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<\/p>\nIan F. Blair is a writer and editor in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The consolidation of<\/span> the new police state has not been announced. There was no press conference declaring that local, state, and federal law enforcement \u2014 plus the military \u2014 are all marching to the same drum. No news conference featuring a bunch of police captains standing before a microphone to express their commitment to the new regime.<\/p>\n But it is here.<\/p>\n In the past six months, a quiet, mass reorganization of resources and rules and personnel has rippled across the country in order to enforce the Trump administration\u2019s desires.<\/p>\n This realignment is happening swiftly, smoothly and without fanfare. That the police have been so quiet in a historically loud moment should be a dead giveaway that a shift is under way. The line between order and chaos is moving. And the police are adapting to meet the changing norms.<\/p>\n Politics was always in their job description \u2014 whether by origin (slave catchers) or by election or appointment. But under this new order, the police \u2014 arm in arm with immigration agents, the military, and the rest of the federal agencies \u2014 are starting to function more as political police force. That is, an instrument of a specific regime. City by city, state by state, the police have been reorganizing themselves to align with the priorities of the White House. This is what the free agents of fascism do: They make themselves useful. They figure out how to stay in the mix, how to serve the emergent status quo.<\/p>\n Since the summer, where there have been Trump administration escalations, police have been lurking on the margins \u2014 or lending a helping hand.<\/p>\n Sometimes, the assistance matches the fiery timbre of repression put forth by the White House. When thousands showed up in downtown LA to protest federal immigration raids, in June, the Los Angeles Police Department seemed to cast aside decades of sanctuary city policy forbidding cooperation with immigration enforcement authorities by working alongside federal forces<\/a> to violently repress protestors. LAPD officers on horseback trampled a man and beat him with batons while their colleagues alternated with members of the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> and National Guard to shoot people<\/a> \u2014 including an Australian journalist<\/a> \u2014 with \u201cless than lethal\u201d bullets and pepper spray.<\/p>\n Other times, the help aids and abets. During a raid, the LAPD blocked<\/a> in formation as Immigration and Customs Enforcement quarterbacked an operation that resulted in the violent arrest of Service Employees International Union California and SEIU-USWW President David Huerta. Then, at an ICE staging area at Dodger Stadium<\/a>, the LAPD helped federal agents exit though a different gate after one was blocked by protesters and the press. One month later, during \u201cOperation Excalibur\u201d \u2014 a \u201cshow of presence\u201d by the National Guard and Customs and Border Protection \u2014 police officers worked crowd control at MacArthur Park. (Then, when they were done, they swerved at<\/a> a few Angelenos protesting the federal scare tactics.)<\/p>\n In the nation\u2019s capital, D.C. Metropolitan police, under the president\u2019s orders and backed up by Mayor Muriel Bowser through an executive order<\/a>, are formally cooperating with ICE, helping with immigration checkpoints and, apparently, responding to calls for backup. This month, when a resident followed a group of National Guard troops on patrol, playing the storm troopers theme music from \u201cStar Wars,\u201d one soldier threatened to call the police<\/a>.<\/p>\n This kind of collaboration is easy to overlook. If, during the regular course of a work week or at a major community event \u2014 like the recent West Indian Day festivities or the African American Day parade in New York City \u2014 the cops are around every corner, why wouldn\u2019t they also make random cameos during ICE raids?<\/p>\n You might not think much of these because they feel so banal in the face of the spectacular terror and brutality being perpetrated daily. If you\u2019re watching political violence take place \u2014 say, ICE agents gunning down<\/a> a man in Chicago \u2014 the uniformed officers directing traffic fade into the background.<\/p>\n But they\u2019re signs of the Thin Blue Line\u2019s willingness to go with the federal flow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gone are the days of beefs between local cops and federal agents, the plot engine of blockbusters like \u201cBad Boys\u201d and \u201cBeverly Hills Cop,\u201d and auteur productions like \u201cInside Man\u201d and \u201cDog Day Afternoon.\u201d Instead of drama over one department stepping on another\u2019s toes, the police, federal agents, and military forces are now taking turns as leading role. During the Biden administration, the local police were the strong arm violently cracking down against the student protesters objecting against Israel\u2019s genocide. Now, they\u2019re playing second fiddle to ICE\u2019s top billing as America\u2019s violent first responders.<\/p>\n Sworn duties and responsibilities have become blurred between jurisdictions, and, in some cases, downright bizarre. The distinctions \u2014 agencies, budgets, and even uniform design \u2014 between different departments of law enforcement are becoming subsumed under one identifier: police. Agents of the state take to the field united by the word \u201cPOLICE\u201d on their vests.