The past week has presented an upsetting montage of what happens when an authoritarian executive, motivated by naked racism and nativism, activates a highly militarized “unitary executive police force” across the country to storm into apartments and restaurants, throw kids onto the ground, and whisk people away with their kids still in the car.

Why would local police support ICE operations that appear violent and unjustified?

ICE and the immigrant criminalization system, to a large extent, do not operate the way most local criminal legal systems do. Warrants don’t require the same scrutiny to be actionable. The burden of proof is different. There is no real “statute of limitations” – you can be deported for something that happened decades ago or deported before you are convicted. People facing deportation and detention are not guaranteed defense attorneys. And, as we now have seen so clearly, ICE is not required to say who they have detained or why (although they are supposed to post who is being held in ICE detention). Thus, we have an immigrant criminalization system that is perfectly designed to disappear people in a horrific way, that leaves loved ones in confusion and dismay, that criminalizes people for movement.