So it begins. The photo-op ICE raids, with Fox News reporters and cameras embedded, have finally come to Colorado, with their armored vehicles, with their scary guns, with their flash grenades, many agents wearing masks, most dressed in camo — but without warrants, and yet knocking down doors, spreading fear through neighborhoods, making kids cry as they watch a parent cuffed and taken away, seeing whole communities shocked by the onslaught.
Fear was the point, after all. And fear is what they got.
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But guess what? That seems to be most of what they got in the raids in Aurora and Denver, other than what you might call a large embarrassment.
The raids themselves — which were conducted by several federal agencies with the goal of apprehending 100-plus members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua — were apparently a major flop.
They were so much performative theater, which is how their boss — the man who has spread lies about migrants, particularly those in Aurora — likes it.
We can deduce the measure of the failure by the fact that ICE has refused to say how many were detained, whether those detained have any gang association, whether any charges have been filed, whether any of the detainees were, in fact, violent criminals, or whether this turned out to be — despite all the drama — a run-of-the-mill, despicable action against people who don’t have documents.
And we can deduce the failure from comments made by so-called border czar Tom Homan, who blamed the media for hindering raids, saying leaks warned the bad guys that the feds were coming. Of course he blamed the local media while also threatening any local politicians who might get in his way. It’s Trumpworld 101. Well, the media did report that raids were likely coming because the Trump administration had told us raids were imminent.
We also knew raids were imminent because a week ago a report on NBC News led Homan to publicly call off the raids in Denver and Aurora. Did they think that coming a week later would be a surprise?
We knew raids were happening because the many agents involved could not have been more visible. Instead of knocking door to door at apartment complexes and asking for papers, they might as well have sent out warning candy grams to each resident.
Local politicians, by the way, are pretty unanimous about getting violent criminals off the street, but not necessarily about migrant roundups. Who doesn’t want to see violent criminals taken off the street? It’s a phony message.
And we can further deduce the failure because the White House, via press secretary Karoline Leavitt, said 100 gang members were deported back to Venezuela. Which can’t be true. Because even though Venezuela has agreed to take back deported citizens, the first flights carrying deportees there won’t begin until next month.
Meaning, it sounds something like a lie.
And the raids, bound for failure, look now like a made-for-TV fiasco.
The raid-embedded folks from Fox News (naturally) said that 30 people were detained in the raids, including — wait for it — one gang member. That gang member was reportedly facing charges in a South American country that isn’t Venezuela.
Kevin Vaughan at 9News — yes, Kevin and I are old friends and colleagues — followed up with a report on the Jan. 25 Adams County raid, which you might recall. The DEA said after the raid it was looking for dangerous criminals with drugs and weapons.
The DEA detained 49 people that night. Videos of the raid were sent to local media. And local DEA authorities — which said the raid had been planned for six months and that the investigation began when a gang member brought 12 kilos of fentanyl to Colorado — announced that, as a result, the Denver area woke up as a safer place to be.
And yet, no charges — as in, zero charges — have been filed against any of the detained. Not by the U.S. attorney. Not by the Adams County DA.
The raid did turn up some personal-use drugs and, Vaughan reported, four guns. ICE did inform us that 41 of the detainees were unauthorized to be in the country.
But we don’t know where they are detained, which is the way ICE operates. We don’t know what crimes they may have committed, which is the way ICE operates. We don’t know if they’ve committed crimes other than being undocumented immigrants —a civil offense, not a criminal one.
Here’s the point: The raids are all part of the Trump administration’s fear campaign.
Just like the announcement that they’re sending some of those arrested to Guantanamo Bay is a part of the fear campaign.
Just like the Elon Musk resignation-letter threat campaign against more than 2 million federal workers— now paused by a federal judge — is a likely illegal way of scaring people into resigning before they get (probably illegally) laid off or fired.
Just like Musk and his juvie gang of tech nerds’ attack on USAID, which has saved millions of lives around the world, is another way to scare federal workers into resigning. A judge has temporarily blocked that, too. And fun fact: While Musk has called USAID a criminal enterprise, we now learn, via Forbes, that just last year USAID spent a million dollars on Musk’s Starlink terminals.
Just like Trump’s deport-the-Palestinians and turn-Gaza-into-the-Riviera-of-the-Middle-East threat is meant to cause chaos and, of course, fear. Trump seems to be backing down now, describing the takeover as a real estate deal.
The list is too long. But you get the idea. It’s all of a piece.
Many people are trying to figure out what to do to resist all of this. It may be the hardest question. Some Democratic politicians are waking up to the need for active resistance. Many groups are going to court to take on the (likely) illegal moves by Trump and Musk and the rest. People are starting to turn up for protests. People are starting to tune in to the fact that the Trump/Musk attempt to overwhelm us with nonstop outrage is deliberate and that we can’t give in to it.
A friend sent me a very long video message from AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York) discussing Musk’s assault on the Treasury Department and how it relates to Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, the televised raids on migrant communities and how, in large part through social media, they have taken control of our emotions.
She pointed out that Trump/Musk feed off our fears and rely on the notion that people believe that nothing they do will matter.
She went to say: “They want you in a state of paralysis. They want you in a state of not doing anything … But understand as human beings, we outnumber them. Do not give up the strategic advantage of our numbers. Small acts matter. They matter. And do what you can — do what you can and know that what you can do is enough.”
Small acts do matter. We’ve seen it many times before in American history. Small acts turn into big acts, and small actions turn into mass resistance.
And so, the raids have begun, and they’ll be back. Count on that much.
But as hard as it might be, we can’t give in to the fear. We can’t let fear stop us from resisting.
That’s how they win.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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