As I see it, Adolf Hitler had the “Brown Shirts,” Benito Mussolini had the “Black Shirts” — both named for the uniforms they wore — and Donald Trump has ICE.

Their common purpose: to make everyone in the country afraid. Tear gas, pepper balls, pepper spray, flash bang grenades and bullets, all part of the arsenal brought out when ICE loses control of a situation that they deliberately created. They smash windows. They threaten innocent people. This is not law enforcement — this is thuggery. People get injured, people die. The story of what happened gets left to ICE to tell.

Only 5% of those arrested and deported are violent criminals. Seventy-three percent of them, over 400,000 people, have no criminal convictions at all. These are not the worst of the worst. The mass deportations are all a show to help a narcissist feel powerful. The real mission is to stir things up, bring enough angry people into the streets, that the president can try to invoke the Insurrection Act and then, as he said on Dec. 3, 2022, terminate parts of the Constitution. 

I know that we can do better than this. I am angry. So, I will vote, vote in person, every chance I have.

Robert Sessums
North Yarmouth