Armed ICE officers ruthlessly swoop on US homes in the dead of night, rounding up men and locking them in shackles ready for deportation. The Mirror has watched them in action
In the dead of night, unmarked vans sweep into neighbourhoods.
Armed officers pour out, faces masked, weapons ready. They don’t ask questions. They don’t show proof. They just take people.
We watched it unfold in Chicago. On these streets, once ruled by gang boss Al Capone, a new mob now spreads, only this one is backed by the government. Families are torn apart in an instant. Fathers are dragged away in handcuffs as children scream.
Young men are slammed against walls. All those seized have their pockets emptied, then they are shackled. Older men, some in their 70s, are bundled into vans as if they were nothing more than cargo. This is life in Donald Trump’s America.
And with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK riding high in the polls, its leader threatening mass deportations, some fear these are scenes that could one day soon be played out in Britain too.
US protesters gave us the warning as we visited the Broadview Detention Center in Chicago. Sarah Smith, 27, told us: “Don’t be fooled by Farage’s talk. Trump told us the same lies: that it was about safety, about jobs. What it really does is divide neighbour from neighbour and turn your country into a police state.”
READ MORE: Nigel Farage on course to be PM as Labour faces worst drubbing since 1930s, poll findsREAD MORE: Nigel Farage slapped down after he suggests eastern Europeans are eating swans in parks
The accountant, who spends almost all her free time protesting here, added: “Everything that is wrong about Trump is what Farage appears to worship. He will import the goon squads, the fear, the chains, the deportation flights. And with it, he will poison the very fabric of Britain.”
She is joined by junior school teacher Daniel Pointer. The 29-year-old is one of the most vocal protesters outside Broadview, and ICE agents stationed on its roof have on many occasions shot him with pepper powder bullets. He said defiantly: “It doesn’t matter how many times they hit me.
“I’m not going anywhere. The snatch squads will become the 21st century’s Nazi stormtroopers. They are Nazis doing Trump’s work, and history will never forgive them.”
Standing with Daniel, we too were hit by bursting pepper balls fired by ICE officers stationed on their roof.
The burning in our eyes and throats lingered long after the crowds had been broken up. Other victims have been doused in milk and saline solutions by ICE agents to wash the irritant out of their eyes. As it was unclear how ICE officers were deciding who to detain. We challenged one about due process in taking prisoners and he spat back: “We don’t need to prove it. We take them, and it gets sorted later.”
At the detention centre, we saw 84 men crammed into a cell built for 30, the air thick with sweat and despair. Hours later, we watched as they were shackled at the wrists, ankles and waist to be loaded on to buses, with no explanation or destination revealed. Some were flown to states thousands of miles away, others seemed to vanish entirely.
They included young men barely out of college and grandfathers old enough to remember the Vietnam War. And it is difficult to see how Mr Farage could meet his target of deporting five planeloads of people every day without similarly cutting legal and moral corners.
The Reform boss seems to be getting more hardline on immigration. Only recently, he dismissed the idea of mass deportations as a “political impossibility”. Now he suddenly thinks it possible.
Making his “five flights a day” vow, he added: “There is only one way to stop people coming into Britain and that is to detain them and deport them.”
Human rights campaigners warn the plan would mean vulnerable people being shipped back to countries such as Afghanistan and Iran, where they face the risk of persecution, torture or death.
Mr Farage shrugs off moral objections, saying: “We cannot be responsible for all the sins that take place around the world.” His lieutenant Zia Yusuf was hardly reassuring about deportations, saying: “Those that don’t [leave voluntarily] will be subject to immigration enforcement as part of our mass deportation programme.”
For now, the idea of goon squads prowling Britain’s streets remains only a nightmarish vision. But the US thought it was safe from such a nightmare too – until they came true.