While the Trump administration has a duty to arrest immigrants who arrived in the country by illegal means, it is failing to enforce the law in a respectable and civilized way.

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The United States is increasingly playing out scenes reminiscent of a brutal fascist regime as officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show an absolute disregard for human rights as they hunt down illegal immigrants.

In the small California town of Campo, which sits less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border, witnesses described the terror they experienced as they watched masked men round up agricultural workers employed on farms – young and old alike – and force them into unmarked cars.

In most cases, the officials wear plain clothes and refuse to identify themselves, thus making it impossible to distinguish between immigration agents and imposters. And with no number to call to track down their loved ones, people have no choice but to report the disappearances as potential kidnappings.

One young man asked as his friend was shoved into an unmarked van, “What kind of police go around in masks without uniforms and identification badges?”

Citizens feel desperate as there is nothing that can be done to rein in the power of the ICE troops. Filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security is a futile gesture because the office that once handled them has been dismantled. There is little hope of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because there is simply no way to reliably learn their identities. This has led to a situation where people are afraid to venture onto the street to perform simple chores, like go grocery shopping or pick up their children from school.

Across the nation, people must accept the grim reality that there are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. The town of Campo has proven to be a testing ground for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in places like Portland, Oregon and Chicago, Illinois and elsewhere.

Last month, the Supreme Court cleared the way to permit racial profiling by a local ICE facility in Los Angeles. Earlier this month, a raid on a Chicago tenement building, in which young children were reportedly pulled from their homes at night without clothes, sparked public outrage.

Meanwhile, Trump has warned that he may invoke the centuries-old Insurrection Act that empowers presidents to deploy troops on U.S. soil.

“Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act,” he told Fox News. “Fifty percent of the presidents…have used that. And that’s unquestioned power.”

In the view of Trump’s opponents, ICE is worse than having members of the U.S. military patrolling urban areas. It has become an unaccountable secret police force, which is making the United States resemble a third world country.

One retired high-ranking official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it was a “sad day in America” as he provided his personal views on the situation. Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official described the new realities ever since Trump became president: “I’ve seen people outside of their immigration court hearings dragged off to prison where they can’t contact relatives or speak to a lawyer. Groups of masked men nabbing people off the street in broad daylight and sending them to some country – like Ecuador – where there exists torture and severe human rights abuses. This is what America has become in the year 2025.”

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a bonanza in financial resources. In addition to its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting alone. As part of its hiring efforts, the agency has reduced age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $100,000.

“Moving forward without vetting new recruits is creating a dystopian reality on the streets of America,” the former DHS official said. “This is very frightening.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson praised ICE conduct and accused their political opponents of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”

“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism,” Jackson said in a statement. “Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that lead to violence.”

Meanwhile, the White House eliminated the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with reporting inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of immigrants are held. The office was brought back after a lawsuit and court order, though it’s meagerly staffed.

The weakening of the office comes as Trump moves to build detention sites with names that do nothing to conceal the harsh conditions inside: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.

On April 1, ICE storm troopers showed up at a birthday party in Hays County, Texas, not far from Austin, where they apprehended 47 people, including nine children. The agency’s only disclosure about the raid was that they were searching for members believed to be part of the Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.

Six months later and the government refuses to provide answers as the fate of the arrested.

“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them,” said a neighbor of the family. “By definition that’s kidnapping.”

The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.

While the Trump administration has a duty to arrest immigrants who arrived in the country by illegal means, it is failing to enforce the law in a respectable and civilized way. Bands of unmarked vehicles grabbing people off the streets in broad daylight sets a dangerous precedent and only encourages acts of further violence against innocent people. It makes the United States look like a banana republic with no respect for the law or human rights.