We’re Now at the Stage Where Criminals Are Impersonating ICE Agents

Police in Philadelphia are searching for a man who robbed a business while masquerading as a Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, according to Fox 29.

A man wearing a tactical vest with the words “Security Enforcement Agent” entered a car repair business Monday afternoon and detained a 50-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic using zip-ties, before making away with roughly $1,000, according to police.

“He kept saying he is immigration officer,” the woman told Fox 29’s Steve Keeley.

Crimes like these are the inevitable result of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants, as part of the government’s massive deportation efforts.

During recent ICE raids across the country, agents have declined to show identification or a warrant, often detaining people while wearing face masks to hide their identity, meaning that it’s not difficult to pretend to be an ICE agent and enact racialized violence and mayhem. The Trump administration’s escalating rhetoric targeting immigrants has already emboldened several ICE imposters who have been hit with charges such as kidnapping, assault, and of course, impersonating a federal officer.

The Trump administration’s decision to empower an extrajudicial enforcement agency that is not accountable to the citizens it purports to protect will likely continue to sow chaos across the country—particularly as the Trump administration has moved to increase the number of daily ICE arrests.

The president’s “law and order” agenda isn’t popular with the people tasked with enforcing it.

The Los Angeles Police Department torched Donald Trump, revealing to the public that not only had the administration failed to notify them of its decision to send 700 Marines to quell the city’s anti-ICE protests, but also that they believe Washington’s  involvement will unnecessarily complicate the situation.

“The LAPD has not received any formal notification that the Marines will be arriving in Los Angeles,” wrote LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell in a news release Monday. “However, the possible arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles absent clear coordination presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.

“The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively,” McDonnell continued. “That said, our top priority is the safety of both the public and the officers on the ground. We are urging open and continuous lines of communication between all agencies to prevent confusion, avoid escalation, and ensure a coordinated, lawful, and orderly response during this critical time.”

Police unions across the country comprised a massive coalition responsible for sending Trump back to the White House. Cops were some of his biggest cheerleaders during the past three election cycles, frothing at his promises to always “back the blue.”

Thousands of locals flooded the streets of Los Angeles over the weekend in a stunning visual protest of the president’s agenda. Protesters blocked off a major freeway, trashed Waymos (self-driving cars), and organized outside City Hall and the Metropolitan Detention Center. In reaction, law enforcement officials shot rubber bullets and fired tear gas and flash bangs into crowds of civilians. The FBI added protesters suspected of throwing rocks at police cars to its Most Wanted list and ominously threatened to intervene in the anti-Trump display without guidance from California or the White House.

California sued the federal government Monday to roll back Trump’s deployment of 4,100 National Guard members that state authorities said had not been authorized or requested to handle the protests. In a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

Direct orders from Stephen Miller ignited the Los Angeles protests, leading to the precarious, highly militarized situation the city is currently facing. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Miller, frustrated with ICE’s failure to meet their lofty deportation quota, held an intense meeting at ICE headquarters  last month and bet his agents that they could go to places like Home Depot or 7-Eleven and start arresting people. 

“Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said, asking the audience directly. Officers were repeatedly told to do “what they needed to do” to make arrests. 

ICE followed suit, flooding Los Angeles’s Westlake neighborhood with agents, accosting immigrants at their jobs and setting off resistance from community members, which then in turn led to federal agents deploying tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash-bang grenades on American citizens. Miller, who is from Santa Monica, has long been obsessed with Los Angeles as a symbol of everything he hates: multicultural, multilingual, vibrant.

Los Angeles is only the beginning of this immigration crackdown, and Miller’s aggressive, by any means necessary tactics will only continue to be met with community protest, which in turn will lead to more Marines and National Guardsmen in the street (and without rules of civilian engagement at the time of this writing). This cycle is exactly what Miller and the administration want, as they continue to use the response to their extrajudicial detainments to further justify their actions. 

Defense officials are working overtime to throw together guidance in the event that U.S. Marines—sent to Los Angeles Monday—are required to use force on civilians.

The rare prospect is the design of Donald Trump, who ordered 700 Marines to the city amid ongoing protests intended to block ICE raids and thwart his administration’s immigration agenda.

The soldiers are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and have been trained in deescalation, crowd control, and self-defense, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. But rules on how the active duty soldiers should engage in force are still being drafted, according to nine anonymous U.S. officials who spoke with the AP.

The troops are experienced in active combat zones, having spent time in Syria and Afghanistan. But sending troops overseas is starkly different from sending them to one of America’s most populous cities. In war zones, soldiers are guided by the rules of engagement, but on American soil they will be guided by standing rules for the use of force, which must be agreed upon by Northern Command.

One U.S. official told the AP that each Marine should receive a card indicating what they can and cannot do. Another U.S. official told the publication that the troops will be armed with “normal service weapons” and will be carrying helmets, shields, and gas masks, but they will not be carrying tear gas.

Drafted use-of-force documents obtained by the newswire indicate that the Pentagon has so far written off warning shots, deciding that they should be prohibited. Marines sent to the city are instructed to deescalate but are not prohibited from acting in self-defense, according to the documents.

They are also drafting rules on how Marines should go about protecting federal personnel and property, or detaining civilians if troops are under assault.

Trump’s order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law dating back to 1878 that forbids the government from using the military for law enforcement purposes. The White House could have bypassed the military doctrine by invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to utilize the military during periods of rebellion or mass civil unrest, but had not done so by the time of the order. (Trump has still not invoked the Insurrection Act, as of the time of publishing.)

The Marines are joining 4,100 National Guard members that Trump similarly tasked with disassembling the protests, against the wishes of local government officials. On Monday, California sued the Trump administration to roll back the National Guard’s deployment, citing logistical challenges that L.A. and state officials said would make it more difficult to safely handle the protests.

In a press conference announcing the lawsuit Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters that Trump had “trampled” California’s sovereignty.

“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” Bonta said.

The president claimed on Truth Social Tuesday morning that Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground” without his militaristic directive.

Trump also endorsed threats to arrest Newsom, telling reporters that he’d “do it.”

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman was spotted Monday night chatting with Steve Bannon, according to Politico Playbook.

Fetterman, who has displayed his own dramatic rightward shift, was reportedly dining at a top MAGA hangout near Capitol Hill with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle, when the conservative news site’s old director wandered up and spoke to the pair for roughly 20 minutes.

Bannon took over Breitbart in 2012, and directed the site to publish patently pugnacious rhetoric and conspiracy theories cooked up by far-right activists and white supremacists. In 2016, Bannon stepped down to join Trump’s presidential campaign as its CEO, and went on to mastermind the authoritarian MAGA movement.

Fetterman broke with his party yet again on Monday to condemn the anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles. “I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos,” he wrote in a post on X.

“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement,” he added.

Bannon has a slightly different view of the unrest in Los Angeles, which has been spurred on by Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard, and now the Marines. “We’re in the Third World War,” he said in an interview published on Monday. “And it’s a battlefield that’s everywhere, including in downtown Los Angeles.”

Last month, a damning report said that some of Fetterman’s staff were concerned about his increasingly erratic behavior, and Republican lawmakers flocked to support the Democratic senator with whom they’d inexplicably come to agree.

Fetterman was one of the more than two dozen Democrats to support the Laken Riley Act, which would, among other things, allow the government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of committing nonviolent crimes.