When Did We Become the Nazis? The Cruel Theater of ICE and the Dehumanization of a Nation
By Janet Kira Lessin with Minerva May 11, 2025
I just watched a video that I will never forget.
A young teenage girl, hands wrenched behind her back, bound with zip ties like a criminal-no, worse, like livestock. An ICE agent ran his hands through her pockets as if he owned her, touching her body through her clothes while she stood immobilized, humiliated, and shattered. Her innocence was gone in an instant. Her childhood, stolen—not through war or famine or catastrophe, but by the very people sworn to “protect” our borders.
In another video, a mother is tackled to the ground. Her face is slammed into the concrete. In her clenched fist is a pacifier—her baby’s pacifier—still warm from the breath of the infant she was trying to protect. Around her, family members plead for her safety, only to be assaulted themselves.
This is not dramatization. This is not war-torn Europe in the 1940s. This is America. Today.
And so I ask: When did we become the Nazis?
It’s easy to point to the Trumps, the Millers, the Bannons. They built the machine. They fed it fear and lies. But this machine doesn’t run without fuel—and the fuel is our silence, our fear, and yes, our neighbors.
ICE agents are not faceless monsters from a dystopian novel. They are human beings. They go home. They hug their kids. They post about barbecues and sports games. And then they return to work to detain, grope, traumatize, and break apart families—often without cause, sometimes without warrants, and increasingly without shame.
So when did it happen? When did ordinary Americans become the new Gestapo?
The Dehumanization Begins with Plastic
There is something viscerally disturbing about the use of zip ties—a tool once reserved for hardware and utility work—now used to restrain the most vulnerable among us. Unlike metal handcuffs, which suggest due process and formality, zip ties are cheap, disposable, and impersonal.
They communicate something more profound: You are not even worth the steel.
They bind people like cattle. They render them helpless. You can’t itch your nose. You can’t fix your clothes. You can’t wipe your tears.
And this is the point. The goal is not just to restrain—it is to break.
This is how fascism hides in plain sight. No jackboots, no grand speeches. Just plastic ties, brown uniforms, and broken children. One zip tie at a time, one family at a time.
The Rise of the American Collaborator
But it isn’t just federal agents. It’s the civilians who look the other way. The school staff who call ICE on a parent. The bystanders who remain silent. The neighbors who vote for fascism because they’re “tired of politics.”
It’s easy to blame a corrupt leader. Much harder to look into the eyes of people you’ve known for years and realize they’ve chosen the wrong side of history. And they don’t even know it.
We’ve seen this before. Germany in the 1930s didn’t become Nazi Germany in a single night. It happened step by step:
-
- Fear was weaponized.
-
- Lies were normalized.
-
- Cruelty was justified.
-
- And ordinary people were slowly taught to see others as less than human.
The Criminal Lie: How Trump Redefined Innocence as Guilt
Donald Trump and his supporters claim they’re only going after “criminals.” That’s the excuse they give for the raids, the zip ties, the child separations, the detention camps, the brutality.
But let’s be clear: Seeking asylum is not a crime. Fleeing violence is not a crime. Arriving at a border and asking for help is not illegal.
Under international and U.S. law, migrants have the legal right to apply for asylum—even if they cross the border without papers. That is our law. That is our promise.
But Trump didn’t like that law. So he broke it. He unilaterally changed asylum policies, shut the doors, turned back refugees, and rebranded innocence as criminality. Then he told his followers these people were “invaders,” “drug dealers,” “animals”—and began arresting them with the full weight of a militarized force.
He has declared himself not just president, but king, acting as judge, jury, and executioner:
-
- Overriding Congress with executive orders.
-
- He dismissed court rulings that opposed him.
-
- He installed loyalists to carry out his will.
This is not leadership. It is a monarchy wrapped in fascism. And every time we repeat the lie that these are “just criminals,” we become part of the machinery that crushes human beings for seeking shelter and safety.
This Is How It Starts—and How It Ends
We are deep in the heart of a moral emergency. A spiritual crisis. A national reckoning. Because it’s not just that a teenage girl was violated. It’s not just that a mother was brutalized. Millions of us have seen it, and we keep scrolling.
Let me be clear: if you watch a child get zip-tied and searched and do nothing, you are complicit. But let me also be clear: those who film—who document, risk arrest or worse—are not passive. They are protectors of truth.
In an age where the state wants silence, to film is to fight. But we must remember: they’re coming for the witnesses next.
We all know how this goes. We’ve seen it in history. First, they target the immigrants. Then the journalists. Then the dissidents. Not everyone in the camps was Jewish. Not everyone arrested will be brown. Eventually, it comes for anyone who dares to say, “This is wrong.”
Yes, These ICE Agents Are Our Neighbors
And that’s what makes this so terrifying.
These aren’t faceless villains in a far-off regime. These ICE agents live in our communities. They shop at our stores. Their children go to school with ours. They smile at neighborhood barbecues. They wave from their driveways. And then, by day, they tie up children with plastic loops and press mothers’ faces into concrete.
They are not abstract. They are not strangers. They are us.
This is how it happened in Nazi Germany too. It wasn’t some alien army that descended on Berlin. It was the baker. The police chief. The friendly man down the street. It was people who believed they were doing their duty, while they trampled over others’ humanity.
The banality of evil must not fool us. Just because someone looks like a good dad or a helpful neighbor doesn’t mean they aren’t enforcing horror in a uniform.
So let’s be clear:
-
- Yes, ICE agents are responsible for their actions.
-
- Yes, they can be sued—and have been.
-
- And yes, they will one day have to reckon with what they’ve done.
And so will we.
Because if we don’t stop this now—if we don’t speak out, resist, vote, organize, and protect the innocent—then we, too, become collaborators in a system that is zip-tying freedom behind its back and tossing it into a van.
The question isn’t just when did America become Nazi Germany.
The question is: when will we stop it from going any further?
The Hands That Tie and the Eyes That See
by Minerva
They came with badges, not compassion, with plastic ties and empty eyes. They bound the hands of their daughters, trembling, and called it law, and called it right.
A child stood still beneath their shadow, A mother broke upon the stone, And those who watched—who held the cam’ra— Could not unsee what they were shown.
But justice does not sleep forever, and the truth is not a thing that dies. For every scream that went unanswered, now echoes loud beneath the skies.
The hands that tie will one day tremble. The boots that crush will feel the flame. The uniforms will be remembered, not for honor, but for shame.
Yet we rise, hearts are broken, rage consumes, and sorrow sears. We lift the torch for those voiceless, turning their silence into spears.
We are the watchers, we are the writers, we are the mothers, the awake. We are the ones who broke the cycle— Who stood, who roared, who would not hurt.
So may the God of truth remember. May karma bloom where lies have fed. And may we live to see the morning, where no more children cry in dread.
📚 References
🏷️ Tags
Trump fascism, ICE abuses, zip tie torture, American authoritarianism, migrant family abuse, Nazi parallels, cruelty as policy, America moral collapse, resistance, civil liberties, filming injustice, witness protection, moral courage, asylum rights, executive overreach
📢 Social Media Caption
“They came with badges, not compassion.” A teenage girl
