Image by Chad Stembridge.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) helicopters will undoubtedly be circling my neighborhood looking for roofers and landscapers this “Veterans Day,” just as they have been for weeks. In the U.S., you’re an easy mark when you have brown skin and your job demands that you labor out in the open.
My town, located just outside of Chicago, has been crawling with ICE agents or soldiers (the terms deserve to be used interchangeably) for weeks now. Recently, two moms, in the cold with their whistles, helped guard a crew working on a roof that was damaged by hail in a recent storm. The ICE agents/soldiers, dressed in full military kit, carrying semi-automatic weapons, and wearing ski masks to hide their identity, are patrolling in unmarked trucks — I think we all know how to spot them at this point.
These people remind me of the soldiers I patrolled with in Afghanistan, only the average ICE agent has less training than the average soldier. It seems like every neighborhood in the U.S. is now subject to an armed and potentially violent confrontation with federal troops. The U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has come full circle.
Similar to the way that I terrorized Afghan villages during my time in the military following 9/11, ICE has been terrorizing my town. When I was in the U.S. Army Rangers, we’d target high school and college-age Afghans. Most of the time, these kids were simply walking down the street, minding their own business, when they became subject to a search, an intimidating interrogation, or abduction. After a while, Afghans would alert their neighbors anytime our caravan of trucks entered a town — sometimes they would use whistles. Villagers would quickly disappear and it then felt like we were rolling through a ghost town. This, in part, is life under occupation.
The Trump Regime’s Skyrocketing Domestic Occupying Forces
ICE training has been cut by five weeks to “surge” the number of troops: Training is now eight weeks long, down from 13 weeks. The Trump administration hopes to increase the number of ICE agents from 6,500 nationwide to 10,000 by the end of 2025. A signing bonus of $50,000 has reportedly drawn 150,000 people to apply for positions with ICE, as the agency uses white nationalist imagery to attract white supremacist recruits.
ICE agents/soldiers are occupying U.S. neighborhoods with some of the deadliest weapons in the world with only eight weeks of training and no comparable past experience required. According to a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official interviewed by NBC News, “[DHS is] trying to push everyone through, and the vetting process is not what it should be.” Yet, even if the vetting were more rigorous and thorough, no amount of training could justify armed soldiers terrorizing our neighbors.
My Ranger unit in the Army had some of the best-trained soldiers in the world in it. Still, we lost a soldier every six months or so to an accidental discharge of a weapon. A first sergeant in my unit, who was considered an extremely competent soldier, accidentally shot his M-4 rifle inside a Blackhawk helicopter. The first sergeant lost his rank and was booted from the Rangers.
Pat Tillman, the former professional football player who joined the military after 9/11, was also in my unit. He was killed in an act of “friendly fire” and his death was covered up all the way up George W. Bush’s chain of command.
The vast majority of those killed in the U.S.’s “global war on terror” after 9/11 were noncombatants. “Collateral damage” is what they call it. But in reality, these deaths should be defined by what they are: gross recklessness with deadly weapons and a general disregard for human life. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world died at the hands of U.S. soldiers and their leaders. Even the most well-trained military units can’t be trusted to do the right thing. The “global war on terror” proved this.
So when I see ICE and militarized police carrying assault rifles or weapons of any kind, I’m reminded how naive and foolish it is to trust those armed by the U.S government. It is becoming increasingly clear that ICE agents — dressed and equipped like soldiers — should not be allowed anywhere near our neighborhoods, especially armed with assault weapons.
In October, Chicago resident Miramar Martinez was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent here in Chicago. The yet-to-be-publicly-named masked agent fled to Maine immediately after the shooting. According to the local FOX news station, the masked man, moments before opening fire, aimed an assault rifle at Miramar and shouted: “Do something, b—h.”
Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez was shot and killed by an ICE agent/soldier in another suburb in Chicago in September.
In only the past few weeks we have seen far too many incidents that prove how dangerous this masked band of vigilantes is.
Meanwhile, Trump is seeking to make the National Guard complicit in this occupation: So far he has deployed troops to Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles,; Chicago; Portland, Oregon; and Memphis, Tennessee. He is threatening to deploy even more troops to Baltimore, New York, New Orleans, Oakland, San Francisco, and St. Louis. The Posse Comitatus Act prevents the National Guard from being deployed in a law enforcement capacity. But as Democracy Docket has documented, this 150-year-old law hasn’t stopped Trump, who has already been reprimanded by a federal judge who found that his administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act by “using troops to directly protect federal agents carrying out arrests, setting up perimeters and road blockades for law enforcement operations and, on at least two occasions, detained civilians.”
Morale is collapsing in the National Guard. Internal documents show that the Army is aware that their mission is unpopular; a snapshot from September found that only 2 percent of social media postings analyzed had a positive view of the National Guard’s deployment to Washington, D.C., while more than 53 percent of posts cast Trump’s orders negatively. This provides an opening to anyone hoping to convince National Guard members to lay their weapons down and resist Trump’s demands. These soldiers have a moral responsibility to refuse illegal orders. It’s our duty to remind them of this fact — something to consider the next time you’re at a protest or have an opportunity to talk to an active-duty guard member.
Veterans’ groups such as About Face, and Veterans for Peace are doing a phenomenal job encouraging National Guard members to resist Trump. The “Vets Say No” protests here in Chicago and other cities have drawn thousands to hear their message of resistance. These groups are reminding soldiers that they are not alone, that the U.S. has a proud tradition of refusing orders, and that courage and honor sometimes involves saying no to commanding officers.
Rejecting “Hero” Worship
In speaking with immigrants in my neighborhood, I know they are experiencing a similar fear to that felt by the Afghans I patrolled. I signed up for the military in February of 2002 thinking I would make the U.S. safer by helping to protect it from another 9/11-style attack. I learned that most of what the U.S. was doing in places like Afghanistan was making the world a more dangerous place: both by occupying territory where it didn’t belong, and by killing so many noncombatants — innocent civilians. Further, it was predictable that the uncritical hero worship of soldiers that we saw after 9/11 would breed a dangerous level of comfort with those who carried weapons on behalf of the U.S. government.
I grow more angry and frustrated with each passing “Veterans Day” — this is my 20th since leaving the U.S. Army Rangers as a conscientious objector — because it gets clearer and clearer that “Veterans Day” is nothing more than an attempt to bury the oppressive and deadly agenda of the U.S. ruling class by celebrating our “heroes.” Heroes don’t kill innocent civilians, prey on the marginalized, or participate in imperialist missions designed only to make rich people richer, do they? If you are carrying a weapon on behalf of the federal government in 2025, you are the opposite of a hero, in spite of your best intentions.
I never call it “Veterans Day.” I call it Armistice Day as we did in the years following World War I. Armistice Day was meant to celebrate an end to war, as opposed to Veterans Day, which seems intent on glorifying war. I agree with Kurt Vonnegut, who said:
Armistice Day has become Veterans Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans Day is not. So I will throw Veterans Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.
But in truth this day is more accurately described as “Occupiers Day” — a term that properly describes the threat that our communities inside and the U.S. face from all those who carry a weapon on behalf of the U.S. government.
Collectively, let’s see this day as an opportunity to maintain and accelerate the necessary pushback required to ward off the imperial mindset that has infected far too many in this country. No one is “illegal,” and only through abolishing ICE will we find safety for communities. We need to stop celebrating occupiers — both at home and abroad.
This piece first appeared on Truthout.org.
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