Federal Agents Are Violating the Rights of Americans

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The transformation of ICE into a type of national police force, backed, in some cases, by soldiers from the National Guard, has been covered as immigration story—but these forces are reshaping democracy for all of us. This shift was evident even before the shootings in Minneapolis and Portland this week. In this episode, George Retes, a U.S. citizen and an Army veteran, recounts how he was detained by ICE and held for three days without explanation. The Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum returns as host of Autocracy in America and talks with Margy O’Herron and Liza Goitein from the Liberty & National Security Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice about the potential impact of these forces on elections in November.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Anne Applebaum: From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Anne Applebaum.

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Applebaum: In this new season, I am going to ask how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of US politics, and introduce you to some of the Americans whose lives have been changed as a result. The president and his entourage are accumulating power in ways that seem familiar to me: this is exactly how elected leaders in other countries have distorted their democracies. I want to understand how these kinds of changes work here, and what they bode for the future.

George Retes: My name is George Retes Jr. I’m 25 years old. I was born and raised here in Ventura, California. I’m a father of two, and yeah, I’m a U.S. citizen. The day I was arrested by ICE agents was July 10.

Applebaum: This first episode will focus on an issue you’ve probably heard about: the transformation of America’s immigration and customs officers into a masked and heavily armed paramilitary, and the deployment of the National Guard to American cities, supposedly to defend them. Americans may think of this as a change that mostly affects illegal immigrants, but this new federal police force is also establishing standards of lawlessness, and they are operating with an assumption of impunity that is changing the lives of U.S. citizens as well.

George Retes has already felt the impact.

Retes: I was driving to my workplace, where I work as a contracted security guard. When I pulled up, there’s just cars on that entire road, bumper-to-bumper—people getting out, just cars driving around each other. And I was like, All right, well, I just need to make it to work. So I make my way through, and it’s just this roadblock of ICE agents just standing across the road.

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Retes: There’s people banging on trash cans and just yelling and stuff. I got out and I stood right by my car. I’m basically yelling at them, like, I’m a U.S. citizen. I’m a veteran. I’m just trying to get to work. I’m not protesting. I’m just trying to get to work. I thought everything was gonna be okay, and they just were hostile from the get-go. Like, You’re not going to work today. Get back in your car. Leave. So I end up getting back in my car, and they just all start walking in a line towards me, and they just surround my car. I have the agents on the side trying to pull on my door handles, trying to open my car door, yelling at me to get out, and the agents in the front of my car are telling me to reverse, contradicting what these other agents are telling me to do. They end up throwing tear gas. And I’m in there choking, trying to plead with them, like, I can’t see; my car’s engulfed in smoke, and eventually they hit my window again, and it just shatters. Immediately, the moment it shatters, another agent sticks his arm through and sprays me in the face with pepper spray. They just dragged me out of the car, threw me on the ground. They just immediately kneeled on my neck and back. There’s maybe four or five other agents just standing around us, just watching as they do this.