<\/p>\n This is, in part, a function of Trump\u2019s relentless push to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump, a system built on confusion and dubious legality. His deportation program and his illegitimate constitutional subventions have perverted the relationship between the immigration and justice systems, with the administrative proceedings of immigration enforcement transformed into crackdowns on so-called criminals \u2014 or even \u201cforeign terrorists\u201d \u2014 who can be renditioned to gulags in far-off countries<\/a> with no due process<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s insistence on the presence of crime \u2014 his claim of crime as not just a feature of immigration but as the principle prism through which immigration must be understood \u2014 justifies leveraging all means of enforcement to fix the system. And that system needs endless resources.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s deployment of the National Guard has only further corrupted these distinctions and made the job duties stranger. Troops are spreading mulch<\/a> and picking up trash on the Mall, and the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Secret Service; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are conducting traffic stops<\/a>, asking for drivers\u2019 immigration status. Meanwhile, military lawyers are being recruited<\/a> to sit as immigration judges.<\/p>\n The perversion of job duties might seem like a natural progression. To encounter a police officer taking on tasks that might seem beyond the core job of a cop \u2014 \u201cbeing asked to do too much,\u201d in the words of New York mayoral favorite Zohran Mamdani \u2014 is unremarkable because that has been the norm for some time.<\/p>\n In New York, all sorts of services mysteriously and bafflingly fall under the stewardship of the police: school crossing guards, street vendor citations<\/a>, traffic enforcement, staffing summer and after-school programs at what are, ostensibly, community centers administered by the Police Athletic League<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the mission creep has accelerated.<\/p>\n As of October 1, 2025, ICE has signed 1,036 memorandums of agreement for state and local cooperation in 40 states, including New York, under its 287(g) program<\/a>. Police surveillance is merging with federal surveillance more than ever before. And the technology is advancing faster than regulators, the media, and the general public can keep track of.<\/p>\n In March, a Guardian investigation found<\/a> that local police and ICE had \u201cgained access to troves of data\u201d in sanctuary cities such as Westchester from vast networks of license plate readers. In April, New York Focus revealed<\/a> that the New York State Police are funneling information from the 20-year-old gang database it maintains into a federal database used by ICE<\/a> to further its deportation efforts. In June, 404 Media reported<\/a> that ICE has been field-testing Mobile Fortify, an app that uses facial recognition captured via a smartphone to access your biometric data in various government databases. 404 Media also reported that, in Oregon, local police \u201ccasually offered<\/a> various surveillance services to federal law enforcement officials from the FBI and ICE, and to other state and local police departments, as part of an informal email and meetup group of crime analysts.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Forbes<\/a>, ICE has a $4.4 million contract \u2014 first procured during the Biden administration \u2014 with a manufacturer that produces Stingray, the fake cell tower<\/a> that can be used to trace the whereabouts of anyone in range.<\/p>\n This month, The Guardian reported<\/a> that ICE obtained access to begin the use of Israeli spyware to hack phones and encrypted apps. And a week later, 404 Media reported<\/a> ICE spent $10 million on Clearview AI <\/a>facial recognition software to support Homeland Security Investigations, supposedly allowing the agency track people it accuses of \u201cassaulting\u201d officers. This is all on top of HSI\u2019s contract with Peter Thiel\u2019s Palantir, which, according to a dossier of documents<\/a> reviewed by The Guardian, built a platform called ImmigrationOS that \u201cwill service ICE branches beyond HSI\u201d and includes a \u201csearchable super-network\u201d for agents to comb through government and private databases. One wonders if and when the NYPD\u2019s elaborate operation of data collection<\/a>, which includes everything from OMNY taps to CCTV feeds<\/a> taken from \u201cfree\u201d Wi-Fi networks at public housing developments, will be the next searchable feast for federal authorities to sink their teeth into.<\/p>\n The budgetary allocation to immigration enforcement<\/a> contained in the Big Beautiful Bill will soon kick into overdrive, meaning there will be a huge leap in recruitment<\/a> and the acquisition of more tools of technological surveillance and repression. (DHS claims<\/a> any \u201clapse in funding\u201d brought on by the government shutdown \u201cwill not slow ICE down.\u201d) ICE recruitment<\/a> is moving ahead swiftly and will surely accelerate. The agency is working full stop to crush counter-surveillance efforts<\/a> by organizers and concerned citizens. At the same time, its propaganda machine is hard at work creating hero narratives<\/a> and poisoning the discourse<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n