This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 28 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Donald Trump wants to use the Department of Homeland Security as the state apparatus to impose his rule on this country — that has been clear from Day 1, and it only gets clearer by the day.
Much has been said about Trump calling the military into our cities, but the masked agents conducting the worst violations of our constitutional rights have almost all been under the DHS umbrella. Those agents have been the ones tackling people to the ground, tearing them from cars and snatching them from their places of work, detaining citizens and noncitizens alike.
One of the most notorious figures behind this operation is Greg Bovino. He’s a senior official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a DHS agency that is seen within the Trump administration as more willing than other agencies, like the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to go along with the most aggressive parts of the president’s mass-deportation scheme.
In many ways, Bovino has become the face of this project. Most folks first heard of him over the summer as the guy overseeing CBP operations during the federal invasion of Los Angeles. In July, agents in armored vehicles and on horseback disrupted a children’s summer camp in MacArthur Park. After Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom both objected to that dangerous stunt, Bovino went on TV to tell them both, effectively, to take a hike.
“The federal government is not leaving L.A.,” he told the local Fox affiliate. “I don’t work for Karen Bass, the federal government doesn’t work for Karen Bass. We’re going to be here until that mission’s accomplished, as I said, and you better get used to us now because this is going to be normal very soon.”
Bovino has since moved on to the administration’s operations in Chicago, where he was caught on camera personally throwing a can of tear gas at civilians during a raid on a parking lot last Thursday.
According to a legal filing, on that same day, one of Bovino’s agents pointed a gun at a protester, a U.S. veteran, and said, “bang bang” and “you’re dead, liberal.”
It is worth noting that there is an existing temporary restraining order from Oct. 9 prohibiting federal agents from using chemical munitions in Chicago against civilians and journalists who do not pose a threat.
However, it doesn’t appear that federal agents are abiding by that order. In addition to that incident from last Thursday, residents and demonstrators over the weekend confronted Border Patrol agents near a Halloween parade after they arrested an undocumented construction worker who came to the U.S. as a child. According to witnesses and videos taken at the scene, federal agents then started lobbing tear gas, just minutes before the start of the scheduled parade.
“You had parents on the street literally taking their kids to this Halloween parade when this happened,” one resident told a local news station. “And I didn’t see anybody with a weapon. I didn’t see anybody make physical contact with these agents.”
Bovino was hauled into court in Chicago on Tuesday to answer for that behavior. And the court obviously believes he needs to be reined in — the judge ordered Bovino to appear in court every day this week to provide a status report on his actions in Chicago.
He will also be forced to turn over use-of-force reports and accompanying body camera footage. (He and his agents are now required to use body cameras.)
While Bovino was being admonished in court, we learned that there is a purge happening within Homeland Security to strengthen its most violent, reactionary tendencies. Those in favor of what’s called more “targeted” immigration enforcement are being pushed out, so that Bovino can more easily undertake Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s draconian vision of mass deportation.
As NBC News reports:
President Donald Trump’s top aides have welcomed Border Patrol’s more aggressive tactics to secure arrests, such as rappelling into apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters and jumping out of rental trucks in Home Depot parking lots, as they’ve become disappointed with ICE, the officials said. ‘The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,’ one of the DHS officials said. ‘So CBP will do it.’
In short, Trump’s top aides think ICE leadership is too soft and want to replace it with Border Patrol leaders, who are seen as more aggressive and willing to go along with whatever this administration asks.
But believe me, this is just the beginning. After Republicans provided Homeland Security with an unprecedented surge in funding, the agency is spending billions to recruit thousands more agents, with aggressive marketing campaigns and signing bonuses. Trump wants them to be, effectively, his federal police force, wreaking havoc on the streets of this country.
That may be especially true heading into next year’s midterm elections. Several experts in elections and democracy spoke to The Atlantic about their fears that Trump will deploy armed agents to polling places to sow chaos and intimidation and to maintain power.
This is a plan, it is worth noting, that the president’s ally Steve Bannon is openly bragging about. “They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, ‘hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places,’” Bannon said on his podcast earlier this year. “You’re damn right.”
Bannon has also doubled down on his threat that Trump would run for a third term, telling The Economist that there’s a “plan” in the works. “Trump is going to be president in ’28 and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” he said.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
