Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

The ICE agents that round up migrants increasingly appear in neighborhoods in SWAT team formations, in full tactical gear. CBP agents, who operate within a 100-mile radius of the border, also see themselves as soldiers, and some refer to migrants as their “prisoners of war.” Many treat their facilities as spaces of exception from professional and ethical norms. While drug smuggling among CBP agents was not uncommon during the Bush and Obama administrations, the demonization of migrants by Trump and his government has encouraged new levels of cruelty, such as the denial of visas to victims of sex trafficking. “Border Patrol is designed and made for someone like Donald Trump,” says Jenn Budd, a former CBP officer who watched her peers embrace extremist ideas that since 2016 have received White House benediction. In America, too, many people have lain awake at night, fearing that state agents will bang on the door.