On July 9, 2025, the House of Representatives passed a sweeping legislative package that dramatically expanded the operational scope and funding of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), making it the largest domestic policing agency in the country. After months of escalating detentions, politically motivated efforts to arrest, detain and deport lawful permanent residents based on their protected speech, and ICE’s growing use of contractors operating without warrants or identification, this moment marks not the beginning of authoritarianism—but its consolidation.
The Trump Administration’s second term represents a break with constitutional norms—not a continuation of a bipartisan trend. While presidents from both parties have struggled to manage immigration, it was not until 2025 that federal officials began openly violating court orders. Once constrained by long-standing constitutional guardrails, detention and deportation now proceed with minimal legal accountability. This breakdown is aided by a compliant Congress—dominated by Republican majorities beholden to Trump—and by a Supreme Court which in overturning precedent and issuing unsigned opinions has not merely supported but actively enabled Trump’s executive overreach.
Unmarked Vans, Unchecked Power
ICE’s operational methods under Trump are already borrowing from the tactics of long-established authoritarian regimes. Tactics routinely include early-morning raids without warrants, indefinite detention without formal charges, and transfers across state lines to block access to habeas corpus. Masked operatives seize targets from the streets and force them into unmarked vehicles en route to contractor-run facilities in other states. Some are deported to countries where they have no personal ties and no access to counsel.
Though ostensibly targeting undocumented immigrants, these tactics have also ensnared permanent residents and, in several cases, U.S. citizens. A graduate student in Los Angeles was tackled and detained during a Home Depot raid; another citizen’s car window was smashed as he tried to record the scene; others were grabbed and placed in unmarked vehicles. None had engaged in unlawful conduct. In one high-profile case, ICE acknowledged it arrested permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil without a judicial warrant. Private contractors have summoned individuals to routine ICE appointments—only to have them detained upon arrival, often by plainclothes agents who have failed to identify themselves.
Three recent cases—BI Inc.’s check‑in dragnets in Manhattan, the contractor-facilitated deportation of a family in Metairie, Louisiana, and detentions by G4S teams at an immigration court in San Antonio—show ICE operating through private firms to seize targets without public accountability or judicial oversight.
These are not isolated cases of rogue ICE agents overstepping. They represent a deliberate rupture from American policing norms. State and local police are barred from concealing their identities. Federal agents must identify themselves, follow lawful arrest protocols, and inform suspects of their rights. ICE’s institutional design circumvents these protections by deploying private contractors and “special teams” operating in legal grey zones to shield unlawful actions from scrutiny.
Funding the Repressive State
ICE funding under President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” tripled detention capacity and made it the most heavily funded domestic enforcement agency. Its $11.3 billion annual budget now surpasses the FBI’s. The new law includes $45 billion for detention expansion, $29 billion for operations, and funding to hire 10,000 new agents. Retrofitted federal prisons and former military bases are being converted into enforcement facilities.
ICE’s reliance on contractors is evident in no-bid transportation contracts for $100 million or more with firms like CSI Aviation. Former ICE leadership and investigative reporting underscore that outsourcing of enforcement duties—including arrests and detentions—is both notable and, according to a former acting ICE director, “plainly unlawful.”
Among the largest contractor deals, GEO Group secured a 15-year, $1 billion contract to operate one major ICE center in New Jersey, while CoreCivic receives $4.2 million per month to manage another one in Leavenworth, Kansas—illustrating the scale of ICE’s privatized detention infrastructure. But we still do not know who is physically grabbing ICE targets off the street. The legal ambiguity surrounding these contractors creates a built-in shield of deniability. The intentional opacity provides a model for scalable repression.
ICE, created as a specialized agency for immigration enforcement, is now primed to become a general-purpose domestic security force. The question arises: what will those 10,000 new agents and an unknown number of contractors actually do? One answer: shift from immigration-cleansing to election-cleansing.
From Border Patrol to Ballot Patrol
It may seem implausible that ICE would interfere in elections. But that view underestimates both its transformation and the political logic of authoritarian systems. ICE does not need jurisdiction over elections. It can bring force, fear, and deniability for those who want to shape their outcomes.
Recently, the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi sent formal letters to at least nine states, demanding voter rolls, voting system data, and internal communications. Framed as protecting election integrity, these requests are widely understood as a pretext to chill election administration and to lay the groundwork for post-election challenges. But subpoenas alone don’t intimidate. The threat is that noncompliance could trigger federal enforcement.
That’s where ICE comes in. It has the agents and contractors in place to turn legal pressure into lived fear. If DOJ declares a jurisdiction noncompliant, ICE can appear—not necessarily with a warrant, but in tactical gear. The visit might be described as a review of contractor records or inquiries into ‘procedural irregularities.’ In practice, it reminds state and local officials that federal scrutiny comes with force behind it – starting with the threat that they may be personally targeted if they fail to comply with any ICE request.
