caption by @/ashleytheebarroness on tiktok: People reach for the Gestapo comparison because it sounds extreme and foreign. It lets white Americans pretend this kind of policing came from somewhere else. But ICE looks closer to slave patrols because that's our history. Local enforcement. Racialized suspicion. Vague authority. Taking people first, justifying it later. Gestapo is a warning. Slave patrols are a mirror.
You know I hadn’t made this exact connection at first but something in my gut told me that people comparing ice to the gestapo didn’t quite feel right. This comparison does fit a lot better.
Historically, slave catchers would tear up freedom papers held by freedmen in order to destroy the facade of legal protection they had. Similarly, ICE have been repeatedly documented confiscating people’s birth certificates, passports, visas, etc, and throwing them away. This white supremacist state will always eschew the fictive legal protections it claims to have once it gets the chance, and it always has
