Echoes from the Past: Comparisons of ICE to Historical Fascist Paramilitaries

Comparisons between contemporary state institutions and fascist paramilitary organisations are often dismissed as inflammatory or historically careless. This quite blatantly ignores the power of comparison lying in finding key overarching similarities, not one-for-one likeness. Yet historians of fascism have long emphasised that authoritarian systems are rarely recognised in their formative stages. One of the key references this article will refer to is the work of Robert O. Paxton. He argues that fascism is best understood not as a static ideology but as a process, identifiable through behaviour, institutional accommodation, and the gradual normalisation of coercion rather than through explicit declarations of intent [9].

This article does not claim that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is equivalent to the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) or Mussolini’s Blackshirts. Instead, it advances a narrower and historically grounded argument: ICE increasingly exhibits structural and behavioural traits that resemble those historically associated with early-stage paramilitary formations, and these similarities warrant careful scrutiny as indicators of institutional trajectory rather than categorical identity.

Using comparative fascist history this article examines origins, evolution, recruitment, use of violence, and power structure to identify warning signs rather than assert equivalence.

The Nazi Brownshirts (SA)

Origins in Crisis and Political Opportunity

The Sturmabteilung emerged in a Germany marked by military defeat, economic collapse, and widespread distrust in parliamentary democracy. Founded in 1921 as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the SA initially framed its role as defensive: protecting nationalist speakers, restoring order to chaotic streets, and countering perceived left-wing disorder [1][2].

Socially, the SA drew heavily from men displaced by the postwar settlement, including unemployed veterans and those alienated from liberal institutions. The SA offered belonging, hierarchy, and symbolic purpose through uniforms, ranks, and ritual. Violence was not peripheral to this identity; it was central. Street fighting, intimidation, and public demonstrations of force created momentum and visibility that conventional political activity lacked [3]. Despite how these actions may be viewed today, through the lens of those involved at the time many will have framed them as legitimate actions to bring about order and stability.

Early SA violence operated in a space of selective enforcement. Although formally illegal, assaults and disruptions were often inadequately punished or quietly tolerated, particularly by conservative judges, police, and political elites who viewed the SA as a useful counterweight to socialism. As Paxton stresses, this tolerance did not require ideological commitment to Nazism, it rested on expediency and fear of alternative threats, mostly from the left. Moreover,  He argues that the success of fascist movements depended heavily on complicity from traditional elites who did not necessarily share fascist ideology but accepted or enabled it for expedient reasons, treating it as preferable to feared alternatives [9].

From Street Militancy to Normalised Coercion

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the SA had matured into a mass organisation operating across Germany. What began as episodic street violence evolved into systematic intimidation, electoral interference, and the harassment of Jews and political opponents [2]. Violence became the norm rather than exceptional, reshaping public space through the constant possibility of coercion.

This phase is often mischaracterised as chaotic. In practice, it reflected a new political equilibrium in which violence increasingly aligned with Nazi electoral strategy. Democratic participation remained formally intact, but the presence of uniformed intimidation distorted its substance. People learned where not to speak, where not to gather, and when silence was safer than dissent. Democracy at this point became superficial as the key pillar of free speech was de facto eroded away by SA intimidation.

Paxton’s process-based analysis is crucial here. The decisive shift was not the formal seizure of power but the normalisation of violence as a political instrument. By the time Hitler became chancellor in 1933, much of the democratic erosion had already occurred. The later purge of SA leadership during the Night of the Long Knives did not negate the SA’s historical role. It confirmed that the organisation had already fulfilled its function in destabilising democratic norms [9].

The Italian Blackshirts

Informal Violence in a Fragmented State

Italy’s Blackshirts arose from a different political tradition but followed a strikingly similar path. In the aftermath of World War I, Italy (as per Germany) experienced economic instability, mass strikes, and widespread fear of socialist revolution. Fascist squadristi formed initially as local, loosely organised groups that targeted trade unions, socialist councils, and political opponents [6][7].

Like the SA, early Blackshirt violence was decentralised and opportunistic. It was framed as restorative rather than revolutionary, claiming to defend national unity and property against chaos. Violence was overt and theatrical, designed to be seen as a signal that authority had shifted away from formal institutions toward those willing to act decisively.

State response was inconsistent and often complicit. Police and courts frequently failed to intervene, while industrialists and conservative politicians increasingly viewed the squads as stabilising forces. Violence thus became politically functional before it was formally legalised. Arguably the inadequate reaction of the authorities could be seen as appeasement.

Institutionalisation and the Absorption of Violence

Following Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922, the Blackshirts were institutionalised as the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale. Earlier extralegal violence was retroactively legitimised, and perpetrators were absorbed into the fascist state apparatus rather than punished [6].

This transition illustrates a central historical insight that paramilitary violence often precedes authoritarian consolidation rather than following it. The Blackshirts did not seize power on behalf of a completed dictatorship. Instead they helped create the conditions under which such a system could plausibly function. As with the SA, coercion moved from the margins to the centre through tolerance, utility, and eventual incorporation.

ICE

Origins and Structural Differences

ICE was established in 2003 under George W Bush as part of the Department of Homeland Security following the September 11 attacks. Its creation was bureaucratic and security-driven, intended to consolidate immigration enforcement and customs functions within a legal framework. Unlike the SA or Blackshirts, ICE did not arise from a mass political movement or street-level militancy.

This distinction matters. The most pertinent comparison must focus not on origin but on institutional evolution and behavioural convergence over time. Despite the origins of ICE having footing in a reaction to a perceived threat from within violence and enforcement methodologies fitted within the norms of the day. One shade of grey in this regard is that post 9/11 norms had indeed shifted though not quite to the degree of post first world war continental Europe.

