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Police State Bounty Hunters: The Rise Of ICE’s Unconstitutional War On America – OpEd

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thursday

Masked gunmen. Tasers. Tear gas. Pepper spray. Unmarked vehicles. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Racial profiling. Children traumatized. Families terrorized. Journalists targeted. Citizens detained. Disabled individuals, minors, the elderly, pregnant women, military veterans—snatched off the streets. Private property destroyed.

This is not a war zone. This is America.

This is what now passes for law-and-order policing by ICE agents in Trump’s America—and it is not making America safer or greater.

What began as an agency tasked with enforcing immigration law has metastasized into a domestic terror force.

From coast to coast, ICE goon squads—incognito, thuggish, fueled by profit-driven incentives and outlandish quotas, and empowered by the Trump administration to act as if they are untouchable—are prowling neighborhoods, churches, courthouses, hospitals, bus stops, and worksites, anywhere “suspected” migrants might be present, snatching people first and asking questions later.

Sometimes “later” comes hours, days or even weeks afterwards.

No one is off limits—not even American citizens.

Make no mistake: this is not how a constitutional republic operates. It is how a dictatorship behaves when it decides the rule of law—in this case, the Bill of Rights—is optional.

Journalists are being shoved to the pavement, forced into chokeholds, teargassed, and brutalized—in violation of the First Amendment. U.S. citizens, including toddlers, are being snatched up and carted off—in violation of the Fourth Amendment. People with no criminal records who have lived, worked and paid taxes in this country for decades are being made to disappear—in violation of habeas corpus.

This is not public safety. It is domestic terrorism, carried out by masked, militarized, lawless bounty hunters.

In California, ICE agents stopped a U.S. citizen and military veteran on his way to work. According to George Retes, agents fired tear gas, broke his car window, and applied physical force, including kneeling on him. Retes spent three days in federal custody with no charges, no call to his family, no access to a judge or an attorney, no shower, and no explanation for ICE’s actions before being released.

In Portland, a U.S. citizen outside his workplace was detained by masked, plainclothes agents who refused to identify themselves, threatened him with a dog, handcuffed him, hauled away in an unmarked vehicle, and held for hours without justification.

In Chicago, a local TV journalist was violently knocked to the ground by masked agents, handcuffed, arrested, and hauled to a detention center—then released without charges.

In Los Angeles, ICE agents handcuffed and detained a 23-year-old, heavily pregnant woman for over eight hours with a chain around her belly, accusing the native-born American of being from Mexico. Bruised and in labor, she went straight to the hospital upon release.

Two sisters were stopped outside a school, surrounded by at least ten ICE agents, who broke into their locked vehicle, dragged them out, and pinned them to the ground. Both women were later released without explanation.

Each of these........

© Eurasia Review