MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow tried to make the case that the United States is a “dictatorship” because Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are arresting illegal immigrants.
Maddow opened the Rachel Maddow Show saying, “the thing we were all warning about for the last few years … is here” – President Donald Trump in office a second time. The anchor tried to describe how life is “profoundly changing” in the U.S.
“[Life is] profoundly different than it was even six months ago, because we do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge,” Maddow said. “We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country. And it sounds melodramatic to say it, I know, but just go with that for a minute, right?”
“Think in melodramatic terms. Think in cinematic terms. Imagine the cartoon-level caricature of what you think a dictatorship looks like,” Maddow added. “I mean, it’s secret police, right? A massive, anonymous, unbadged, literally masked, totally unaccountable internal police force that apparently has infinite funding but no identifiable leadership.”
As Maddow described this “secret police,” her program aired photos and video clips of ICE agents and officers on the job. Maddow blasted the agency for “breaking people’s car windows and snatching people off the streets and at church parking lots and courtroom hallways and taking them away with no charges.”
However, these arrests are mostly focused on immigrants who already have outstanding charges against them or criminal convictions. According to internal government data shared with the Washington Examiner, ICE is still apprehending primarily criminals.
ICE has brought nearly 150,000 people into federal custody since January. Those with either pending criminal charges filed against them or who had been previously convicted of a crime, made up 100,000 of the arrestees, according to ICE. About 67% of illegal immigrants arrested had a criminal charge pending or had been convicted.
As a result, ICE’s efforts still boast strong approval ratings. Conservative political commentator Dinesh D’Souza responded to Maddow’s monologue on X to voice his own approval of ICE.
NO, TRUMP WON’T BECOME A DICTATOR
“If this is [a] dictatorship, let’s have more of it. Of course it’s not,” D’Souza wrote. “Rather, the Left is furious, and alarmed, that its thugs are no longer in charge.”
According to a Rasmussen Reports poll from June, 83% of likely voters said they believe deporting criminal illegal immigrants is important.