25 January—So Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons committed yet another wanton murder in Minneapolis yesterday. And you can bet the ICE murderers won’t be punished for this crime. Either.

A week after an ICE goon murdered Renee Good on 7 January, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal compared ICE to Hitler’s Gestapo. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz calls ICE a modern-day Gestapo. After an ICE goon murdered Alex Pretti yesterday, then, let’s see just a little of how ICE and the Gestapo actually compare. Incidentally, last year the Monitor called the FBI Trump’s Gestapo. Suffice to say, the Gestapo shoe fits both Trump’s FBI and Trump’s ICE.

Of no real importance but worth noting, both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police) are commonly known by their acronyms, ICE and Gestapo. For convenience, the comparison will be stated mostly in the present tense.

Both the Gestapo and ICE most obviously are indisputably aggressive, brutal paramilitary tentacles of authoritarian regimes, are known for use of excessive force, and victimize so-called marginalized groups. Both agencies use masked, armed thugs to target specific populations. Both agencies dehumanize, terrorize, and work in secret until they carry out abductions rationalized and euphemized as law enforcement.

Both the Gestapo and ICE rely on opacity, secrecy, anonymity to do their dirty. Both agencies operate with impunity (like Hitler and Trump), Gestapo’s de jure, ICE’s de facto. Gestapo agents were punished for things like disloyalty to Hitler and corruption. ICE agents certainly will be punished for disloyalty to Trump. As for corruption, however, no government functionary in good standing with any regime will ever be punished by that regime.

The Gestapo was in business to stifle all dissent and enforce racial purity laws. While neither of those reprehensible undertakings is in ICE’s official remit, that’s precisely what it does. The Nazi regime sanctioned the Gestapo’s use of torture and summary executions. ICE’s inhumane tactics are tantamount to torture; and its detention facilities are really concentration camps. Then there are ICE’s summary executions . . .