The US is asking Sharaa to normalize with Israel and crack down on Palestinian resistance groups

"Who Are These Men in Masks?"

By Tony Pentimalli

They wear masks. They show no badges. They storm homes without warrants. They drag people away without cause. Sometimes they take neighbors. Sometimes parents. Sometimes U.S. citizens.

Who are they?

They call themselves ICE agents. But in Donald Trump’s second term, they no longer enforce immigration law. They enforce fear.

In March 2025, masked men raided homes in El Paso. No names. No warrants. No explanation. “They kicked the door in and told me to shut up,” said Karina Velasquez, a 32-year-old mother whose husband was taken. “My kids watched him get dragged away. No one has told us where he is.”

Two weeks later in Chicago, a high school teacher—Laura Peña—was detained for filming ICE agents near a train station. She’s a U.S. citizen. They took her phone. They held her for hours. No charges. In Portland, Oregon, ICE teams began conducting raids out of rented U-Haul trucks. They detained people with valid visas—and in one case, a U.S. passport. This isn’t enforcement. It’s state terror.

ICE has outsourced its war on immigrants to private security firms. Triple Canopy. CoreCivic. MVM Inc. The same companies once paid to detain migrants now operate in the field—raiding homes, interrogating families, and disappearing people. They wear no insignia. They answer to no agency. They operate in the shadows—with the blessing of the White House.
In Phoenix, a contractor involved in a 2025 ICE raid had previously been fired for abuse at a detention facility. That didn’t stop Trump’s ICE from rehiring him. A leaked memo from a DHS regional supervisor, dated March 3, warned that “operational opacity”—masks, secret teams, no court review—would trigger lawsuits and public backlash. Trump’s team ignored it. Because secrecy isn’t the problem. It’s the strategy.

The Fourth Amendment bars unlawful searches. The Fifth guarantees due process. The Fourteenth protects equality under the law. Trump’s ICE disregards all three. Agents now use administrative warrants—documents signed internally, not by judges—as a pretext for entering homes and detaining residents. These hold no legal weight in court, but ICE presents them as law.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruling in DHS v. Thuraissigiam stripped due process rights from asylum seekers. That crack in the dam has become a flood—used now to justify raids and detentions across the interior, not just at the border. In March 2025, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered ICE to release two Brazilian nationals with green cards. ICE deported them anyway.

“This isn’t law enforcement—it’s terror,” said former federal judge Marilyn Torres. “ICE is operating outside the Constitution. And that should terrify every American.”

ICE has also detained dozens of U.S. citizens—held them for days, sometimes weeks. They were Brown. Poor. Accented. In 2019, Francisco Galicia, a Dallas-born teenager, was held for 26 days in ICE custody. Now under Trump’s second term, such cases have multiplied. ICE refuses to release data on how many detainees were citizens. Why? Because that would admit the truth: they no longer check.

In April 2025, 13-year-old Mateo Jiménez, a U.S. citizen, was separated from his father during a pre-dawn raid. Mateo was held for six hours. No guardian. No social worker. Just a locked room, a crying child, and armed men in masks. Under Trump, the burden of proof isn’t on the state. It’s on the accused—to prove they’re human.

Where is Congress? Where are the hearings? Where are the Democrats who once said “Abolish ICE”? Gone. Judges issue orders. ICE ignores them. City councils pass sanctuary laws. Local police share data anyway. The federal government isn’t just failing. It’s participating.

And this isn’t new. It’s repetition. In 1919, the Palmer Raids swept up thousands of suspected radicals without cause. In 1942, Executive Order 9066 interned 120,000 Japanese Americans—most of them citizens. From the 1950s through the 1970s, COINTELPRO targeted civil rights leaders with state surveillance and sabotage. Every time, it started with fear. Every time, we looked away. Every time, we later called it a national shame.

We are repeating the cycle—with more technology, fewer legal checks, and far more apathy. The lesson of history is not that secret police start regimes. It’s that democracies end when no one stops them.

So who are these men in masks?

They don’t wear name tags. They don’t show badges. They don’t read rights. They are paid by your taxes. They are shielded by your silence. And they are loyal to only one thing: Donald Trump.

He declared immigrants an invasion. Now he’s treating American soil like a war zone. And ICE—once a law enforcement agency—is now his foot soldier.

They’re not enforcing immigration law. They’re enforcing fear. And the longer we tolerate it, the closer we come to becoming the country Trump already believes we are.

*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Seems legit.

 Steely_D wrote:

I can relate, honestly.

The thing that caught my eye was his defender's tweet, that said "in just 5 months, he’s already accomplished more than Biden did in 4 years." But I thought Joe did so much damage it will take years to undo. Did nothing in 4 years but is responsible for Everything Wrong Everywhere. Like the lazy immigrants who are taking our jobs.

Did Donald Trump Fall Asleep During Saudi Arabia Meeting?

When in Rome

 rgio wrote:
Quid Pro Quo. Pay to Play. 'Transactional'.