ICE also now has vast databases. The “Big Beautiful Bill” allocated $6 billion for surveillance, including a $30 million Palantir contract to build “ImmigrationOS,” integrating sensitive data from DHS, IRS, SSA, DMVs, and beyond. This infrastructure can flag communities of recent immigrants, or foreign-sounding names. These flagged zones could quietly be passed to DOJ for audits, used to justify purges, or exploited for claims of fraud.
That same fraud narrative was tested and discredited in 2020: more than 60 court challenges failed, Republican-led audits in key states confirmed the results. Trump’s own attorney general, along with state-level Republican officials, publicly affirmed that no widespread fraud had occurred. But the persistence of that falsehood – sometimes referred to as Trump’s “big lie”— now gives ICE and DOJ a pretext to revive it. This time, not to relitigate the last election, but to shape the next one through targeted scrutiny, intimidation, and selective enforcement.
Private contractors further extend ICE’s reach. Firms can monitor online speech, geolocate immigrant neighborhoods, or conduct background checks under vague pretenses – tools easily redirected beyond suspected illegal immigrants toward activist networks, politically disfavored precincts, or for that matter any sources of dissent, opposition or voices that are simply critical.
In rural areas, ICE’s authority to deputize local officials under 287(g) agreements, now in place in 41 states, can blur into election-related enforcement – especially where officials are aligned with Trump or militia groups. ICE cooperation with “patriot” observers near polling stations would give federal cover to otherwise prohibited tactics.
On Election Day itself, ICE agents could be deployed to precincts under the pretext of apprehending “illegal voters.” They need not arrest anyone. They need only be seen. A single agent loitering near a drop box could chill turnout from vulnerable communities. Even rumors of ICE presence could suppress votes.
Raids during early voting, detentions of organizers’ families, and public warnings about “noncitizen voting” could all depress participation and provide an excuse for intensified governmental oversight. Retroactive prosecutions—however specious—for alleged election violations could target political enemies, such as those working to counter voter suppression.
None of this requires new legal mandates – only political direction. That direction has already been given in principle.
On March 25, 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14149, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”—a sweeping and constitutionally dubious directive that reimagines federal oversight of elections. While framed as protecting against foreign interference and voter fraud, the order effectively creates a nationalized framework for election policing. It directs DHS and DOJ to scour state voter rolls using immigration and Social Security databases; to audit voting systems for “foreign access;” to demand documentary proof of citizenship from voters; and to withhold funding from states that fail to comply with new federal mandates on voter ID, mail-in ballots, and Election Day deadlines.
ICE is not named explicitly, but the order’s reliance on DHS systems, interagency “verification,” and enforcement of immigration-related voting prohibitions leaves open a clear role for ICE involvement. In effect, the order creates a legal pretext for extending federal surveillance—especially immigration enforcement—into every phase of the election process, from registration to vote-counting. Its effect is to fuse the machinery of immigration control with that of electoral control. These actions are not intended and will not be carried out neutrally. Their goal is to suppress the votes of whomever Trump directs ICE to target.
Intimidating the Powerful
Even before ICE expands its force, the Trump Administration has escalated targeted intimidation of political and judicial figures—sending a message to those who might otherwise resist.
At a press event, California Senator Alex Padilla was tackled and handcuffed after attempting to question DHS. Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested in her courtroom and then indicted for alleged interference with ICE. New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIver faces three felony charges for “obstructing federal personnel” in seeking oversight of a New Jersey ICE site.
All three are Democrats—underscoring the partisan selectivity of these actions.
Trump’s efforts to intimidate universities, media organizations, and major law firms, through meritless lawsuits, asset freezes, politicized investigations and extortionist financial demands are aimed at forcing settlement or silence. These moves follow a familiar authoritarian pattern to target not only the marginalized, but symbolically selected elites.
The logic is mafialike: cooperate, or be destroyed. By punishing inquiry, the administration signals that scrutiny will not be tolerated.
Death Threats as a Tool of State
Trump’s consolidation of power in 2025 has also relied on death threats and harassment—networked intimidation as a mode of political enforcement.
After Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused Trump’s direct request to “find” more Trump votes in the 2020 election, Raffensperger and his wife received death threats. One read: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.”
Other election officials—especially in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—have faced a sustained barrage of threats. Their offices have reinforced walls, installed bullet‑proof glass, and strengthened security protocols. In Michigan, the threats included “violent and graphic” phone calls warning “Your family, your life.” Arizona’s Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, altered his routines and travel in response to threats directed at his children.
Judges, too, have come under fire. Nearly 200 judges received threats between March and May 2025, according to the U.S. Marshals, an intensification of the attacks on judges presiding over criminal cases involving Trump that took place in 2023 and 2024. Members of Congress have faced similar pressures, as reflected in Senator Lisa Murkowski’s statement that “we are all afraid” of the political retribution Trump can unleash.
