The authoritarian escalation of immigration policing under Trump challenges the limits of US law

• video: Immigration agents arrest a man during an operation in Los Angeles and take his young daughter
• Broken dreams: Read a series of articles about Brazilian immigrants living in the United States under the Trump administration

The district councilor in which Raito de Sol is located in Chicago, Matt Martin, from the Democratic Party, denounced the failure to submit any warrant to enter the school. And that the immigrant had a work visa. The US Department of Homeland Security, in turn, reported that she was fleeing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid and was wanted for “child trafficking.” She was accused of helping her two children, aged 16 and 17, now in a public shelter in the city, cross the border illegally.

Last Friday, CNN collected public data showing that 3,000 people have been arrested since January on the same charge, which is unprecedented in the country. In the Los Angeles case, authorities say the video does not show the previous altercation, in which the arrested, armed citizen threatened customers.

Even with different accounts, the two incidents intensified questions about the methods used by immigration inspections during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. For fulfilling its campaign promise to mass deport illegal immigrants, most of whom are of Latin American descent, ICE has been condemned, including in court, for acting brutally, above the law and without accountability for wrongdoing.

• Context: A newspaper said the Trump administration published manipulated videos of anti-immigration protests and operations

With an annual budget of US$10 billion (R$53 billion), plus a contingency budget of US$7.5 billion (R$39.75 billion) in 2026, ICE has begun a recruitment drive, with lower age, training and education requirements. It offers bonuses of US$50,000 (about R$266,500) to new recruits.

At the same time, it is being compared to the secret police of totalitarian governments by civil rights groups and specialist lawyers who have privately reported persecution and harassment of its work to GLOBO. Last week, the US Bishops’ Conference issued an official document containing rare public criticism of Washington, stating that it prays for “an end to inhumane rhetoric and violence.” Just over 40% of Latinos are Catholic.

— Since the agents always act convincingly, it can’t even be said that they are actually from ICE. This makes accountability difficult, and a dangerous approach is being taken in the actions of the militias and guards, using tactics previously limited to border police, Cesar García Hernández, a professor at Ohio State University, tells GLOBO.

The independent journalism agency ProPublica heard from lawyer Michele Brané, a civil rights authority and ombudsman for the Department of Homeland Security in the Joe Biden administration, that ICE has become, “with its new authoritarian and completely inaccurate manual, the secret police of the current government, able to focus its attention in the future on other citizens.”

• “A Day Without Kings”: Thousands take to the streets in the United States in demonstrations against Trump

The White House denies these accusations and points to the intensification of the “demonization of agents” whose identities are not revealed “for security reasons”, after they were also deployed to combat urban crime in several cities across the country, which is also happening, in an unprecedented way, in Los Angeles and Chicago, led by Democrats and with large Latino populations.

Even in the country’s largest city, which just elected an immigrant mayor, reports of ICE abuses are increasing. In August, New Yorker photographer Mark Peterson published a definitive piece on the new red tape in the courts in lower Manhattan, located just a few blocks from City Hall where Zahran Mamdani, a Democrat, will take office starting in January.

Hundreds of agents, many of them masked and armed, patrol the corridors of the state’s judiciary, waiting for immigrants, in order to detain them when the hearings end. This is the case of the Colombian photographed by the New York Times, whose photos we publish below. Lawyers and journalists witness the arrests, which “often occur without due process,” according to The New Yorker. Relatives, including children, scream and cry. The posters ask “Where are they?”, with pictures of people who have been transferred to federal prisons before being deported, not always to their home countries.

• Trump setback: An American court confirms the suspension of the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago

Peterson’s images, in black and white, with distinct flash and shadows, deliberately evoke film noir and detective journalism from the 1930s and 1940s. “If someone does everything right and gets caught, it’s a crime scene,” the photographer says. “Okay” is to appear in court.

Immigration lawyers who work in areas of the United States where there are many Brazilians told GLOBO they struggle to continue doing what they learned in college: recommending clients go to court, even though they know they might “fall into a trap.” They say an increasing number of people are failing to attend hearings, increasing the chances of deportation. But they would rather hide “until the worst is over,” rather than face the risk of ICE and public humiliation.

Garcia Hernandez, of Ohio State University, remembers the moment in September when he read on his cell phone the Supreme Court’s decision on the handling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles. Federal agents can already, the conservative majority ruled, question people based on race, ethnicity or use of language or dialect alone.

The decision, which overturned, on an emergency basis, the ban imposed by a federal judge in California, is not final. There are four lawsuits pending in court seeking to limit warrantless arrests and traffic stops. In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Trump was asked whether ICE agents had gone “too far” by “immobilizing mothers, using tear gas in neighborhoods and smashing car windows.” “On the contrary, the only reason not to go further is the fault of the progressive judges, appointed by Biden and Barack Obama,” the president said.

Therefore, García Hernández believes, as an antidote to authoritarian progress, in the judiciary, in the right to protest, and in the sovereign voice at the ballot box. The last, at the beginning of the month, punished Trump in the regional elections. Including areas with large Latino populations, which were central to last year’s victorious Republican coalition and which will be crucial in next year’s election, when Congress will be at stake. Surveys show growing discontent among the class with the government and a proliferation of repentant voters amid a climate of terror, with empty pockets, rising costs of living and economic depression where they live.

• Understands: Trump targets cities with black mayors while testing National Guard interventions

But the academic also highlights the Supreme Court’s widespread deference to existing executive power. In his statement on the Los Angeles decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, justified ICE’s actions as “common sense.” The majority of those who violated immigration law wrote and spoke Spanish and worked and lived in specific places with clear racial characteristics.

— When the decision was made, I was having coffee at the university and chatting in Spanish with another academic. He was wearing a guayabera, which he bought in Mexico. What will keep me safe from an ICE raid from now on? Being a teacher, being in a place occupied by the white elite, and speaking fluent English? I do not want to change my identity, the way I dress, or stop speaking more than one language to avoid abuse. The lack of a homogeneous culture makes the United States stronger, the professor says.