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Plenty of videos have made the rounds in recent days that epitomize Donald Trump’s occupation of Washington, DC. There are those documenting the senseless brutality of masked thugs manhandling unarmed brown people, and others highlighting the ridiculous overkill of deploying military hardware to a city with a declining violent crime rate in order to “restore order.” And then there are a couple that have largely been overlooked, which is a shame because they provide an answer to the question of why any decent human being would participate in Trump’s hunt for undocumented migrants.

More importantly, they are foreboding, because they highlight a major ingredient of the volatile mix that is brewing in the nation’s capital and wherever else ICE is active.

The first shows the abduction of a delivery driver on DC’s streets by a bunch of masked men who refuse to identify themselves or even say which agency they are with.

While masked agents were violently attacking a delivery worker this morning, bystanders repeatedly asked to see their badge numbers but they refused. Bystander: You guys are ruining this country, you know that, right?Agent: Liberals already ruined it.

— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) 2025-08-16T15:56:10.201Z

In the clip, somebody off-camera says, “You guys are ruining the country. You know that, right?” and one of the (presumably) federal agents responds by saying that “liberals already ruined it.”

In the second video, a federal agent calls the far-right extremist group Proud Boys “great guys” because they “love the United States.”

Federal "agents" complimenting the proud boys as if they're not a domestic terrorist organization. In the open praising them is how comfortable these brown shirts are that this will be tolerated as okay by their superiors.

— AltStateGov (@altstategov.altgov.info) 2025-08-16T18:19:14.592Z

And that gets to the heart of the matter.

Those heavily armed government goons believe that they are the good guys here… and that does not bode well for the future because, as we will explain in a moment, things could really get out of hand quickly.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: it is one of the most un-American things imaginable for masked and heavily armed government agents who refuse to identify themselves and won’t present any warrants to snatch people off the street and whisk them away to some unknown location in unmarked vehicles.

That is the very embodiment of tyranny, and every true American should be appalled by it, no matter how they feel about immigrants and whether they should be deported.

In fact, it is exactly the kind of government overreach and oppression that conservatives have been warning about for years (and that they argue justifies the need for armed militias).

Of course, the same people who have been saying this are now cheering on these thugs… if they ever see these videos.

After all, these clips are not going to be aired on Fox News or by pro-Trump influencers. Instead, those audiences will continue to be inundated by stories of immigrants committing heinous crimes and leftists destroying America.

And, more than likely, those audiences include the agents captured on camera here, i.e., men who have been brainwashed so thoroughly by a right-wing propaganda machine that they apparently think that their mission is righteous because all “illegals” are dangerous criminals and that “liberals” ruined the country.

Not that they require a lot of indoctrination. It is well established that law enforcement officers and soldiers (at least those who are not minorities) are more conservative than the country’s norm. In addition, right-wing extremist groups have made a concerted effort in recent years to infiltrate the police and the US military.

However, while they may view themselves as patriots, they are much more like the SA and SS troops in Nazi Germany — who had been conditioned to hate Jews and saw it as their duty to eradicate them — than the colonists who threw off the shackles of British tyranny 250 years ago.

These right-wing ICEmen are the first ingredient of a dangerous mix.

The second is a lack of accountability.

In recent years, only about 0.2 percent of ICE’s law enforcement officers were terminated for discipline and performance reasons annually.

Of course, that was before the agency developed into a full-on goon squad that arbitrarily grabbed people, including US citizens, off the streets. However, it does not seem as though the agency is particularly eager to discipline its officers.

To find out for sure, WhoWhatWhy reached out to ICE on Monday to get a list of investigations that were launched or disciplinary actions that were taken against agents who used excessive force or were accused of other types of misconduct. If we hear back, we will update this story accordingly.

We are not hopeful.

Apart from individuals who cross the president, accountability is not a high priority for the Trump administration, and the only thing these federal agents seem concerned about is avoiding being identified and publicly shamed, which is why they regularly wear masks, don’t display badges, and won’t even say which agency they are working for.

In other words, there is a large force of armed and indoctrinated government agents who don’t have to fear consequences for their actions… and they have been let loose on the people they consider to be enemies of America.

In Washington, DC, there are probably more agents per capita than anywhere else in the country.

And that’s the final ingredient.

In the 2024 election, more than 90 percent of voters in the District of Columbia cast their ballots for Kamala Harris as opposed to just over 6 percent for Trump.

In addition, they are seeing firsthand what he is doing to their city and the US government in general. Many of them will know people who lost their job because of the president’s efforts to slash the federal workforce.

While plenty of conservatives moved to Washington after the election to work for the administration, it is fair to say that the vast majority of people in the nation’s capital don’t like Trump.

And they really don’t like ICE or other government thugs harassing them.

So what do you think is going to happen when several thousand heavily armed troops and ill-disciplined federal law enforcement officers, who are unfamiliar with the city and with this kind of police work, have to interact with a population of several hundred thousand people who do not want them there? If you’re thinking that It all sounds like a recipe for disaster, we sadly agree.

This is one of those cases where we hope we are wrong, but we would be shocked if this does not end in bloodshed.

And, depending on where, when, and by whom the first blood is spilled, we are looking at an escalation that could plunge the country into chaos.

Editor’s Note: Following the publication of this article, the link to the first video was changed along with the attribution to who told the masked agents they are “ruining the country.”