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The ICE Extortion Racket | Protect & Serve with Michael Fanone & Maya May & Author Radley Balko
When “lethality” becomes a leadership goal, American streets start to look like occupied zones.
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ICE’s raids have turned policing into performance, terror into spectacle.
Federal “partnerships” with local police now function as bribes for complicity.
The language of war has replaced the purpose of law enforcement.
Fear is no longer a byproduct of policing — it’s the point.
ICE isn’t failing — it’s doing exactly what it was built to do. When Maya pointed out that agents are “fucking up everywhere,” she wasn’t exaggerating the chaos; she was defining the strategy. The agency’s defiance of a Chicago judge’s body-cam order says it all: Accountability is a threat to the theater. The uniform, the helicopter, the masked face — all of it is part of a show meant to remind communities who holds power and who doesn’t.
Money keeps that theater running. Michael Fanone called the federal incentives for local cooperation “blood money,” but it’s more like a protection racket disguised as funding. Washington cuts traditional grants, then sells new ones tied to immigration enforcement. Cities either buy in or get left to fend for themselves. It’s not policy — it’s extortion wrapped in the language of law and order, trading safety for subservience.
Journalist and author Radley Balko’s warning landed like a gut punch: A cop’s oath and a soldier’s mission no longer live on opposite sides of the law. When “lethality” becomes a leadership goal, American streets start to look like occupied zones. The weapons may come from Pentagon surplus, but the real import is psychological — teaching citizens to see armor as safety and resistance as threat.
There’s no version of democracy that survives this normalization of force. A nation can’t protect and serve while it hunts and silences. What’s left is a choice: accept militarized peace as stability, or insist that accountability — not fear — is the foundation of public safety. Tune in to Protect and Serve for that reckoning.
 | A guest post by
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 | A guest post by
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