The threats function as signals. The state rarely issues them—but neither does it disavow them. Instead, it amplifies the narratives that inspire them: talk of “traitors,” “rigged elections,” and “enemies within.” By echoing these themes, the state aligns itself with those issuing the threats, creating a shared language of menace—and paving the way for politically-motivated targeted violence, as recently demonstrated in Wisconsin, where a Democratic lawmaker and her spouse were killed and another Democratic lawmaker and his spouse critically injured.
With new ICE surveillance capability, these signals can be operationalized. For an already-threatened election official, a visit from ICE—no matter how pretextual—sends the unmistakable message that the only safe action is the one favored by the President.
This is how fear becomes systemic: a convergence of signals—online hate, rhetorical targeting, and federal force moving in synchrony.
Law at the Edge of the Republic
District courts have repeatedly ruled against the Trump Administration’s immigration policies—blocking raids, transfers, and deportations. But those rulings are increasingly failing to restrain executive behavior.
In Trump v. CASA, issued June 27, 2025, the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority sharply curtailed the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions, limiting their power to check presidential overreach. A year earlier, in Trump v. United States, the same justices granted the President presumptive immunity from prosecution for acts undertaken within the “outer perimeter” of official duties—effectively shielding almost any executive behavior from legal accountability.
Such rulings form a jurisprudence of impunity. Executive acts are reframed as sovereign and unreviewable. This is a modern iteration of Weimar-era German legal theorist Carl Schmitt’s doctrine of “state of exception.”
Schmitt’s 1922 treatise Political Theology shaped the thinking of German legal and political elites who helped dismantle parliamentary democracy and replace it with authoritarian one-party rule. Schmitt argued that the “sovereign is he who decides on the exception”—that is, the moment when the regular order of law is suspended. In Schmitt’s framework, legality is subordinate to order: the ruler determines when national security requires the abandonment of normal legal constraints. Once a state of exception is declared, the head of government is empowered to override all other authorities and apply the law—or disregard it—according to his own judgment.
A century later, the U.S. constitution is being reinterpreted in a similar fashion. The President declares a threat. Extraordinary powers follow. Contractors are deployed. Detainees vanish. Oversight is punished. Constitutional norms are ignored and discarded. Courts resist, but the Supreme Court declines to uphold their rulings. What remains is not rule-of-law but governance by emergency decree.
From the Margins, Resistance
Resistance persists – but mostly beyond the elites. In California’s Central Valley, immigrant-led networks monitor raids and shield families. In Los Angeles and Chicago, teachers, clergy, and cultural workers stage sit-ins and sanctuary actions. The 50501 movement—named for the emergency detention code on DHS forms—has sparked school walkouts, work stoppages, and courthouse protests across 44 states.
Churches once again provide refuge. In Detroit, congregants marched from Most Holy Trinity Parish to the ICE field office. In Austin, the Austin Sanctuary Network continues to harbor individuals for the months or years that deportation proceedings remain pending. Some congregations have retreated due to fear of enforcement action. But others have filed lawsuits to protect their religious spaces.
A few figures of national status have spoken. Judge J. Michael Luttig has described Trump as a “tyrannical wannabe king.” Legal scholars at Harvard and Stanford have condemned the erosion of legal norms, and helped law firms targeted by President Trump fight back against unconstitutional executive orders. Bar associations are mobilizing. Former President Obama has urged institutions to resist intimidation.
Some universities and state coalitions have begun anticipatory noncompliance, refusing to act on directives before they take effect. But these are exceptions. Many remain silent. And a growing list—including Iowa, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn, UVA, Columbia, and Arizona’s public universities—have acquiesced under regulatory or financial pressure.
Trump’s strategy of intimidation has worked. Resistance, including protests involving hundreds of thousands or even millions has had little effect. Law firms have largely gone quiet. University presidents hedge. Trial court victories are routinely undone once the Supreme Court steps in—often through emergency rulings issued in silence, without even the courtesy of a public explanation.
Metastasizing Power
The infrastructure for removing undocumented immigrants is now in place. But power built for one purpose rarely stays confined.
What begins with raids in immigrant neighborhoods has already proceeded seamlessly to threats to election officials, judges, and members of Congress. What begins with ignoring injunctions ends with something more dangerous still: reinterpreting the Constitution to suppress opposition and convert political preferences into unreviewable dictates.
The window for meaningful institutional resistance remains open—but it is narrowing. Public protest alone is not enough. Those with power must act.
That begins with lifting the curtain on ICE. No agency with this much power should operate in darkness. Transparency is the first step towards restoring democratic controls.
Our democracy isn’t on autopilot. The machinery will not repair itself. Judges, executives, university presidents, media and tech leaders, donors, lawyers—those with some power, even now—must join the work of defending the legal frameworks that protect us all.
When the structure collapses, no one escapes the ruin.
Jonathan M. Winer, a former senior State Department official, is a member of The Steady State. The Steady State is a nonpartisan organization of more than 280 former senior national security professionals from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security which advocates for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.
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