After the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, the president told them to “Stand down, and stand by”. Those rioters, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters were all later tried and convicted of criminal actions in courts of law by their peers, as required by our Constitution, and many sent to jail or fined.
One of Trump’s first executive orders in 2025 was to pardon every one of those insurrectionists, overriding 250 years of judicial law. He unilaterally threw out the separation of powers that has been the hallmark of our democratic Republic.
Now, his administration is actively recruiting those same convicted felons to join the ranks of ICE, offering up to $50,000 as recruitment bonuses, $60,000 student loan repayments and 25% premium pay (websites of ICE and Dept. of Homeland Security, Washington Post, 12/31/2025, “ICE plans $100 million ‘wartime recruitment’ effort targeting gun shows, military fans for hires”). That is $100 million of our taxpayer’s dollars to be spent in one year to boost the ranks of ICE’s employees of 20,000 by an additional 10,000 recruits. More than 220,000 applications in five months have already been received.
Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, is using online influencers, conservative talk shows like Rumble, and geo-targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear. The ads call for recruits who are willing to perform their “sacred duty” to “protect the homeland” from “foreign invaders.”
Although ICE agents are required to take an oath to support the Constitution, the warrants they use are administrative warrants, issued by “administrative judges” part of the Department of Homeland Security, not regular judicially issued warrants by judicial branch judges (“Are ICE agents violating their oath?” by Richard Johnson, a former Warrant Issuing Magistrate, Medium.com, May 13, 2025). As an employee of Homeland Security their job is to fulfill the one-million deportation quotas, not worry about trampling on Fourth Amendment rights, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
As the Trump administration tramples on the rights of “the people,” including those immigrants legally in the U.S., those granted asylum or temporary protected status, what is to prevent it from later using the ICE goon squad from rounding up and deporting those he deems having undesirable ideologies: “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianism” and “anti-Americanism” as he stated in his speech of September, 2024?
We are already seeing a rise of Hitler-like brown shirt tactics of intimidation, online threats, and actual targeted killings of politicians and those Trump deem as standing in his way to fascist authoritarianism, while rewarding the kleptocratic billionaires who are dividing up the financial pie among themselves.
