June 8th, 2025.

Flatbed train cars carrying tanks rolled into Washington, D.C. yesterday in preparation for the

military parade planned for June 14th. On the other side of the country, protesters near Los Angeles filmed officers from immigration

and customs enforcement, or ICE, throwing flashbang grenades into a crowd of protesters.

The two images make a disturbing portrait of the United States of America under the Donald J. Trump

regime, as Trump tries to use the

issue of immigration to establish a police state. In January 2024, Trump pressured Republican

lawmakers to kill a bipartisan immigration measure that would have beefed up border security

and funding for immigration courts because he wanted

to campaign on the issue of immigration. During that campaign, Trump made much of the high immigration

numbers in the United States after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic when the booming U.S.

economy attracted migrants. He went so far as to claim that migrants were eating

people's pets. Many Trump supporters apparently believed officials in a Trump administration would

only deport violent criminals, although Trump's team had made it clear in his first term that they

considered anyone who had broken immigration laws a criminal.

Crackdowns began as soon as Trump took office, sweeping in individuals who had no criminal

records in the U.S. and who were in the U.S. legally. The administration worked to define those

individuals as criminals and insisted they had no right to the due process

guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Anna G.R. Ateli of the Washington Examiner reported that at a meeting

in late May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who appears to be leading the

administration's immigration efforts,

eviscerated federal immigration officials for numbers of deportations and renditions that, at around

...