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The Nazi Political Theory That Explains ICE's Impunity
Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement has become the violent face of the country’s transformation into a new 21st-century dual state.
Jan 23, 2026
Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, will not be brought to justice. Let that sink in. Ross is going to skate, because in Donald Trump’s America, his agency operates above the law. As Vice President JD Vance put it at a White House press conference the day after the shooting, Ross has “absolute immunity for doing his job.”
Vance’s comments shed light upon the larger legal design behind ICE’s newfound power. In Trump’s second term, the United States is rapidly devolving into what the late German émigré legal and political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called a “dual state,” in which acts of violence perpetrated against designated enemies of the regime are not only tolerated, but often celebrated as acts of valor and redemption.
A socialist attorney who practiced labor law in Berlin, Fraenkel fled Nazi Germany in 1938, eventually settling in Chicago. There he would write his most famous work, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, a study of the legal system implemented by the Third Reich in the 1930s.
Fraenkel’s central thesis is that the Nazis did not dismantle the legal structure of the Weimar Republic all at once or entirely, but replaced it with a bifurcated system in which state functions were divided between a “normative” sphere—which operated according to set rules and regulations—and a “prerogative” sphere, where violence was permitted and traditional legal restraints did not apply.
The struggle against ICE and our emerging dual state is now approaching a critical inflection point.
To keep capitalism up and running, Hitler’s government had to maintain the façade of a stable “normative” legal system that permitted businesses and Christian Germans to engage in commerce and settle contract cases, employment disputes, landlord-tenant matters, and other civil issues in court. As University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq noted in a March 2025 Atlantic magazine essay, this duality allowed capitalism to “jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.”
But as the judiciary surrendered its independence through a combination of cooptation and intimidation, the “prerogative” system came to dominate. “On any given day,” Huq explained:
… people or cases could be jerked out of the normative state and into the prerogative one. In July 1936, for example, Fraenkel won a case for employees of an association taken over by the Nazis. A few days later, he learned that the Gestapo had seized the money owed to his clients and deposited it in the government’s coffers.
The case was closed with no further appeals.
Fraenkel largely attributed the theoretical underpinnings of the dual Nazi state to the work of the German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. Often referred to as the “Crown Jurist of National Socialism,” Schmitt joined the party in 1933 and went on to serve as president of the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals.
Schmitt was an unrelenting critic of liberalism, decrying its weaknesses for embracing universal human rights and what he deemed its hypocritical and indecisive fixations on discussion, debate, negotiation, and compromise. As a counter to universalism, he promoted a “friend-enemy” concept of politics, insisting that all states necessarily distinguish between those whom it embraces as friends worthy of protection and those who are forever considered enemies, outsiders and invaders deserving of its wrath, retribution, and punishment.
As a complement to the friend-enemy concept, Schmitt promoted the idea of the “state of exception,” arguing that the sovereign in a well-functioning state must be vested with emergency powers to suspend the rule of law to maintain public order and ensure the survival of the nation. Soon after joining the party, he declared that the Enabling Act, which effectively made Hitler a dictator, had become the provisional constitution of Germany. He would go on to enthusiastically support the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, stripping Jews and other “enemies” of citizenship, and to defend Hitler’s right as sovereign to define the enemy as he saw fit.
All of this will sound eerily familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the news. Since retaking the presidency, Trump has declared nine states of emergency on a range of issues stretching from the imposition of bloated tariffs on foreign goods to designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and proclaiming a national emergency at the southern border. The border proclamation, issued on January 20, his first day back in office, cited the now-familiar charge of an “alien invasion” of “criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers,” and laid the groundwork for both his mass-deportation program and for giving ICE the largest budget of any police agency in the country.
ICE is now a formidable paramilitary force, having hired 12,000 new agents in the past year, more than doubling its size, and ramping up to hire more. It has been deployed into American cities on orders from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to root out the invaders. It has become the violent face of the country’s transformation into a new 21st-century dual state.
