Quiet Fear and Visible Force: What ICE’s Latest Moves Reveal About Power
Quiet Fear and Visible Force: What ICE’s Latest Moves Reveal About Power
Two stories have been unfolding this week that…taken together…reveal an urgent pattern about enforcement and power…and almost no one is talking about both of them in the same breath.
First:
Across the United States…Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t just making headlines. It’s making quiet arrests that rarely get captured on camera or explained in real time.
In Los Angeles…San Diego…Portland…Charlotte…Washington…D.C., and other cities… advocates say ICE has shifted from drawn-out raids to “smash and grab” operations that unfold in minutes…often without advance notice and without media coverage.
Workers at job sites, people checking in with immigration officials…even folks simply stopped in traffic are being taken into custody and lodged into detention systems just as swiftly.
Community legal hotlines report surges in calls from detained individuals and their families…trying to find out where loved ones have gone.
Those calls aren’t just numbers…they’re people pulled out of daily life without spectacle..leaving neighbors afraid to go back to routine.
Second:
In Portland, Oregon, a federal judge has gone further than most courts in pushing back against federal enforcement tactics.
Responding to a legal challenge from civil rights groups…Judge Michael Simon issued a temporary order barring ICE and other federal officers from deploying tear gas…pepper balls…rubber bullets…and other crowd-control munitions against protesters unless someone poses an imminent threat of physical harm.
The ruling came after agents had used chemical agents against largely peaceful demonstrators…some of them elderly…some of them children…and journalists documenting the protests…drawing widespread criticism.
The court framed its decision in constitutional terms:
Free speech…peaceful protest…and independent journalism must be protected even from the government itself.
These aren’t isolated developments. They show a two-track enforcement strategy:
Track one:
Force that is visible, violent, and headline-grabbing…used where public resistance is organized and near facilities where protests happen.
Track two:
Force that is invisible, procedural…and swift…used where people are mentally and physically most vulnerable.
One raises alarms on social media. The other reshapes daily life.
That’s what makes this moment important: when enforcement becomes both quiet and ubiquitous…the public can fixate on spectacle while the deeper impact spreads in plain sight.
Orientation isn’t about noise.
It’s about seeing what most people overlook.
If you’re tracking this trend where you live…note not what makes headlines…but what keeps happening.
#HoldFast
Back soon.
-Jack
Jack Hopkins
P.S. If this reframed how you’re reading the news, read it in the app and leave a short comment about what you’re seeing locally. These patterns only become visible when people compare notes.
Jack, I live in a small, rural, mountain town in Western North Carolina and to date, as far as I can tell, we have been largely untouched. We have, for the size of the town, a fairly large Mexican community. We have a lot of Mexican restaurants, some of which we frequent. Family owned and operated. These are good, hard working people who support themselves and their families and provide good food at a reasonable price and cause no trouble. I worry about them. ICE hasn’t got here yet. They meet their quotas faster in large cities such as Charlotte and others. That will change in time if we can’t stop them.
Also, I do not trust our local law enforcement. While NC is purple and leaning blue from my observation, rural communities remain largely red. That’s the case here for now. As you get closer to Asheville, where my son lives, that changes. Our state legislative is a big problem. We finally broke their supermajority in 2024 after a long, drawn out battle. It helps but it’s not enough.
Thank you for drawing attention to both sides of what is happening in our country.
I’m concerned about the upcoming elections with respect to possible ICE presence and other voter suppression tactics. NC is heavily gerrymandered, as I’m sure you’re aware.
#HOLDFAST
~Susan
Thank you Jack. The internet attention span is dreadfully short. I heard Cornell West talk on CNN about how this has been happening to Black people for 250 years. We as a people should be used to this with the way covid was not fought and a million people died. It has been ten years. We are threatened to continue to exist as a country. Thank you for always presenting the way to look at things through a psychological lens.