No One is Safe.
By AUSTIN FENNER
After Congress passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill into law, one of the main features of the new law is to turn the Immigration Customs and Enforcement Agency into a juggernaut of new standing army.
ICE’s critics say this exponential growth in agent manpower is not just to target undocumented immigrants, but if left unchecked, it could mean a further eroding of personal freedoms and liberties as Americans get swept up in the undocumented dragnet.
“It’s already happening…It gets disturbing to see American citizens getting deported. American children getting deported because they face an impossible choice, when their undocumented parents are getting deported,” said Philip Sherman, who joined protestors on a recent Thursday evening outside of the massive Delaney Hall Immigration Detention complex in Newark.
Delaney Hall sits in the middle of an industrial waste land on the edge of Newark. The air reeks of stench and garbage. A grimy film whips up in the air from the trucks thundering down the oversized streets. Delaney is about two football fields away from the Essex Correctional Detention Center.
Sherman, a founder of Leftist Progressive Night Out, said he is protesting to raise awareness about what he sees as the abuse of power against personal freedoms by the Trump Administration and ICE.
“They are deporting U.S. citizens. They are trying to get birth right citizenship revoked,” said Sherman, 39, a software developer from New Milford, New Jersey. Protestors have been gathering outside the walls of the Delaney Immigration Detention Center on Thursday evenings and on Saturdays for the last several weeks.
Hundreds of motorist were honking their horns to support a dozen protesters standing high in the air on the overpass bridge along Route 4 in Paramus, New Jersey.
The protestors were from the Visibility Brigade. They floated twin banners facing both directions of rush hour traffic which jokingly read, “Honk if you want to see the Epstein Files” or the more serious message “No Concentration Camps in the USA.”
“I’m here because I’m upset about fascism overtaking our country,” said Dana Glazer, 54, of Northern New Jersey and a member of the Visibility Brigade. “When you have
unidentified masked people purporting to be federal officers taking people away without due process, then that becomes fascism It becomes Gestapo era stuff.” The visibilitybrigade.com is a network of 15 to 20 groups across New Jersey who want to encourage people to act in a non violent way to speak up for democracy.
“We want people to remind people that they are not alone in this fight,” said Glazer. “We want people to activate themselves.”
In a major show of force, hundreds of protesters crammed into the same Route 4 overpass in Bergen county for the “No Kings Day” protest to complain that the Trump administration is using ICE is a weapon against democratic values.
Princeton University Professor Eddie Glaude charges that the new ICE agency has little to do with safety, and is not going to make America great.
“ICE is becoming the largest law enforcement agency in America. Its charge is to make America White again,” Professor Eddie Glaude told MSNBC. “This is not about violent criminals. It’s not about safety. This is about trying to address demographic shifts that disrupt a particular understanding or a particular view of the American polity.”
Yet, the Trump Administration dismisses those arguments and say the new campaign is about public safety.
“President Trump’s signing the One Big Beautiful Bill is a win for law and order and the safety and security of the American people,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “This $165 billion in funding will help the Department of Homeland Security and our brave law enforcement further deliver on President Trump’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe again.”
Protestors in Manhattan descend on Foley Square across from the Thurgood Marshall United States Federal Courthouse on Monday evenings inside the triangular park.
“I think we are in a dangerous period. They (ICE) want to flood sanctuary zones, urban areas with democratic mayors,” said civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “We are in an unprecedented period of American history.”
Siegel said he recently heard about plans for ICE to use a New Jersey military base as a detention center.
“Anyone who is dark-skinned needs to be concerned. Anyone who speaks Spanish needs to be concerned,” said Siegel.“This administration does not follow the rule, they make up the rules,” he said.
The new army of ICE agents will add 10,000 people to its law enforcement arm, and it will eclipse the number of working FBI agents in the country, according to a report in the New York Times on July 12, 2025.
The new ICE agent jobs come with an attractive $50,000 signing bonus and a starting salary of $100,000 annually plus benefits, according to the New York Times.
With $170 Billions of dollars to erect deportation centers and a bolster its use of surveillance equipment and deep dive data grabs, the plan for the Trump administration is to launch a blitzkrieg style attack on homes, courthouses, farms and businesses hiring day laborers with a goal to deport a staggering one million undocumented people annually.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller is seen as a guiding force behind this multi billion dollar cudgel to remove undocumented people from America. Miller, an Immigration hardliner, boasted on X about the merits of the Big Beautiful Bill.
“The BBB will increase by orders of magnitude the scope, scale and speed of removing illegal and criminal aliens,” Miller wrote on X.
ICE’s actions have already earned it a reputation as authoritarian and fascist, as agents shroud their identities under dark Ninja styled masks and/or do not wear badges as they round up people for arrest. The heavy handed tactic by ICE agents have been recorded on videos of people literally lifted off the group into waiting vehicles.
Critics charge ICE of racial profiling as they arresting Latino men without warrants at Home Depot centers. ICE has demonstrated ruffian tactics against elected leaders in New York City, California and Newark, New Jersey.
“We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Public Citizen co-President Lisa Gilbert said during an online news conference.
Public Citizen is a left leaning non profit that is spearheading a 100 plus member Not Above the Law coalition against what it perceives as Trump administration’s rule of law abuses. “We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration … as the rights, freedoms and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged, ” said Gilbert.
The flashpoint for ICE’s roughhousing of elected officials across the country began in early May in Newark when a confrontation broke out between ICE agents and Mayor Ras Baraka during a visit.
The mayor and his team were denied entry to inspect the conditions of the controversial Delaney Immigration Center on the industrial outskirts of Newark.
Baraka came to inspect conditions of the detainees after hearing they were poorly treated at Delaney. Upon his arrival, the Mayor and this team were ordered by a ICE agent to leave the area or face arrest.
In a disturbing moment caught on video by news camera, the Mayor of the largest city in New Jersey and Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver were in the center of a pushing and pulling match with ICE agents.
Baraka and McIver were handcuffed and charged by ICE officials. The charges against Mayor Baraka were eventually dropped.
But, the political fallout from that day continued for the congresswoman, which led to McIver going to court and pleading not guilt to assaulting law enforcement officers outside the detention center, as well as impeding abductions interfering with the federal officers.
The charges against McIver were brought by Interim New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, a Trump appointee. Habba faces a civil suit by Baraka for malicious prosecution.
The Newark congresswoman has alleged that the prosecution is politically motivated.
“This is political intimidation,” said McIver. “This is Trump weaponizing the DOJ for people who speak out against him, for members and elected leaders who do their jobs to hold this administration accountable.”
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Austin Fenner