Undocumented immigrants remain ICE’s primary target, but citizens like Good are also in jeopardy. Good’s case stands out because she was white, and her killing was caught on video. But she is not alone. While there are no official figures that specifically track how many citizens have been victimized by immigration agents, ProPublica reported last October that it had found more than 170 cases where citizens were detained during raids and protests. According to the report:
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.
To date, not a single federal agent has been prosecuted for these incidents. Nor are any prosecutions likely.
In “normal” times, we could at least expect Agent Ross to face a rigorous Justice Department investigation. It is not true, to return to JD Vance’s comments, that Ross enjoys absolute immunity under existing law. It has always been difficult to prosecute federal law enforcement officials, but no such immunity exists.
But these are not normal times.
Trump, who now openly directs the Department of Justice and the FBI, has precluded the possibility of any serious federal investigation. Nor can we count on a state investigation conducted in concert with federal law enforcement. The FBI has announced it will exclude Minnesota authorities from participating in any fake pro-forma probe of Good’s death.
Perhaps most regrettably, we cannot count on the Supreme Court to hold Ross and other offending agents to account. The Supreme Court has endowed Trump with the powers of the unitary executive, holding in Trump v. United States that the president may exercise his pardon power however he pleases to excuse anyone from any federal prosecution.
The struggle against ICE and our emerging dual state is now approaching a critical inflection point. We can be heartened by the fact that the United States is not Germany in 1933, and Trump, for all his bluster and megalomania, is not Hitler. The country’s fate remains open, and dependent on the nonviolent and lawful collective action that we—all of us—take in the coming weeks, months, and years.
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Is ICE Trump's Gestapo?
All of us have a dark side, and Trump has been successfully summoning the darkness of his supporters. Go get ’em, boys! And wear your masks.
Jan 15, 2026
“Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.”
The words are those of Renee Good’s wife Becca. They cut to our heart—our humanity. She was shot in the face by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who then muttered: “Fuckin’ bitch.” The murder of this 37-year-old mom as she tried to drive around the ICE guys who stopped her is national news, of course. Almost everyone has seen at least one of the many videos of the incident and, you might say, the national dialogue about virtually anything else has been put on hold.
At least it seems that way. Is ICE keeping us safe from vicious, radical terrorists, along, of course, with those horrific immigrant invaders, or is it obliterating humanity’s sunshine?
President Donald Trump hasn’t simply handed us a new enemy of the moment, something most US presidents have loved to do, certainly in my lifetime: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan... uh, Gaza. Trump has declared that our main enemy is here at home, the ones fleeing chaos and poverty in their home countries and crossing our borders—you know, the rapists, murderers, drug dealers, insane-asylum escapees, etc. (Trump explains it all clearly on X.) But the enemy is also you, if you question his racism and belligerence in any way. If you are outraged by the killing of Renee Good and so many others, not to mention the kidnapping of hard-working Americans and their deportation to concentration camps, well, maybe you’ll be next.
Whether or not Trump is “being Hitler” is beside the point. He’s feeding not just hatred to his supporters—contempt for the radical left—but he’s also feeding them a chance for actual victory over the left: the chance to create the world they want.
Trump is at war with half—maybe two-thirds—of the country. He’s invading the cities—including Minneapolis, where Renee Good lived—that voted against him, that dared to declare themselves sanctuary cities. Where is this all going? Unsurprisingly, a lot of people see a parallel with Hitler and the Nazi era. They call ICE Trump’s Gestapo.
Of course, there’s plenty of disagreement and criticism about this. Come on, this ain’t the Third Reich! And I agree, to an extent. I see little value in comparing Trump to Hitler simply to intensify the insult you’re throwing back at him. But in a larger sense, God help us! What is going on here?
The US has waged hellish and unnecessary wars before, but what’s going on now under Trump is different. What I sense here is looming social change: the undoing of any semblance of democracy. Trump is seizing hold of the hatred and political rancor that exists in this country and is attempting to use it to his advantage. He’s feeding it to his supporters, empowering them with it. He has no interest whatsoever in uniting the country, finding common ground between sides, or embracing complex values as he governs. He just wants to eliminate the bad guys, the anti-Trumpers. All of us have a dark side, and Trump has been successfully summoning the darkness of his supporters. Go get ’em, boys! And wear your masks.
