These past few months, individuals, under the aegis of “ICE,” [FN1] carried out trump administration seizures of immigrants. [FN2] I’ve referred to ICE as equal to the SA, or “brown shirts,” who were the muscle of the Third Reich. [FN3] They were typified by: 1/11

“‘the bulky, bloated forms with that special development of the upper neck, the roundish faces, the uninspired eyes.” [FN4] The “first Nazi strong-arm squads” they were an “army of storm troopers.” [FN5] Hitler’s support for their brutal violence was clear. [FN6] 2/11

In photographs of the S.A. that I’ve seen, none of them wears a mask. By contrast, ICE thugs [FN7] seem always masked & cite personal safety for concealing their identities. Other agencies’ officers are doing the same. [FN8] That helps officers dodge liability. [FN9] 3/11

During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, before Chicago Police waded into crowds of demonstrators, those officers covered their badge numbers. [FN10] What occurred there was determined to have been a police riot. [FN11] 4/11

Hitler took power on 1/30/33. The SA, purged from the NSDAP on 6/30/34, had functioned from October, 1921, outside the government. [FN12] The brown shirts had no problem showing their faces for over a decade. I should not have placed alongside the brown shirts. 5/11

ICE is far, far down, beneath even the most gutless of cowards. Kidnaping little kids w/cancer was a wet dream for Stephen Miller. Hey - his wife left him for Musk. Miller has to get his jollies somehow. And four times now: Russia’s hack of 2016 has been confirmed. 6/11

Footnotes:
FN1. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
FN2. Not “just” immigrants, but those who look or sound like they are here illegally, i.e., not white or at least not speaking English as fluently as some native-born, white, Americans. 7/11

FN3. The Third Reich was a descriptive for the reign of Adolf Hitler in Germany, 1933-45.
FN4. Padfield, Peter, “Himmler,” (1990), p. 130.
FN5. Shirer, Wm., “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” (1990 ed), p. 38. 8/11

FN6. Evans, Richard, “The Coming of the Third Reich,” (2003), p. 297.
FN7. “a brutal ruffian.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, (1974 ed), p. 712.
FN8. Harris, Mary, “ICE Officers Keep Hiding Their Faces. Someone Is Going to Get Hurt,” SLATE, 7/3/25, accessed 7/12/25. 9/11

FN9. NYPD officers covered their badge numbers at “Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. That actually prevented them from being found liable for abuses later.” Id.
FN10. ABC, “Democratic Convention,” 8/28/68. 10/11

FN11. Unrestrained & indiscriminate police violence ... “often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents...” Today in Civil Liberties History.
FN12. Id., Evans, note 6, pp. 182-83. 11/11