It begins in the dead of night – ICE agents raiding factories, restaurants and farms, while families sleep unaware as the state flexes its full disciplinary muscle, reviving the ghosts of America’s exclusionary past with a vengeance that is unmistakably contemporary.

What Donald Trump hails as “the largest deportation operation in American history” is unfolding as a dark and sweeping expansion of state machinery – an iron-fisted blend of ICE raids, sprawling detention centres and legal shortcuts dug up from the dustiest corners of America’s statute books to shore up both physical and social borders.

Framed as the fulfilment of his campaign vows, Trump’s vision for a “new America” rests on what Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito terms ‘immunitas’: the sovereign’s feverish attempt to insulate itself from perceived contamination.

In the Trumpian worldview, the “disposable labour” extracted from nations long ravaged by US foreign policy is now being cast aside like a used tool – mercilessly and by design.

Even some of Trump’s allies are starting to shift in their seats. Joe Rogan, one of his most prominent supporters, recently sounded an alarm: “We’ve got to be careful that we don’t become monsters while we’re fighting monsters.”

However, the warnings from the populist leader's base remain steeped in the same obscene