Whether or not Trump is “being Hitler” is beside the point. He’s feeding not just hatred to his supporters—contempt for the radical left—but he’s also feeding them a chance for actual victory over the left: the chance to create the world they want. This would be a world without political correctness, a world with the freedom to be racist and misogynist and, what the hell, tear down the Statue of Liberty. He and his believers believe they are creating white America.
How do we push back against this? How do we stop it before it gets politically entrenched and starts pulling in the American center? I can’t think of a harder question to answer. So let me quote some more words from Becca Good about Renee:
Renee leaves behind three extraordinary children; the youngest is just six years old and already lost his father. I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.
We thank you for the privacy you are granting our family as we grieve. We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.
Marianne Williamson, who quoted these words in an email post, contrasted them with JD Vance’s comment that Renee Good’s real tragedy was that she had been “radicalized by left-wing ideology.” “If that was ‘left-wing ideology,’ Mr. Vice President,” she wrote, “I’ll take it.”
Every life is precious. Never let knowing this be stolen from you. When it comes to reclaiming the country, that’s the starting place, even—especially—when you’re face-to-face with an armed guy wearing a mask.
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How Many Laws Will Trump Break to Make America Predominantly White Again?
Much of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy can be understood only by examining them through the lens of his obsession with deporting people and restricting immigration from non-white parts of the world.
Oct 25, 2025
The Trump administration aspires to deport a million people in its first year of office. The president has also spoken of the more ambitious goal of deporting 15-20 million undocumented people overall, even if that category probably covers only 14 million folks. The discrepancy of a couple million people shouldn’t bother President Donald Trump. He’s happy to deport those with green cards, H-1B visas, and even American citizens.
Deporting a million people in a year is a heavy lift. The previous record, 409,849 people, was during the Obama administration, as part of the 1.5 million deportations he conducted in his first term. Trump, no doubt, wants to best Barack Obama in this category, since he’s determined to outshine the former president in every respect, even the dubious ones.
Despite all the high-profile seizures by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the deals to dump Venezuelans to Salvadoran prisons, and the truly crazy efforts to send people to countries they’ve never even visited like Eswatini and South Sudan, the Trump administration has managed to deport only about 350,000 people through the end of August. That includes the 200,000 by ICE and the rest by Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard, plus some self-deportations. Another 60,000 are languishing in ICE detention centers. The government is currently monitoring about 180,000 families and individuals in its Alternatives to Detention program, which may end up becoming a Preparation for Deportation program.
Most of the people currently in detention—over 70%—have never committed any crime, which undermines the claim by the Trump administration that he’s going after the “bad hombres.”
German citizens failed to stop the Nazis. Will Americans stand up and be counted?
Detention is pretty much a fast track to deportation. After all, detainees often don’t have access to lawyers. As the American Prospect reports, “ICE uses bureaucracy and location transfers to isolate their detainees from both their families and their lawyers, limiting their ability to get out of their predicaments and increasing misery and hopelessness.” One immigration lawyer told me that some of his clients have disappeared for several days in ICE detention—and these included people who were willing to self-deport.
Trump is not close to meeting his ambitious deportation goals. That’s no comfort to all the immigrants whose lives he has already upended.
ICE Is Not Nice
The scenes involving the roundup of refugees and migrants have been harrowing. Consider this description:
Buses backed up to apartment buildings and were filled with screaming, crying people. Hospital beds were emptied. A cancer patient operated on the previous day was carried away. One woman gave birth while police waited to haul off mother and baby. Younger children were permitted to be left behind, and many parents desperately accepted that choice in the hope that neighbors or orphanages would take them in.
Oh, I’m sorry, I got mixed up. That’s a description of the French police rounding up 13,000 Jewish refugees in 1942 at the behest of their Nazi overseers, as reported by David Wyman in his seminal book, The Abandonment of the Jews.
