ICE, the American Gestapo

by Mark Snider, Hamilton

Before WWII, Hitler ordered the Nazis to eliminate all Jewish people. At first, Hitler accused the Jews of causing many of Germany’s problems. He eliminated legal and political opposition, opening the door to persecution, dehumanization, and genocide. The Nazis produced vast amounts of propaganda, calling Jewish people bloodsuckers, mongrels, parasites, subhuman, and the scourge of humanity. Many Germans who supported Hitler treated Jews worse and worse, trying to make life so unbearable for Jewish people that they would voluntarily immigrate to other countries. Those who didn’t leave were harassed and beaten. The Nazis burned their businesses, stripped them of civil rights, and shipped them off to concentration camps or forced labor camps. 

Trump is using the same game plan that Hitler and the Nazis used. He has accused immigrants of being violent criminals, murderers, and rapists, and has said they are worse than animals. He has claimed they are “poisoning the blood of our country” and taking Americans’ jobs. He has also claimed that immigrants come from the jails, prisons, and insane asylums of other countries. Trump has said that immigrants are eating the dogs…eating the cats…eating the pets of American citizens. 

Trump has his own Gestapo, called ICE, which is ignoring the civil rights of undocumented and documented immigrants and American citizens, especially citizens who do not agree with his lies about immigrants, which are totally untrue and false. 

The facts are this: A study in Texas found that immigrants have a 45% lower crime rate than American-born citizens. Stanford University reported that immigrants are 60% less likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens. Princeton University reported that American-born citizens are twice as likely to commit crimes as undocumented immigrants. The CATO Institute reported that undocumented immigrants are 37% less likely to be convicted of crimes than natural-born citizens.

Government records and national institutions refute Trump’s lies about immigrants. Most immigrants are law-abiding, do not eat pets, are not from prisons or asylums, and contribute positively to our economy. When an immigrant is arrested, it is most likely because he lacks documentation of citizenship. In the eyes of ICE, he is an illegal immigrant and will be arrested and sent to a detention center, where he is abused, denied medical attention, and even killed. On top of that, they are shipped back to where they came from and forced into harm’s way. 

One might ask why he does not have a citizenship document. The reason most “illegal” immigrants do not have documentation is the U.S. government’s inefficiency in processing immigrants, the bureaucratic burden, and racial discrimination. Many illegal immigrants remain illegal not by choice but because legal options are extremely limited. Even for many who qualify, waiting times can exceed 20 years.

A person living in South America who applies for citizenship will go through a process that takes between 3.5 and 6 years. A Mexican citizen who applies for citizenship must wait about five years. First, they must obtain a green card and maintain continuous residency for 5 years before they can apply. Obtaining a green card can take a South American from nine months to over 15 years. In addition, they must speak English fluently and take a test for which our government can provide schooling. They must then pass a test that most Americans cannot pass. 

Some of the hundred questions include “What is the longest river in the United States?”, “What is our national anthem?”, “Why does our flag have 13 stripes?”, “What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?”, “What rights does the First Amendment guarantee?”, and “Name a U.S. Indian tribe.” Most documented immigrants know more about America than most high school graduates.

Imagine you are a citizen of Venezuela, Ecuador, or Colombia, and your life is threatened by corrupt police, or a drug cartel demands that your home be used to store drugs under threat of death. So you go to the U.S. embassy and ask for asylum. Unfortunately, the waiting time for asylum seekers is backlogged by over ten years because our courts are swamped with over two million court hearings in 2025. You have only two options: suffer and die or try to enter the United States illegally because of the unreasonable waiting period. Immigrants are not the problem; corruption, poverty, and criminality in many countries have made it our problem. 

We must stop demonizing immigrants; they are not criminals, not rapists, and not eating our pets. ICE should be helping them, not killing them. They are good people who need our help and deserve a chance to live, just like our ancestors did years ago.