'Plan for the worst': Critics need 'escape plan' for when Trump comes for them

Leigh McGowan, who does the Politics Girl podcast, was on CNN recently. As I watched, I found my admiration growing.

I don’t mean her politics, which I mostly share, or her skills as a communicator, which are enviable. What I admired was her courage.

She was part of a panel discussing “an aggressive new strategy” by the justice department to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans. McGowan is herself an immigrant. She came from Canada as a student, then spent years going through the grueling process of naturalization.

That’s admirable, but what really struck me was the context.

McGowan was criticizing the president’s anti-migrant purge on national TV just a few days after his Republicans in Congress decided to give more money to immigration cops than any other law enforcement agency in the country. ICE and related agencies now have more funding — $170 billion on top of their regular annual budgets — than most countries in the world spend on their national defense.

She was also criticizing the president’s anti-migrant purge after ICE and other federal agencies staged what appeared to be a “massive show of force,” according to an eyewitness, in a park in Los Angeles. It looked like “a city under military occupation,” that city’s mayor said.

McGowan surely understood the context and she surely understood that the Trump regime could make an example of her — search for some pretext for why her citizenship is no longer valid, perhaps by sifting through her history of public commentary and finding any sort of opinion that the regime considers “a threat to national security.”

This is, after all, what the regime is already doing to foreign students. They can’t go to college here if they have expressed opinions critical of Trump (or of Israel). The regime is doing this to public servants, too, forcing them to take lie detector tests in order purge anyone deemed disloyal to Trump, which is to say, anyone who thinks for himself.

Yet McGowan went on national TV anyway. My admiration grew.

So did my trepidation.

This is real, not theoretical. There are nearly 25 million Americans in this country who went through the naturalization process, which is more than half of all immigrants living in the U.S. All of them now face the prospect of being stripped of their earned rights and privileges based solely on whether Trump is in the mood to respect them.

It’s one thing for a naturalized citizen and public figure like McGowan to go on national TV to criticize the president before he has made an example of someone. It will be another after he has done so, and we should not be naive: eventually, he will make an example of someone.

As if on cue, Acting ICE Director Tom Homan made this statement on Fox: “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them ... based on their physical appearance."

Trump and his Republicans in the Congress have created a secret police force in the form of ICE and Border Patrol that has, unlike the US military, no allegiance higher than the president’s whims and fancies. At the rate we’re going, snatching and disappearing a critic of the regime isn’t a likelihood. It’s an eventuality. What do we do then?

We carry on, said Jemar Tisby.

He’s a historian and professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, in Louisville. He’s the author of The Color of Compromise, the award-winning How to Fight Racism and recently, The Spirit of Justice.

After the GOP passed their budget bill, Professor Tisby posted a piece called “Trump’s Personal Army,” in which he recommended an escape plan for anyone who’s “committed to truth, justice, and democracy.”

I read the piece and asked for an interview. I admit I was skeptical of the reality behind Professor Tisby’s escape plan, as you will see. But then I saw McGowan on CNN. I learned that she’s a naturalized citizen. And I thought: 'Damn, yeah. He’s right.'

“People with large public platforms who continue to be outspoken will be in far more danger than the average person,” the professor told me.

JS: Many people have been concerned about Trump's use of the US military to control the population. Sending the Marines to Los Angeles seemed to confirm that suspicion. In your recent piece, you say that that's a red herring. The real problem is ICE. Why?

JT: The US military, for all its issues, has a higher standard for deployment and very strict rules for any domestic functions. The Posse Comitatus Act, for instance, largely prevents the president from deploying US military for domestic operations. ICE is different.

ICE agents do take an oath to the Constitution, but they are under the US Department of Homeland Security, and they are classified as civilian law enforcement, not military. Not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They are under the executive branch, which means Trump has much broader discretion to direct them.

So he can functionally use them as his personal paramilitary army. You can imagine how such force and power could be wielded by an impulsive president.

The ICE and Border Patrol's demonstration of strength in a park in Los Angeles would be a case in point, correct?