Here, by comparison, are three snapshots of recent ICE actions:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl—separating them indefinitely—and three children ages 2, 4, and 7 who are US citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said Saturday.
In Chicago:
Agents used unmarked trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building. NewsNation, which was invited to observe the operation, reported agents “rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters.” Agents then went door to door, woke up residents, and used zip ties to restrain them. Residents and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which canvassed the area, said those who were zip tied included children and US citizens.
In New York:
On the morning of September 4, dozens of masked federal agents raided a snack bar factory in the small town of Cato, New York. They claimed there was a “violent felon” in the plant, but proceeded to siphon off and hold anyone who looked Latinx. At least 69 workers were initially detained, with 57 still in custody or deported, though some say that could be an undercount. There are multiple reports of aggression—knees on necks, blows to heads—used during the raid.
This is happening not just to the undocumented and those on the rock-strewn path to citizenship. Quite a few American citizens have also been caught up in the ICE dragnet. At least 170 have been detained, according to ProPublica:
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched. About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Much of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy can be understood only by examining them through the lens of his obsession with deporting people and restricting immigration from non-white parts of the world. The question remains: How many laws will the Trump administration break and how many crimes will it commit in this effort to make America predominantly white again?
German citizens failed to stop the Nazis. Will Americans stand up and be counted?
Trump’s Immigration-Obsessed Foreign Policy
In exchange for a payment of about $5 million, the tiny country of Eswatini in southern Africa has agreed to receive up to 160 deportees from a variety of countries. Human rights groups in Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, have challenged the arrangement in court. A US District Court judge also blocked the removal of deportees to third countries back in April, but the Supreme Court lifted that ban in June.
The $5 million is only part of the sweetheart deal. In August, the Trump administration waived all tariffs on Eswatini goods entering the United States—in contrast to the 30% rate that South Africa will be paying. A number of countries hoping for tariff reductions or similarly favorable treatment from the Trump administration—Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kosovo, Panama, Rwanda, South Sudan—have also accepted the transport of deportees.
Eswatini does have its limits. It refused to accept Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national that the Trump administration sent to a prison in El Salvador. Garcia was freed and sent back to the States, only to be arrested again by the US government and charged with human trafficking. Afraid that Garcia will be released by court order, the Trump administration is scrambling to find some country that will take him. Garcia is living proof of the administration’s lies—contrary to what Trump has said, he is not a gang member or a human trafficker. No wonder Trump wants him out of the country.
He has put a sign on America’s front door that reads: Wealthy, Christian, Right-Wing Whites Only.
El Salvador has been an enthusiastic backer of Trump’s deportation plans. The country received $5 million to house deportees like Garcia in its horrific prisons. In addition, the State Department recently gave the country its highest safety rating, ahead of France and Spain. Trump has also backed Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s bid to become the country’s leader for life. Finally, the country faces a mere 10% tariff on its goods, Trump’s lowest tier.
In one of the least savory parts of the arrangement with El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut a deal with Bukele to return several members of the MS-13 gang who were cooperating with US authorities. Bukele wanted them back because they had information about members of his administration who had cut their own deals with the country’s various gangs. It’s best to keep your enemies close, as the expression goes, particularly if you can put them in a dangerous high-security prison.
The immigration issue also affects relations with Venezuela, where the Trump administration has used the threat of Tren de Aragua, and the alleged inroads the gang has made in US society, to step up its efforts to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro.
Trump has attempted to tilt immigration policy in favor of English speakers and white people more generally, even as the overall quotas for immigrants are radically reduced from 125,000 per year to 7,500. Among the proposals considered by the administration is one that would give preference to such groups as Europeans who support the radical right and white Afrikaners from South Africa. The overall purpose is a reduction in American diversity because, as one of the internal proposals argues, “The sharp increase in diversity has reduced the level of social trust essential for the functioning of a democratic polity.”
