America’s Slippery Authoritarian Slope and the Totalitarian Temptation

There is a paranoia, foreboding, anxiety, pervasiveness of fear, trepidation that is infiltrating America’s cities such as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Miami, Atlanta and others since the election of Donald Trump to President of the United States. The sense of alarm, terror and fright is palpable as immigrant populations–neighborhoods where parents have raised their children to adulthood after escaping the horrors of persecution in their native lands, people that have run away to America through fear of imprisonment for their political beliefs, ability to practice their religions, escaping deadly conflict, violence and instability, the confiscation of their property–worry that their lives will be torn asunder, children separated from parents, parents separated from children, shackled to the wrists and ankles by chains, sent to detention centers whereabouts unknown, destination not told, any sense of constitutional protections eviscerated and replaced by the batons, guns, handcuffs, shackles of helmeted Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents (ICE) on a mission to rid America of large swaths of its immigrant populations.

Literally millions of America’s nearly 48 million immigrants (2023 statistics) are in the country legally as holders of green cards. And there are millions more that are here on temporary visas. And added to that are law abiding, culturally enriching, economically enhancing, educationally elevating immigrants that have been waiting for permanent residency or citizenship to be finalized.

Yes, there are bad people, drug dealers, rapists, criminals that are not here legally and should be removed. Just as there are bad US-born citizens guilty of the same kinds of crimes, also members of gangs and terrorizing the society with hatred, racism, and heinous violence that is poisoning our inner cities and suburbs. However, it is from this immigrant population, often deeply embedded as the pillars of America’s neighborhoods, that ICE launches its terrorizing, invasive raids, often with no concern for the residential status of those that they terrorize. It is becoming commonplace that they will enter the neighborhoods, spread their nets as wide as possible, select their targets, inducing fear into peaceful places before even knowing the legal status of those they question, and often take into custody.

Certainly the audaciousness of these raids, becoming bolder, more frequent and pervasive across cities, school districts, places of worship, hospitals, recreational facilities and more have as their modus operandi the declaration of President Trump and his Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller that they are authorized under the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798, which grants the US president power to detain or deport individuals who are citizens or nationals of a nation that the US is at war with or who are participating in an invasion. So, under the terms of this “Invasion Act,” America’s immigrant neighborhoods, places where there are millions of law-abiding, community-enriching people adding culture and diversity to the American experiment with a democracy that has thrived on immigration since its inception, are under attack.

Many people in America elected President Trump to halt the masses of immigrants crossing primarily from the border with Mexico. But the cruelty and indiscriminate nature of the ICE terror might not have been expected, or at least to the degree that is occurring in America today. However, to Mr. Trump’s credit, he does telegraph pretty clearly his intentions. And one might have clearly gleaned his plans, objectives, and intentions from his debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, wherein he accused the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, of stealing and eating the pets of the non-Haitian residents of that town. Indeed, his immigration policy, his intention to conduct these raids indiscriminately, viciously, with such authoritarian terror, is an attack on Springfield’s “pet-eating” Haitians, writ large, implemented and fully underway.

The virulence and increasing pervasiveness of the ICE raids would have the appearance of further sanction and imprimatur of approval when President Trump’s top policy advisor, Stephen Miller, argues that the President can legally deny the right of habeas corpus under the guidelines of the Alien Enemies Act.

Let me say that again, the President’s top advisor has actually stated that he would recommend suspending habeas corpus. a Constitutional right which allows individuals the right to challenge the legality of their detention in court. It is a widely accepted legal consensus that only the United States Congress can suspend habeas corpus, and it would be highly unlikely to ever do so under the definition that America is now undergoing an invasion of lawless gangs and immigrants sufficient to suspend these freedoms for all Americans.

Take away the right of habeas corpus for any reason short of an invasion of America that would supplant the Stars and Stripes with the flag of an invading nation and we will be sacrificing the protections of Americans from the brutality of a fascist, authoritarian, totalitarian police state–arrests that occur suddenly, without warning, no documentation, awakened from sleep, taken from schools or places of worship, hospitals, people disappeared without warrant, traceability, documentation, accountability to places unknown. That is the consequence of suspending habeas corpus, and Mr. Miller talks about it seriously. Dystopian? Yes, but of the totalitarian kind, born of a totalitarian temptation to which America surrendered itself in the last election.

I am deeply saddened when I read of what has recently happened to Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an eighteen-year-old, Milford, Massachusetts high school student who was detained by ICE on his way to a volleyball practice. Mr. Gomes Da Silva was described by community members as “an athlete, a musician, an exceptional high school student with an infectious smile.”