ICE Before and After Trump: A Shift in Enforcement Logic

For much of its early history, ICE prioritised immigration enforcement within a framework that emphasised due process and the removal of individuals with criminal convictions. This enforcement logic changed markedly during the first Trump administration and intensified in subsequent years.

Interior enforcement expanded, oversight mechanisms weakened, and enforcement adopted a more demonstrative character focused on deterrence and visibility. Operations conducted in major cities, including Minneapolis, marked a qualitative shift toward aggressive street-level enforcement in civilian spaces [4][8].

Collective Violence, and Intimidation

Recent years have seen multiple controversial uses of force by ICE and related federal agents, including fatal shootings of U.S. citizens during enforcement operations in Minneapolis in early 2026 [4][5]. These incidents often involved bystanders or individuals not subject to immigration enforcement, intensifying public scrutiny. Such actions, with such frequency, can simply not be seen as within the legal remit of ICE instead demarcating over-reach, intimidation with a political slant.

Charles Tilly’s analysis in The Politics of Collective Violence provides a useful framework. Tilly demonstrates that violence frequently emerges without explicit orders, as a product of institutional incentives, boundary-drawing between protected and unprotected populations (a growing

us and them mentality), and weak accountability [10]. What matters is not legality in principle, but whether violent outcomes are predictable and tolerated.

From this perspective, repeated violent encounters, slow or ineffective accountability, and post-hoc justification are indicators of structural coercion, not isolated misconduct.

Recruitment, Culture, and Ideological Practice

While ICE lacks an explicit ideological manifesto, organisational ideology need not be articulated to be operative. Recruitment patterns, internal culture, and tolerated behaviour function as mechanisms of ideological reproduction. Paxton’s emphasis on behaviour over doctrine is instructive here [9].

Historical paramilitaries did not begin with explicit exterminatory programs. They began with dehumanisation, boundary-drawing, and the normalisation of aggression. ICE’s increasingly adversarial posture toward migrants, and at times toward observers and critics, raises questions about similar mechanisms operating within a different institutional context.

Hierarchy, Autonomy, and Legal Overstretch

Formally, ICE remains subordinate to civilian authority within DHS. Yet operational autonomy at the field level, combined with political backing and judicial strain, produces a greater de facto authority in enforcement.

Historically, paramilitaries were not initially autonomous either. As Paxton notes, they operated in spaces where enforcement outpaced law and restraint was politically inconvenient [9]. The resemblance lies not in formal structure, but in functional authority and tolerated overreach.

Outlook

This analysis does not assert inevitability. Democracies do not collapse by analogy. But history provides warning signs. Early fascist movements were characterised by selective enforcement, tolerated violence, erosion of oversight, and elite rationalisation of abuse. These were early features, not late ones.

Following Paxton, the question is not whether ICE is fascist today, but whether its institutional practices align with historically dangerous trajectories [9]. Following Tilly, the focus remains on mechanisms rather than intent [10].

ICE differs fundamentally and unquestionably from the Brownshirts and Blackshirts in origin and legal status. This is nevertheless a disraction from the current trajectory. History shows that paramilitarisation is a process, not an event. When violence becomes routine, accountability weakens, and intimidation spreads beyond designated targets, institutions change character before they change name.

The lesson of interwar Europe is not inevitability, but urgency. Unchecked coercion rarely self-corrects with appeasement an irreversible process. The use of ICE beyond its remit is a clear non-cooperative action of the current administration that should be met reciprocally with an equal and opposition acts of non-cooperation.

Across the political landscape it is easy to become fixated upon the die-hard populists cheering on Donald Trump. Yet, history also teaches us that it is the tepid bystanders that wilfully dismiss the threat, appease or disengage with politics, that play a critical role.

Whether ICE’s trajectory continues, stabilises, or reverses will depend on political will, judicial capacity, and institutional restraint. There is of course the hope that Trump and his movement do not continue down the fascist rabbit hole, that the normalisation of violence on the part of ICE as a tool of political intimidation is reined in, recognising the tarnished image this would leave for history to see. This hope, vanishingly small, cannot be relied upon.

Bibliography

[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, “SA (Sturmabteilung).”
[2] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The SA.”
[3] Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Hubris. London: Penguin, 1998.
[4] Reuters, “Federal immigration agents kill another US citizen in Minneapolis,” Jan. 24, 2026.
[5] Al Jazeera, “Minnesota governor wants federal agents out after Pretti killing,” Jan. 25, 2026.
[6] Oxford Reference, “Blackshirts.”
[7] Payne, Stanley G. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
[8] Reuters, “Trump moved to cut funding for ICE body cameras, pared back oversight,” Jan. 25, 2026.
[9] Paxton, Robert O. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
[10] Tilly, Charles. The Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[11] Deportation Data Project, “Immigration Enforcement in the First Nine Months …” (analysis page), published Oct 15, 2025 data release, accessed 2026.
[12] FactCheck.org, “As ICE Arrests Increased, a Higher Portion Had No U.S. Criminal Record,” Jan. 28, 2026.
[13] TRAC Reports, “Immigration Detention Quick Facts,” data current as of Nov. 30, 2025.
[14] Human Rights Watch, “US: ICE Abuses in Los Angeles Set Stage for Other Cities,” Nov. 4, 2025.
[15] Migration Policy Institute, “Unleashing Power in New Ways: Immigration in the First Year of Trump 2.0,” Jan. 13, 2026.
[16] Brookings, “ICE expansion has outpaced accountability. What are the remedies?” Jan. 26, 2026.
[17] Center for American Progress, “The Trump Administration’s ICE and CBP Have Become a Threat to Americans: Congress Must Ensure That DHS Follows the Law and Adopts Commonsense Reforms,” Jan. 28, 2026