 R_P wrote:
So Universities that don't punish those verbally supporting Palestine, which might offend Jewish students, lose their funding.... all while the guy directing those punishments is taking money from Hamas' bankers?

You literally can't make this shit up...

All of the "Joe Biden is owned by China" folks must have missed this.... since it isn't worth space of Fox News.  Somebody has to cover the McDonald's trailer the Saudi's brought in to honor Trump's fast food obsession.  How much laughing do you think the Saudi's do at Trump's expense?  

 Red_Dragon wrote: With approval

Qatar has been a key financial supporter of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, transferring more than $1.8 billion to Hamas over the years.^<1><2> In consultation with the U.S. and Israeli governments, $30 million were transferred monthly to Hamas, according to a Qatari official interviewed by Der Spiegel in 2023.^<3>

The United States requested in 2011 that Qatar provide a base for the Hamas leadership to ease communications with the group.^<3> From 2012, Qatar hosted the Hamas party leadership when Hamas head Khaled Mashal relocated from Syria to Qatar.^<4> The former head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, had resided in Doha since 2016 until his death in 2024.^<5> Qatar has been called Hamas' most important financial backer and foreign ally.^<6><7>

From 2018 to 2023, Israel's government enabled and approved of the Qatari support for Hamas for political reasons.^<8> (...)

In 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama personally requested that Qatar, one of the U.S.'s most important Arab allies, provide a base for the Hamas leadership. At the time, the U.S. were seeking to establish communications with Hamas and believed that a Hamas office in Qatar would be easier to access than a Hamas bureau in Iran, the group's main backer.^<14><15> (...)

Cf. U.S. military aid for Israel tops $17.9 billion since last Oct. 7

 Red_Dragon wrote: 

Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally. and U.S. military protocol says that it is "customary to salute officers of friendly foreign nations when recognized as such." Saluting officers of unfriendly foreign nations is thought to be forbidden but these protocols don't apply to the commander-in-chief, who is by law a civilian with no military rank or standing.

Former President Barack Obama was also scrutinized for his actions toward foreign leaders after bowing while greeting a previous Saudi ruler, King Abdullah, as well as former Emperor Akihito of Japan in 2009. In the first case, Obama was accused of showing obeisance to a foreign ruler and Islam. In the latter, his behavior was dubbed "treasonous."

Can we pause for a moment and let the gravity of this sink in...The Qatari royal family bankrolls Hamas. 

This is Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, relative of the man who the US Defense Department has identified as the funder of the mastermind of the September 11 attacks and helped Khalid Sheikh Mohammed evade capture for many years. 

Now they just bought their way into Trump’s inner circle.This is the same regime that:

• Finances Hamas 
• Was found guilty of bribing hundreds of European Union officials to sway policy in its favor
• Financed 9/11 attacks, and it's not just Trump with his snout in the trough:
• Pam Bondi – Qatar’s registered lobbyist $115,000 per month
• Kash Patel – Security consulting for Qatar 
• Eric Trump – Building Qatari-funded golf resorts
• Jared Kushner – Took $1.5B from Qatari and Emirati funds
• Lee Zeldin – His firm was paid by a Qatari-linked company
• Steve Witkoff – Business ties with Qatari interests
• Barry Bennett & Doug Watts – Secretly lobbied for Qatar
• Joey Allaham – Arranged Qatari meetings with Trump insidersQatar doesn’t spend billions for friendship. 

They don't give 'gifts'. They invest to control. They've been cited as one of the most corrupt countries on earth, specifically for bribing targets and people it deems necessary to cultivate. 

Terror money is still terror. No matter how big the check.

After being called out this week, DOGE quietly deleted 31 contracts from its website wiping out $122 million in supposed “savings” Musk’s team had claimed from cutting federal spending. But the site is still riddled with errors.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

True dat. The stories about the bear carcass and dead whale have their own hidden meaning. Oh yes, and the worm in the brain. 

 kcar wrote:

although, you gotta admit, swimming in shit is a great metaphor.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

Yeah, you don't wade or swim in Rock Creek Park. DC's sewage and storm runoff system are tied together so when you have significant rains (which regularly occur in the spring and summer), sewage can back up and flow into the Creek. 

However, people don't always remember that. I remember walking into Georgetown through RCP on a crazy-hot July 4 and watching a platoon of masochistic morons jogging right in the middle of the creek, water up to their shins, while some drill sergeant wannabe in the lead barked commands. I'm sure this was an extreme fitness group and not military grunts. SMH.

Also (sorta) in Bobby's defense: Teddy Roosevelt used to get on his horse and jaunt through RCP while he lived in DC. He'd swim in the Creek as well, although the pollution issue likely wasn't a big a deal. 

Are those Bobby's grandkids? If they were my children I wouldn't leave them alone with RFK for a minute. 

@Red_Dragon: In the near future, Trump will sell the nearly drowned kitten as a President Trump Commemorative Pet, $10,000 each. 

What a maroon.