Absolutely. There was no urgent need for a show of military force like that. In a park. In broad daylight. The president and his officials are targeting cities like LA for shows of force.

Not unlike targeting higher education institutions like Harvard University, if they can bring ostensibly liberal bastions to heel, then it’s supposed to demonstrate no one can oppose their power and others shouldn’t even attempt to resist.

LA mayor Karen Bass said it looked like “a city under military occupation,” just the kind of thing that the founders based their revolution on. Yet "constitutional conservatives" for years said the Second Amendment was the answer to tyranny. We're seeing tryanny and no reaction from the NRA and others. I guess they never meant what they said.

The operating principle for the far right or “constitutional conservatives” is “rights for me, not for thee.” They selectively apply civil rights and constitutional principles when it serves their purposes. They willfully disregard them if such rights impede their pursuit of unchallenged power. Simply look at their response to the January 6 insurrection.

A violent mob storms the US Capitol and where was the military show of force? Instead, this president pardons those convicted of crimes that day.

But he does not hesitate to send ICE and the Marines to cities and states with no other “threat” than liberal leadership.

In your piece, you recommend an escape plan for people "committed to truth, justice, and democracy" because “you can’t afford to be unprepared." I feel the urgency. I could be a secret police target. But I confess I don’t feel the reality. How alarmed should I be? How hard are you going to lean into that recommendation?

Look, these preparations may sound alarmist to some, but so did Project 2025. So did deploying ICE and the Marines to public parks.

There is simply no red line this regime will not cross. Why would the $170 billon ICE and Border Patrol forces be any different?

The patterns of authoritarian regimes are clear. Once they have control of military-like force, they use it. While the initial targets may be others (in this case, immigrants), the very nature of these forces is they can be turned by the leader toward virtually any perceived threat, including “dissenters.”

I don’t think they come for everyone the same way. People with large public platforms who continue to be outspoken will be in far more danger than the average person. And there are other ways to shut down dissent: firings, freezing or confiscating assets, lawsuits.

But authoritarian regimes are always built on bloodshed. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

It has been suggested that so far power has not been met with power. Specifically, ICE agents are not being stopped by local cops, nor have they yet been prosecuted by local district attorneys for violating state law. What's your view? Is that an answer? Or is that more escalation of a fight whose outcome we can't know?

My concern is the people will be provoked to violence.

The typical recourses to oppose injustice – courts, local law enforcement, principled leaders – are hobbled and in short supply. They tend to work slowly. And this regime hasn’t shown any willingness abide by the law or settled norms. We need as many officials as possible to use their positions to resist these egregious provocations.

But guns, abductions and confrontations with local residents are a volatile mix. An encounter can turn violent, even deadly, with the twitch of a finger. That would, tragically, be a boon to this regime. They would have even more excuse to deploy military-like force.

As a people, we must remain committed to the welfare of our neighbors, the promotion of democracy, and the use of nonviolent means to protest.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries affirmed recently his belief "in the fundamental goodness of the American people." What we're talking about here, the application of state terrorism for the purpose of controlling the citizenry, would suggest that that's naive. What do you think?

My latest book, The Spirit of Justice, speaks to the tension between the persistent presence of injustice and the necessity of hope.

In my studies as a historian, I have observed that, lamentably, evil and injustice are commonplace. Somehow, they always show up. What is far more remarkable is the fact that there are always people willing to battle evil and injustice. In every age and era, people have risen up, no matter the odds or opposition, to resist and reassert the dignity of all humanity.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, whose husband Medgar Evers was shot and killed in front of their home for his civil rights activism, said: “But it’s something about the spirit of justice that raises up like a warhorse. That horse that stands with its back sunk in and hears that bell —­ I like to say the ‘bell of freedom.’ And all of a sudden, it becomes straight, and the back becomes stiff. And you become determined all over again.”

The spirit of justice is moving today. It is making a small but mighty group of people determined all over again.

Hope is not naive. It is the essential to taking the next step in the journey of justice.