Michael Graf/U.S. Army
An armed officer holds an individual in handcuffs in Fort Bliss, Texas, February 2025.
In 1942, Nazi officials knocked on my great uncle’s door in Antwerp, Belgium, and took him away for the crime of being Jewish. He never returned. Today, we are seeing the terrifying start of history repeating itself, as masked federal agents are knocking on doors across America and disappearing noncitizen residents.
Throughout the country, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are conducting pre-dawn raids without warrants, imposing months of cruel detention, allegedly without proper food, medical care, or lawyers, and even rounding up legal permanent residents who happen to have darker skin or speak Spanish. All of this is unconstitutional and unconscionable.
What’s happening isn’t just about immigration. It’s about democracy itself. When federal agents can disappear anyone without due process and local police become deportation enforcers, no one is safe.
The cruelty isn’t random; it’s part of a deliberate strategy. ICE has been ordered to arrest 3,000 people daily—a threefold increase from previous levels. Despite the recent staggering $75 billion increase in federal funding for ICE, the agency still lacks the ability to meet this quota; they still claim to need more personnel and detention sites.
So ICE is currently recruiting sheriff’s departments to act as local enforcers through hundreds of special agreements, using county jails as holding cells before transferring victims to for-profit detention centers. Right now, most ICE arrests are being administered by local law enforcement.
Watching this harm inflicted on our neighbors, many of us feel powerless, But, in fact, there is a pathway that allows us to take action and make a difference for immigrants today.
ICE’s dependence on local cooperation gives communities leverage to disrupt these operations. Most county sheriffs are elected by voters to serve as chief law enforcement officers in counties across the land. They run jails, serve warrants, and patrol unincorporated areas. But, as locally elected officials, they answer directly to voters and in many cases can control whether their jails cooperate with ICE. They can refuse to cooperate. And we the people can insist that they not participate in these raids and detentions.
As a descendant of Eastern European refugees who fled fascism and came to the United States of America—and of others who remained behind and perished at the hands of the Nazis—I recognize the early warning signs of authoritarianism that, left unchecked, can lead to genocide.
This is why the Jewish organization I lead, the Workers Circle, has joined the national “#DisappearedInAmerica: Talk to Your Sheriff” campaign to organize local communities to demand their sheriffs stop collaborating with ICE’s disappearance operations. It has drawn up a list of suggestions for those interested in getting involved. You can research your sheriff’s ICE cooperation. You can request a meeting with your local sheriff and bring community allies with you. You can demand they act to protect everyone’s constitutional rights.
America was built by people fleeing authoritarianism for freedom. Now we must defend those freedoms. Every sheriff who refuses to cooperate weakens Trump’s machine. Every organized community makes resistance stronger.
To be sure, not every sheriff will listen. Some states are now mandating ICE cooperation, and many sheriffs are supporting Trump's agenda. But sheriffs retain significant discretion over implementing these policies.
Our resistance is working. Some sheriffs in North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, and New York have stopped honoring ICE requests, citing constitutional protections. In Wisconsin, some sheriffs have ended their cooperation agreements entirely after community pressure about budget costs and constitutional violations.
As Jews, we know what happens when good people stay silent while neighbors are dragged from their homes. We know the progression from targeting “others” to targeting anyone who resists. But you don’t need to be Jewish to recognize these patterns. Anyone who values democracy can see where this leads.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.