The Roundup State: ICE Raids, Detention Camps, and the New Face of American Authoritarianism
The Infrastructure of Fear: many of the actions of which are designed to be seem in plain sight to maximize intimidation.
A series of deeply unsettling developments, underreported and insufficiently analyzed, deserves immediate public attention. Across the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are rounding up individuals, allegedly, but not always, without legal status, with a frequency and aggressiveness unseen in recent history. These operations have taken place in restaurants, parking lots, schools, Costco stores, and even public spaces like MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.
Several days ago, Job Garcia, a U.S. citizen, who was tackled, handcuffed, and detained by ICE agents during a Home Depot raid in Los Angeles, filed a federal administrative claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act seeking $1 million. Mr. Garcia had promptly identified himself as a U.S. citizen, but he was held for over 24 hours—purportedly to deter documentation of ICE activity—and suffered both physical and emotional trauma. His case, and a concurrent class-action halted profiling-based ICE stops across L.A., underscore how deeply unconstitutional tactics have become.
ICE even arrests persons in the final stages of their political asylum cases, in violation of international law norms applicable to the U.S., such as Arthur Newmark, a Russian national, former public defender, and outspoken anti-Putin activist who has lived in Northern Virginia with his wife and three children for nearly nine years.
🎓 Targeting Students: A New Low
Visual documentation emerges in a disturbingly consistent pattern. At Columbia University, a graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, was apprehended by ICE agents. Similarly, Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral student, was approached by ICE agents after her student visa was revoked. She was not detained but fled to Canada. Equally troubling is the case of Tufts Graduate Student Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student studying in Massachusetts, whose detention by ICE near her dormitory shocked her university and consular officials alike. She was later ordered to be released by a federal judge. Ksenia Petrova, a Russian research scientist at Harvard Medical School, was detained at Logan Airport and later criminally charged for illegally importing frog embryos. If convicted of the smuggling charge, Petrova faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Ranjani Srinivasan: Source: The New York Times, "Columbia Doctoral Student Detained by ICE"
Mahmoud Khalil: Source: The Independent, "Columbia University Activist Released from ICE Detention"
Rumeysa Ozturk: Source: Boston Globe, "Tufts Graduate Student Released from ICE Custody"
Ksenia Petrova: Source: NBC News, "Russian Scientist at Harvard Medical School Detained by ICE"
A Growing Visual Record
There can be no denying what is taking place today. With cellphones and the Internet, it is difficult for the Trump Administration to hide what is underway; this is not Germany in the 1930s or the Soviet Union 1917 – 1953. Neither country had a vibrant civil society with resolute activists, many of whom are trained journalists, former government officials, ex-military, lawyers, and students.
MacArthur Park Raid, Los Angeles: Source: Los Angeles Times, "MacArthur Park Raid Stirs Controversy"
Pico Rivera Taco Truck “Peeing Incident”: Source: Reuters, "DHS Investigating Video of Immigration Agents in Pico Rivera"
Restaurant Detentions in Pennsylvania: Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, "ICE Operations at Pennsylvania Restaurants Raise Alarm"
Alligator Alcatraz and the Infrastructure of Fear
A new immigration detention facility, officially named “Alligator Alcatraz,” has been erected in the Florida Everglades. The facility, which opened on July 3, 2025, is a state-run detention center. While some have compared its design to Guantánamo and "black sites," this is a subjective interpretation. The facility is not a "pilot location for indefinite 'administrative detention'" but a short-term holding center.
Alligator Alcatraz: Source: Miami Herald, "New 'Alligator Alcatraz' Detention Center Opens in Florida"
Rhetoric of Resistance: From California to the Capitol
Political leaders in California and the Northeast have begun to push back. Governor Gavin Newsom has condemned ICE’s tactics in speeches that verge on the historic—his “Democracy at a Crossroads” address and a separate emotional address for vigilance in defense of democratic values.
On Capitol Hill, Chris Murphy, Ron Wyden, and Adam Schiff have drawn disturbing historical parallels.