The administration has also radically increased the fee for a work permit—the H-1B visa—to $100,000. Although there are some exemptions to the new fee, it is clearly designed to restrict entrance to the United States to the wealthy.
Taken together, Trump has treated the “shithole” countries he identified in his first term—the poorer countries of the Global South—as dumping grounds for undesirable elements. And he has put a sign on America’s front door that reads: Wealthy, Christian, Right-Wing Whites Only.
Barack Obama wanted to create an administration that looked like America. Donald Trump wants to create an America that looks like his administration.
How Deportations Shape Domestic Policy
Trump knows a hot-button issue when he touches one, and immigration remains a great way to defeat Democrats who, however anti-immigration some of them have become, will never stoop to the race-baiting lows that Trump uses to wow his supporters. The invading “army” of migrants approaching the Mexico border, the fictitious pet eaters of Springfield, Ohio, the “murderers” and “rapists” from points south responsible for all the crime in America: These mendacious memes propelled Trump to victory in 2024.
His immigration policies are no surprise: They were all laid out in detail in Project 2025: stopping refugee resettlement; ending Temporary Protect Status for Haitians, Venezuelans, and others; ending visas for foreign students. Trump has gone further. Even Project 2025 didn’t propose revoking birthright citizenship and ignoring the Constitution.
The militarization of the United States, at the expense of social welfare, is now directed not just at China or securing access to critical raw materials: it is directed at the US population.
Trump has put ICE raids at the center of his approach, but there has been pushback from Democratic-controlled cities and states. So, the president is sending in the National Guard to ensure greater access and mobility for ICE agents. The use of the US military for domestic operations is unprecedented, of course, and several judges have ruled the president’s actions unconstitutional. Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to suppress “rebellion,” which would allow him to use the military to impose civilian law (his government’s laws). It’s not quite martial law—which is the imposition of military laws on civilians—but it certainly aims in that direction (and the two may well be conflated in Trump’s mind).
ICE, meanwhile, has received a huge surge in funding—$170 billion in new money—at a time of cutbacks in virtually all non-military parts of the federal government. If ICE and associated agencies constituted a military, it would be the 13th largest one in the world, as Sarah Lazare and Lindsay Koshgarian point out. The militarization of the United States, at the expense of social welfare, is now directed not just at China or securing access to critical raw materials: it is directed at the US population.
Trump is attacking diversity more generally, as the changes in federal immigration policy suggest. Because birthright citizenship has changed the demographics of the United States, its repeal has been a priority for white nationalists, and they have also cheered Trump’s moves in this direction. Meanwhile, the president is going after diversity in federal institutions, federal grantmaking, and across the US educational system.
At the moment, lawyers and judges are the thin line that holds back the lawlessness of the Trump administration. A few civic groups like the Immigration Defense Project and Freedom for Immigrants are fighting the administration. But it will require a lot more public outcry to defend America’s disappeared and preserve diversity in this country.
As Bad as Nazis?
The Nazis were also obsessed with the diversity of German society in the 1930s. They ultimately decided not just to stigmatize and imprison Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others. The Nazis killed them in huge numbers.
Trump and his white nationalist allies are currently at the stigmatize and deport stage. They’re content for the moment to let the killing take place elsewhere. The administration is not only erecting higher walls against refugees and immigrants—leading to more deaths among the desperate overseas—it is sending those who thought they’d already made it to safety to warzones (South Sudan), certain imprisonment (Afghanistan, Russia), and failed states (Haiti).
The US business community is heavily reliant on immigrant labor, much of it undocumented, in agriculture, construction, and the food industry. But it has failed to stand up for its immigrant workforce. The international community is busy making deals with Trump, not censuring him. Congress has been largely silent (though it recently announced an inquiry into ICE treatment of US citizens).
At a time when countries around the world are shrinking in population, the United States has remained strong because of all the people who have come here from abroad to work, to contribute to the tax base and Social Security, and, yes, to have babies. So, who will combine the necessary moral and practical arguments to convince the mass of Americans that the very survival of this country depends on immigrants?
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