Since Markwayne Mullin took over the Department of Homeland Security in March, Immigration and Custom Enforcement has dialed back on the trolling. Gone are the videos and memes, posted regularly under the leadership of Mullin’s predecessor Kristi Noem, that mocked detainees for crying and celebrated ICE agents for being recklessly violent. There have been no more showy “invasions” of cities like Minneapolis or Los Angeles, as Mullin has aimed to draw less attention to ICE’s incompetent and legally dubious methods. His strategy has largely worked in getting the unpopular agency’s name out of the headlines.
But that doesn’t mean ICE has given up on fulfilling Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s cruel fantasies. The xenophobic Miller agenda is still being treated as the vanguard in White House efforts to will an authoritarian police state into being, circumventing both law and tradition to attack due process and inflict fear on the nation’s immigrant population. In early August, DHS posted a notice that they plan to buy $20 million worth of electrified shock gloves that are euphemistically described as “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices.” The gloves are truly Orwellian, cheered on by police because they inflict pain but leave “no burn marks or scars,” making it easier for law enforcement to hide the abuse and cruelty they inflict. Amnesty International opposes the use of these devices, arguing they are “readily misused for torture.”
Trump, of course, has fantasized aloud about unleashing state violence on Americans, regardless of the laws against it. The gloves provide an avenue to hurt both immigrants and protesters, while avoiding due process and legal accountability.
The gloves’ torturous potential seems the biggest part of their appeal to the administration. Mullin has previously defended the killing of nonviolent anti-ICE protesters, while Miller regularly paints progressive protesters and immigrants as apocalyptic threats that need be countered with violence. Trump, of course, has fantasized aloud about unleashing state violence on Americans, regardless of the laws against it. The gloves provide an avenue to hurt both immigrants and protesters, while avoiding due process and legal accountability.
As the courts keeps getting in the way of Trump’s desire to persecute people he doesn’t like, the pressure to find a way to cheat the laws guarding human rights is only intensifying. Liz Dye, legal analyst and host of the “Law and Chaos” podcast, told me that “U.S. Attorneys are being pressured to bring politically motivated cases based on shoddy or even fabricated evidence, with the predictable result that the cases implode on impact with the court system, sometimes spectacularly.”
The most recent high-profile example is the attempt by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro to prosecute David Hearn, a former Olympian who was accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial. As it turned out, Hearn was being used as a scapegoat to hide Trump’s embarrassment over ruining the pool by hiring poorly qualified cronies to renovate it. Pirro eventually had to admit that the case was without merit and dropped it, even though doing so meant a well publicized dressing-down from Trump at the White House.
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The failed attempt to prosecute Hearn was just the latest in a series of high-profile prosecutions of people Trump hates for criticizing him or attempting to hold him accountable, including against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In a recent column for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie observed that “The principal aim of President Trump’s second term is revenge.” Worse, most everyone Trump fixates on is innocent of wrongdoing. Their only “transgression” has been upholding the law, criticizing the president or, in many cases, simply being of a race or class of people he doesn’t like. But Trump, Bouie argued memorably, also wants revenge on the American people “for rejecting him in 2020 and dealing a grievous blow to his ego.”
As Dye explained, Trump’s efforts to use the Justice Department to exact revenge have only backfired. It has “hemorrhaged staff” because honest attorneys have rejected pressure to “drop meritorious prosecutions” so they can “bring garbage political cases” instead. The department’s reputation is in tatters. Zahid Quraishi, a federal judge in New Jersey, said it best. When throwing a federal prosecutor out of his courtroom earlier this year, Quraishi said, “Generations of Assistant U.S. Attorneys had built the goodwill of that office for your generation to destroy it within a year.”
The new ICE gloves are part of this systemic destruction, representing the pathetic means the Trump administration will use, all so they can inflict maximum punishment before the judicial system lets their targets go. The immigration system is far easier to manipulate for authoritarian purposes than the federal justice system. Undocumented residents don’t enjoy the same legal rights as citizens, and deporting someone is a much lower lift, legally speaking, than prosecuting someone for a crime they didn’t commit. And yet, as POLITICO reported this week, the administration is losing most of its deportation cases in court. Of the 20,500 tracked by the media outlet, the White House lost at least 17,600, or 85% of the time.
Unable to win in court, Trump and his officials are looking to turn the process itself into the punishment. Immigrants are held in detention camps for months, often under torturous conditions, while waiting for their cases heard. ICE raids are frequent and often violent, sometimes targeting people who have legal paperwork to be in U.S. The result is that immigrants are being kept in a constant state of psychological terror, especially with the knowledge that having legal status — or even citizenship — may not provide sufficient protection. These electric gloves are just the latest part of what amounts to a torture campaign being waged by the administration — a way for ICE to hurt and punish immigrants and their defenders under the guise of “crowd control” or “de-escalation.”
While the situation is dire, it’s also a sign that Trump is weak. This is evident in the special grand jury Pirro recently convened in Washington following rumors that her job was at stake due to her inability to successfully prosecute a series of fall guys the presidents wants to blame for his own failures. But it’s doubtful she will be able to improve on her losing record. Since Trump can’t imprison people at the scale he wants, he has to settle for harassing them instead. That’s not the behavior of the all-powerful leader he was trying to be a year ago. They are the actions of a spoiled brat trying, and failing, to cover up the stench of losing.