Gavin Newsom – "Democracy at a Crossroads": Source: Official YouTube Channel, "Governor Newsom's Address to Californians"
Adam Schiff on Trump and Iran (Senate floor response): Source: Official Website, "Statement by Senator Schiff on Iran"
Chris Murphy – "We Are Dismantling Our Democracy": Source: Official Website, "Senator Murphy on Threats to Democracy"
Ron Wyden on Mussolini-Era Autocracy: Source: The Forward, "Ron Wyden Compares Trump to Mussolini"
📰 Adam Gopnik and Timothy W. Ryback: When the Past is Prologue
In The New Yorker Radio Hour, Adam Gopnik describes the authoritarian playbook in chillingly familiar terms:
“In both Trump and Hitler… power lies in his shamelessness… they galvanize support by exploiting humiliation.”
Historian Timothy W. Ryback offers a more legalistic lens, dissecting how autocrats exploit legal ambiguity, crisis rhetoric, and bureaucratic complicity to consolidate power. His recent contributions in The Atlantic are indispensable reading:
📚 Ryback Articles in The Atlantic (All 2025):
“How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days”
The Atlantic, January 8, 2025.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/
“Hitler Used a Bogus Crisis of ‘Public Order’ to Consolidate Power”
The Atlantic, June 10, 2025.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/hitler-used-bogus-crisis-public-order-consolidate-power/675098/
“The Enablers: How Conservative Elites Paved Hitler’s Path”
The Atlantic, February 18, 2025.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/hitlers-enablers-weimar-conservatives/681510/
“Inside the Legal Coup of 1933”
The Atlantic, April 4, 2025.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/hitler-legal-coup-1933/681721/
“Germany’s Judges Didn’t Resist. That Should Terrify Us.”
The Atlantic, May 15, 2025.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/german-judges-nazis-rule-of-law/681884/
For deeper context, Ryback’s full-length study, Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power (Knopf, 2024), is available here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705219/takeover-by-timothy-w-ryback/
⚖️ Why Legal Scholars Should Care
This is not a mere coincidence or political posturing—it is a jurisprudential emergency. ICE officers are not rogue actors; they were hired as “civil servants,” and they are supplemented by unknown “contractors.” They are executing orders under dubious legal authority. Increasingly, these fellow citizens are alarmed about being “used” under false pretenses. The lack of justification for their actions is set forth in dozens of judicial decisions that are reported by the legal and independent media.
Politicians and businesspeople who claim to care about democratic norms, must confront their enabling role. What was once dismissed as "compliance" may soon be remembered as complicity.
Back in 2007, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Silberman Seminar for Law Faculty “The Impact and Legacy of the Holocaust on the Law,” Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, taught by world-renowned scholars in the field Theodor Meron, Dina Shelton, and Henry Friedlander. The Seminar was designed for U.S. law faculty teaching or preparing to teach courses on constitutional and international law and related legal fields, who endeavor to draw lessons from or develop themes based on the Holocaust and other genocides.
The objective of the Seminar was to strengthen participants’ knowledge of the impact of the Holocaust on the development of domestic and international law. The Seminar consisted of presentations that analyze Holocaust-era legal developments, and—through case studies and comparisons with post-1945 legal developments—assess their impact on contemporary law. Topics included:
1. the co-opting and corrupting of the German legal system during the Holocaust;
2. the independence of the judiciary and judicial ethics;
3. minority rights; property, reparations, and restitution issues;
4. domestic legal actions against perpetrators, including denaturalization, deportation, and lustration; the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal and subsequent national and international trials;
5. continuity and change since 1945 in international human rights law and international criminal law, including peremptory norms and state and diplomatic immunities;
6. transitional justice today;
7. hate speech prohibitions; and
8. genocide denial and the law.
I can state with a high level of confidence that at the time, none of the Seminar’s participants could have predicted that this would be relevant in the way it is today.
If you are interested in receiving a copy of this syllabus, reply to this post or email me directly through my Substack contact page: https://ethansburger.substack.com/contact.