Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force
ICE now has the biggest budget of any law enforcement agency in America.
“ICE and Customs and Border Protection have long been the most rogue, kind of renegade and certainly pro-Trump police agencies in the federal government,” explained Radley Balko, a journalist who’s covered policing for decades. “What I think we are seeing right now is Trump is attempting to build his own paramilitary force. They want people whose first, ultimate loyalty in this job is going to be to the president.”
Balko is the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.” And he’s been tracking the changes at ICE and the Trump administration’s escalating law-and-order tactics on his excellent newsletter, The Watch.
Who is it for? Trump is old and not long for this world (even if Putin and Xi are discussing longevity though organ transplants), so he must have an heir in mind. America is in deep waters with no way out. Both major parties are stultified and full of non entities. Big Tech bosses are a real danger for us all.
I thought immediately on his blank pardoning of the Jan 6th insurrectionists, that what he was doing was laying the foundation of a personal militia. Sounds like he found a simpler route via already trained and equipped right-wing law enforcement agencies, coupled with a crushed and subordinated Republican party and a government, legislature and judiciary seeded through with sycophants and opportunists elevated far beyond reason or ability. The Epstein controversy seems to have sown some dissension, but it is still to be seen whether this is genuine or opportunistic, or will be effective in any meaningful way.
OK, that is interesting and good to mention the militarist mentality not just military arming of law enforcement and whatever ICE thinks it is doing these days. However, I think we need to pay much closer attention to the personnel pipeline and its conditioning.
So, I’ve finished Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America (2022), which starts with the observation that there is a kind of military proto-caste emerging in the USA, with volunteers from just five states (at time of writing) — California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia — making up half of the US military, and many of these from multi-generational military families. Not quite the bible belt but with some overlap.
The book is concerned with narratives, models and treatments around PTSD but is particularly interested in veterans who are self-traumatised perpetrators and how they are received and treated back in civil society. It seems that the focus of ‘moral injury’ has been fitted into right-wing imperialist soldier-hero myths, neoliberal personnel dogmas, and religious (Christian) doctrines and practices, so that the emphasis is on healing the soldier* and getting him* back to active duty, mentally washed of any unprofitable guilt. And after active duty, perhaps a career in law enforcement, security, or an afterlife as a paramilitary/mercenary. So imperialism demands killers, neoliberalism manages the recruitment pipeline, mental (re)conditioning is outsourced by the state to primarily religious (Christian) non-profits raking in federal funding. The USA has strong veteran-to-civilian-career laws as well, apparently.
For example, the US Custom and Borders Patrol website says:
“Roughly a third of CBP’s workforce has served in the military. If you are a veteran joining CBP, you will find many others that share your military background and principles. When it comes to principles, veterans personify CBP’s core values vigilance, integrity and service to country.”
Now, what happens when you get a steady supply of people who may have enjoyed inflicting mayhem in the (ever racist) military, coming home and being told by priest-therapists that they have only hurt themselves (yet another victim narrative), and joining the ranks of border patrol or federal anti-immigrant militias or other ‘law enforcement’ or paramilitaries (or one of the many mercenary outfits)? In a country with a possibly uniquely sanctifying general public attitude to its soldiers*? A feeling quite apparently not widely reciprocated (see Joe Glenton on the UK version of the ‘hierarchy of hate’). And a very political ‘de-politicising’ demand to support the troops… but not mention the (justice of/point of) the war.
It is not surprising that the military them-us training results in the kinds of behaviours documented in this video, backed as it is by neoliberal imperialism and white supremacy Christianity, building on a history of psychiatry in the service of empire and the suppression of the post-Vietnam acknowledgement of perpetrators (with and without resulting trauma).
*shortcuts use by author for all military personnel
Speaking of Trump, Reform is considering abolishing the Senned. Part of a strategy to provoke opposition and then use that opposition as an excuse to impose military control over the civilian population? No! My imagination is running away with me, surely.
@Jhiu, “military control over the civilian population” has been the norm in these isles since at least 1066, with only brief interludes (some of which Oliver Cromwell ended by vicious purges of dissenters like Levellers from the New Model Army). We don’t ballot the electorate on going to war, or who our military allies are.
Talk of Donald Trump only highlights what catching up he has to do.
https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/2025/06/will-military-officers-have-to-sign-a-loyalty-oath-to-trump-a-senior-officer-and-mrff-client-says-it-appears-to-be-imminent/
While here in the British Empire the military, MPs and many others already have to swear personal loyalty oaths to the monarch, heirs and successors; and treason law is founded on obedience to the monarch, no civil authority (it all stems from God’s appointment, allegedly). And that’s been a God of War (a royal prerogative).
Hence the ‘No Kings’ protests. Really, the USAmerican public seem a bit smarter and better informed about this whole politics of royalism than their British counterparts, whichever side they take on it. Dynastic politics still underpins both of our systems.
The military-police pipeline is the subject of Episode 4 of Business of War (a really good series, I recommend watching it all):
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/business-of-war/2025/8/30/the-military-police-pipeline
which takes a more global view: Chinese rifles among other weapons used by Bangladesh police to kill around 1400 protesters, the French described as the most violent police force in Europe, and back to the USA where police forces are encouraged to absorb surplus military equipment (sometimes for free).
Hind Hassan makes a number of crucial points, such as the observation that colonial police forces were always militarised, and the Bangladeshis inherited theirs from British rule. The international trade seems poorly regulated and one police force may copy another from around the world. ‘Non-lethal’ weapons are being used far more frequently than traditional firearms against working class districts, students and protesters, despite their initial deployments being for anti-terrorist or other serious crimes purposes.
The evidence and testimonies are graphic and disturbing, even apparently to some law enforcement officers themselves. Meanwhile the business of war, conducted on streets around the world by states against their populations, thrives. What, I wonder, is going on in the further-flung territories of the British Empire? The show does make it clear how alarming being arrested by armed police must be, whether they unholster their weapons or not, and not something British subjects here may be prepared for.