People are being snatched off American streets by masked goons who stuff them into cars, often witnessed by horrified loved ones.

The masked goons, as you may have heard, are agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE. There has to be a better way to deal with immigration than this.

The people that are being snatched by ICE are not always even immigrants.  Legal residents, tourists, migrants and yes, American citizens are having their homes raided and being snatched out of their cars and off the streets by masked men who will not show badges and are often in unmarked vehicles. If this were happening in any other country, we’d call this secret police activity.

That this is going on should not be a shocker. We saw problems with ICE during Trump’s first term. Remember family separations?

The horrors of ICE during Trump I led to the Abolish ICE movement. There were even Democratic politicians supporting this concept, and even among Dems who didn’t want to go that far, politicians like Kamala Harris were calling for serious reform.

The inevitable then happened, and by that, I mean the Very Serious Centrists of the Great American Discourse had a problem with all this. In one example, Matt Yglesias claimed that abolishing ICE was like Medicare-for-All in that it was “political poetry” and not a serious policy idea. The Washington Post published an editorial stating that ICE was the wrong target. Columnists at papers like The Philadelphia Inquirer referred to the movement as a very bad idea.

Getting rid of, or reforming, ICE was simply not a pragmatic approach, the centrists argued. It was a political loser because centrists apparently do not believe in persuasion, so they can’t comprehend Democrats trying to make their case to win over voters. So, little was done to try to rein in ICE’s powers.

So here we are. Yesterday, at a Home Depot, ICE (at least that’s who we think they were) conducted a raid and snatched 20-25 people, according to witnesses. I say, at least we think it was ICE, because it’s impossible to know. They never identify themselves. Any of these raids could be, say, a local militia in camo and masks kidnapping people they don’t think look “American.”

The detention facilities that the masked thugs take these people to are not good. There are many reports of insufficient food, poor hygiene, illnesses, and inadequate beds. When Democratic politicians attempt to find out what is happening in these facilities, they are turned away, or, as we have seen, even arrested.

Again, none of this should be a surprise. ICE was a bunch of monsters during the first Trump term, and Trump wasn’t exactly shy about sharing his deportation plan.

So, by following some sort of twisted definition of pragmatism, and worrying about appearing too radical, we now have something so radical it is in fact fascist authoritarianism. Grabbing people off the streets is the kind of stuff you see in Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia, or Pinochet’s Chile.

As for whether pushing back on this is “pragmatic,” the same centrists who were poo-pooing the idea that ICE was a serious problem are now the minority. Recent polls have found that ICE and Trump’s immigration plan are becoming more and more unpopular. At No Kings protests last Saturday, including the one I was at in deep red Blair County, Pa., the people I saw carrying anti-ICE signs were not your stereotypical multi-color hair with piercings lefty. Instead, I saw a lot of normies carrying them. Momentum right now is not with the Very Serious Centrists on this issue.

Democrats are showing a spine as well, introducing new legislation like this:

We’re announcing new legislation — the No Secret Police Act (SB 627) — to ban local/state/federal law enforcement, w/ some exceptions, from covering their faces when interacting w/ the public & require them to wear identifying info.The secret police behavior we’re seeing destroys trust & must end🧵

— Senator Scott Wiener (@scottwiener.bsky.social) 2025-06-16T14:25:44.630Z

Check out that thread, the senator makes some good points. Including, again, what’s to stop a militia, or even just a group of racist dudes, from randomly snatching non-whites off the streets.

Nothing pragmatic about that at all.

The last word goes to Stevie Wonder.