At around 8 o’clock Sunday morning, in Mountain View, California, four ICE agents in full battlefield regalia followed a resident into a 19-unit apartment building. They carried M15 assault weapons, and had no warrants.

They were looking for two Venezuelans, who had lived there temporarily in the apartment of a lawyer, who was helping asylum seekers pro bono. The Venezuelans were legal residents with temporary protected status until last week, when Trump changed the rules and they suddenly became illegal.

The Venezuelans were not present at the time. There was another asylum seeker in the building with similar status, whom the agents ignored, apparently because she was not on their hit list. Residents called the Mountain View police, who said they could do nothing.

Despite brave words about sanctuary cities, state and local officials have not cooperated but have not resisted. Citizens who try to shelter targets of these raids are themselves inviting arrest.

This was only one of several ICE raids over the weekend. Others took place in Chicago, Boston, Austin, and L.A. Fox News reporters were invited to embed with the agents in Boston and Chicago, capturing the raids on video.

The agents wore tactical gear and vests with large letters displaying "Police ICE" and "Homeland Security." According to CNN, at least two agencies told personnel to wear made-for-TV outfits, in case there were video opportunities.

This stunt suggests the performative aspect of these Gestapo-style raids, as red meat for Trump’s base. Trump has directed that ICE increase its raids and summary deportations, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500.

That would total over 400,000 a year. In fact, Biden’s administration actually deported close to 400,000 migrants in 2024, but with none of the Nazi-style stunts.

What’s not clear is whether Trump is ordering these ICE raids in the hope that millions of out-of-status migrants will decide to self-deport before they are arrested, or whether Trump is enamored of the showbiz aspect of these televised arrests. The ICE raids have the secondary benefit of humiliating Democratic officials who once vowed resistence.

What remains to be seen is how these raids will play with normal Americans. Early polls show that respondents narrowly favor the deportation of migrants who are in the U.S. illegally. But that support falls off sharply when the specifics turn brutal.

According to an AP poll conducted from January 9 to 13, Americans favor deporting undocumented migrants as a general proposition, 43 to 37. But they oppose separating children from their families by a much wider margin of 55 to 28. And they oppose arresting children in school, 64 to 18.

In sum, the more people focus on the basic humanity of migrants, the more they reject the cruelty of Trump’s actions.

And if Trump succeeds in getting large numbers of immigrants to self-deport, he will run into major opposition from corporate interests in the construction, restaurant, home care, and other industries that depend on low-wage migrants.

The law is not much help in protecting migrants from summary arrest and deportation. One possible vulnerablity for Trump is the way he expanded the criteria for "expedited removal." Under the law, expedited removal is supposed to apply only for recent migrants arrested within 100 miles of the border. On January 21, repeating a policy pursued in his first term, Trump issued a rule subjecting to expedited removal all immigrants who have not been in the U.S. continuously for two years.

On January 22, the ACLU and Make the Road New York sued the Trump administration for violating the rights of immigrants subjected to expedited removal. The ACLU pointed out that due process requires they get a fair hearing, which this rule strips from them.

While the ACLU suit is pending, targeted immigrants would have to find a judge to issue an injunction—and by then they might already be on a military plane. The use of military transport for deportations has also been challenged in court.

But this battle will have to be won, or not, in the court of public opinion, and that depends on the basic decency of most Americans. And for most people, daily life goes on and feels almost normal.

My wife and I spent the past weekend in New York as part of a long-planned family birthday celebration. The restaurants were full, the opera was sold out, the museums had excellent shows, Times Square was still Times Square, and people were having a jolly time. It was not as if a visible pall of fascism had descended over the city.

The same was true of Nazi Germany around 1937. The economy had revived thanks to Hitler’s war buildup. The Berlin Philharmonic was in fine form, minus a few undesirables who were scarcely missed. It was a nice place to live if you didn’t care about democracy or if you didn’t happen to be Jewish.

While life goes on normally for most Americans under Trump, if you are an immigrant of uncertain legal status, you are living on the edge of a personal holocaust. Will regular Americans resist, or will they be like good Germans?