It is purported that he was driving his father’s car on his way to volleyball practice with some of his teammates when ICE authorities stopped him. They had made the traffic stop because they were looking for his father, who is unlawfully present in the United States, according to the acting director of ICE.

After learning that Mr. Da Silva was also unlawfully present in the U.S., the officers took him into custody. Gomes Da Silva was born in Brazil, but has attended Milford public schools since he was six years old! This did not have to happen to this young man. There could have and should have been tolerance and compassion for this exemplary student, beloved by teachers, fellow students, the community.

From what I read, Mr. Gomes Da Silva was put in chains around his ankles and wrists. The arrest occurred on the eve of his playing drums in the band that would be performing for his girlfriend’s graduation party. According to an ICE spokesman, Gomes Da Silva “remains in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.” What a heartbreaking tragedy for this young man, his friends, his family, his teachers, the state, the country that is America, a country whose constitution is one of compassion, whose very declaration of Independence is born of the “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I cannot think of any other time in my 70 years of lifetime that this young man would have been stopped, taken into custody, and shackled. This is a crime, or it should be!

When hearing of the arrest, the chief of the Milford police, Robert Tusino, is reported to have said, “Did you really stop a high school student, and he’s under arrest, for what?…and the Milford police weren’t there? Shocking.”

An outraged Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, is reported to have stated, “Unless ICE has additional information that would substantiate that this individual had some criminal involvement, he should be released…”

The Superintendent of Milford public schools, Kevin McIntyre, was distraught, and reportedly said that “They are members of our community, students in our classrooms, athletes that compete representing Milford, musicians, artists, friends and neighbors…we will do everything in our power to support our students and families during these difficult times.”

When a government begins to induce fear and infiltrate one’s sense of justice, security, and privacy, it undermines the sense of self Americans have taken for granted. All of a sudden, freedoms become crimes, rights are suspended, personal safety no longer a given because the State has usurped the Constitution and the dictator is undeterred by abuse of power, because he has seized power and become synonymous with the State. His cadre of conspirators is given special privileges for their loyalty–and that power creates a sense of being above the law, while the society itself loses more and more freedom as it becomes more and more afraid to speak out, protest, congregate or even travel. It is a gradual, steady, inexorable erosion of liberty and freedom, our private lives infiltrated by fear and retribution. There is a slippery slope of intimidation and surrender; and suddenly we are in a fascist society, where people are afraid to resist the lies and eventually cannot even discern truth from lies.

One of the first abuses of freedom is the terror that comes from law enforcement and its ability to terrorize, sanctioned by repressive and authoritarian mechanisms that empower hatred and police brutality. When there is unchecked police brutality, we are well on our way to a “police state.” ICE is part of that today in America–a renegade paramilitary force given more and more power to abuse without constraint, accountability or concern for the consequences of their brutality. The behavior has been sanctioned by the dictator and occurs with a sense of legal force, indignation and dehumanization. America has entered this zone. Unchecked renegade police and authoritarian brutality–acting belligerently toward judicial restraint is a symptom of and condition for fascism. Judges have no police force to fight back against such a monster.

The vote is our only weapon. And of course, the dictator will do all he can to suppress that vote, to criminalize it, demonize it with accusations of conspiracy from the “enemy within.” Fearing loss of an election, the dictator will claim “corruption” while using all levers to manipulate and intimidate people, to confuse them into thinking that the real source of corruption is actually the only source of truth. We are in this place in America today, and the slope is getting more slippery as we slide into authoritarianism with symptoms of totalitarianism.

I have optimism that America can rediscover its humanity, the sense that its diversity is its strength, and that democracy–based on Constitutional freedoms that are the lifeblood for the kind of optimism that is essential for a nation to flourish culturally, economically, morally and in every humane way–can withstand deliberate attempts to destroy it.

All of this will require complicity of a media no longer intimidated by lawsuits, a legal profession intent on fighting for its right to represent the clients it chooses to represent, judges that continue to resist corruption and abuses of power, and a citizenry that realizes how much it has forfeited and will continue to forfeit at the expense of a billionaire oligarchy that sees America’s economic freedoms as something to be exploited for rapacious gain. And we must also realize that our ability to attract the world’s most brilliant minds to our institutions of higher learning advances our society, and is essential to the advancement of our knowledge.

Mr. Gomes Da Silva is not the enemy within. The enemy within is the manner in which he was treated and removed in chains.