingly, the administration no longer feels obligated to even pretend that it’s observing norms and constitutional restrictions. “
They just don’t care when judges or the public says they’re violating the law,” one longtime immigration judge, now retired, told me. ...
According to the Brennan Center, the 2025
budget for immigration enforcement already exceeds that of every other federal law enforcement agency combined.
“When law enforcement officers of any kind
wear masks and withhold their identity, it smacks of tactics that are consistent with an authoritarian government,” said Magnus, the ex-police chief and former head of Border Patrol....
“I find the masking absolutely f*****g horrific,” said “Bryan,” a former high-ranking official in the DOJ. “It’s not something we do in a free society. It’s what they do under regimes we should never be emulating. ...
Stephen Miller, who has been traipsing about the fever swamps of white nationalism for years, has made it no secret that he wants to
reduce immigration from nonwhite countries to zero....
In October, the DOJ announced that it would begin appointing military lawyers from the JAG Corps to serve as temporary immigration judges...The most immediate effect of the administration’s politicization of immigration courts will be in
denials of asylum claims and in expedited removal orders and deportations.
[T]he administration has hollowed out the offices within DHS and DOJ that oversee detention facilities. “There’s no oversight. There’s no reporting. There’s no access,” said “Dan,” a longtime former DHS employee and immigration prosecutor. “Until this administration, if a lawyer or an NGO complained about inhumane conditions, that was something we took very seriously.
Now they just don’t care. It’s fully part of the plan. They’re open about it. You put people in detention, deny them access to a lawyer, and just continue to squeeze them until they’re so miserable that they give up their rights.”
With astonishing speed, the administration has toppled the most cherished pillars of a free society. And the experts agree: It’s all going to get much, much worse.
newrepublic.com