Today’s ICE raids resemble days of the Red Scare

IN some neighbourhoods in Chicago, it is not safe to leave your house. Masked agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are lurking, ready to detain anyone they suspect is in the country illegally, even young teenagers. They have stopped, questioned, harassed, physically abused and often arrested people outside Walmarts in suburban shopping centres, near schools, at sporting events, even at cemeteries.

And it is not only alleged illegal immigrants who have been accosted. Since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second run in the White House, as many as 170 U.S citizens across the country (as of Oct. 16) have been detained and frequently treated roughly by ICE. A judge ordered the release of up to 615 people being held by ICE on Wednesday, saying their warrantless arrests were improper.

Chicagoans have fought back against this perceived tyranny and inevitable clashes have erupted, some turning violent.

In response, Trump — as he did in Washington, D.C. and Memphis, Tenn. — has dispatched National Guard soldiers so that they can protect federal facilities from this alleged “Antifa” assault and support ICE’s actions. Thus far, court challenges by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who has denounced the deployment as an “invasion,” have kept the National Guard at nearby army reserve centre.

Meanwhile, Trump wants the guard to be activated as well in other major cities such as Portland, Los Angeles, Baltimore and San Francisco to restore law and order — law and order that does not, in fact, need restoring. Tellingly, all of the cities he has targeted have Democratic Party mayors in states with Democratic Party governors.

This is hardly the first time the U.S. federal government has attacked its own citizens and attempted to cleanse the country of illegal aliens.

In the wake of the Russian Revolution in late 1917 and the fear of communism that took hold in the U.S. (the same fears that gripped Winnipeg during the General Strike of 1919), the “Red Menace” had to be stopped at all costs — no matter how many civil liberties guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution had to be violated.

Leading this crusade was then-attorney general Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, who in 1919 was head of the justice department Bureau of Investigation’s general intelligence division (the bureau was later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, that Hoover led). His task was to collect as much information as was possible on all radical activities.

Early in November 1919, Hoover went after members of the Union of Russian Workers, a small anarchist group with approximately 4,000 mainly “alien” members based in New York. Bureau agents and local police raided URW offices in 12 cities.

Many of those who were arrested were severely beaten before being incarcerated on Ellis Island. A day later on orders from the state, New York police rounded up another 700 anarchists and delivered them to Ellis Island as well. Some were later released, but between the two raids, the government had in custody more than 240 known radicals it could now deport.

Early in the hours of Dec. 21, 1919, 249 radicals were loaded on to an aging transport ship. On board and headed for the Soviet Union via Finland were 51 anarchists, 184 members of the URW and 14 aliens. The two most famous deportees were anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman (who spoke in Winnipeg in 1907 and 1908).

Before the ship had reached its final destination, Hoover, with approval form Palmer, had struck again. On the evening of Jan. 2, 1920, hundreds of BI agents assisted by local police and volunteers from the American Legion, swarmed across much of the United States — 33 cities in 23 states — in order to arrest close to 4,000 suspected radicals, Bolsheviks, anarchists and “aliens.” Without having proper arrest or search warrants for all of those apprehended, the agents invaded political party headquarters, private homes and pool halls — even bowling alleys.

Many of those arrested were beaten, herded into crowded, unsanitary detention centres and not permitted to communicate with their families or lawyers for weeks — just as ICE is doing today. Hoover had argued against granting bail since he noted it would permit those detained to contact their lawyers. It “defeats the ends of justice,” as he put it.

Those infamous raids known as the “Palmer Raids” and initially cheered by the public, turned out to be the Red Scare’s climactic moment. The actual results were less dramatic.

In all, the Bureau of Investigation agents found about four guns — and three of them were rusty. There was no dynamite discovered, although several agents in Newark, N.J. believed they had found four bombs. They turned out to be bocce balls.

“Undoubtedly these raids are the most stupid thing yet done by the administration,” said Pittsburgh socialist leader Jacob Margolis. “To hold the belief that 2,000 people can ever overthrow this country is seeing spooks in the worst form.”

Given the hellbent resolve of Trump and his administration to expel anyone from the U.S. they regard as undesirable, this battle in Chicago and elsewhere is bound to get much worse and more violent before its climactic moment is reached.

Asked recently by Norah O’Donnell in a 60 Minutes interview if “some of these raids (have) gone too far?” Trump replied: “No, I think they haven’t gone far enough.”

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context. His most recent book is The Dollar-A-Year Men: How the Best Business Brains in Canada Helped to Win the Second World War.