The Fake & Fraudulent Prophets Around the President
September 4, 2026 |
Daniel Henderson
Donald Trump, in complete foolishness and stupidity, believes that deploying US troops into major cities will help reduce crime. It will not. In fact, the militarization of urban areas will predictably increase crime, defeating the very purpose for which he claims to be sending them there in the first place.
If Trump understands this, then he is willfully provoking violence, which is evil; or if he doesn’t know this, then he is nothing but a dunce and should not be running the United States government.
When Donald Trump recently addressed a gathering of generals and admirals at Quantico, he didn’t mince words. He urged, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military.” He framed this as defending against “an invasion from within” — an enemy that “doesn’t wear uniforms.”
The message was clear: the streets of American cities are being recast as battlegrounds, and the military should practice the art of war against American citizens.
This is not merely political theater. It is a vision of governance through force — a model that risks exacerbating violence rather than reducing it. And when you layer in ICE’s paramilitary tactics, the result is not escalated crime control, but profoundly destabilized communities, especially in immigrant neighborhoods.
The question we must ask: Does militarization of cities plus ICE raids and detention centers protect us — or betray us?
One of the first rules of law enforcement is de-escalation. Local law enforcement know that their job is to de-escalate violence or potential violence using proven, evidence-based tactics. That is not Trump’s objective.
Trump’s rhetoric is marked by confrontation, rather than de-escalation. When announcing the federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s police and deployment of the National Guard, he declared,
“They fight back until you knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand.” He also spoke of “getting rid of the slums where they live,” with a tone evocative of urban warfare.
These aren’t accidental slips — they’re signals of a mindset in which force is not the last but the first option. It is an objective of deliberate escalation, not de-escalation. The result will be more violence and provocation, creating the perfect self-fulfilling prophecy: “See, they are being violent, so we had to send in the military.”
Yet the danger of militarized policing and ICE is not just the volume of force, but how it warps decision-making. When a city is treated like a battlefield, there is little margin for nuance, de-escalation, or restraint. The presence of armored units and militarized agents normalizes a “shoot first, ask questions later” posture — exactly the logic that feeds cycles of violence.
ICE is no lightweight actor in this theatrical use of force. Its tactics mirror those of special operations units: pre-dawn raids, masked agents, battering rams, unmarked vehicles, and militarized convoys. Legal and civil-society observers have repeatedly criticized ICE’s use of masks during raids, warning they erode accountability and stoke fear. The agency defends this practice as protection for agents, but critics rightly see it as a tool of anonymity and intimidation.
In Broadview, Illinois — a small suburb near Chicago where an ICE detainment center is located — local officials in September accused ICE of using tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray in and around the detention center where local protests had taken place. The village’s mayor and fire chiefs stated that those tactics endangered both first responders and residents alike. “We don’t want them here,” declared Mayor Katrina Thompson. This is a case of military presence provoking violence, perceived or otherwise, and escalating the situation.
Thompson and other officials accuse ICE of putting residents, police, and firefighters at risk with the use of force and “hostile actions”. Acting Fire Chief Matt Martin stated that his crew had been exposed to chemical agents while providing first aid during protests. A 70-year-old veteran was allegedly pushed to the ground and arrested by masked agents during a protest, leading to accusations of excessive force. Village officials are even conducting criminal investigations into ICE’s actions.
The local police chief of Broadview, Thomas Mills, added another blow: he claimed that ICE agents had called false 911 reports to draw his officers away, thereby straining local resources. These are not isolated anecdotes — they reflect the way ICE’s operational logic can destabilize entire municipal systems.
The most insidious effect of militarization and ICE tactics is that they silence people — victims, witnesses, survivors — the very voices necessary to make policing effective.
Consider immigrant neighborhoods, where residents already live with the constant background fear of deportation. When ICE raids occur on or near those streets, calling the police becomes a risk. Who would call for help if that help might bring ICE knocking on their door or reinforce ICE’s presence? The effect is chilling: fewer calls, fewer reports, fewer testimonies. Violence thrives in that silence.
In D.C., when Trump federalized the Metropolitan Police Department and sent in federal agents and guards, local officials and critics pointed out a fundamental mismatch: crime was already at a 30-year low. The swaths of arrests that followed — over 500 in 13 days — included many “other” charges, raising questions about policing by volume rather than precision.
Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged the increased presence, emphasizing that the city has been managing itself for decades: “Violent crime in the District is at the lowest rates we’ve seen in 30 years.” Her warning is that sweeping federal control without respect for local realities is not a solution but a danger.
We cannot ignore what happens when armed state forces enter the lives of children. Studies of parental detention, ICE raids, and deportations show clear increases in anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms for children. Those mental-health burdens translate into social disorder, poorer educational outcomes, and a higher risk of involvement in violence later in life.
In the pre-dawn hours on September 30, Federal law enforcement troops assaulted an apartment complex in Chicago using Black Hawk helicopters to rappel soldiers into the building from the top. Federal law enforcement agencies, including DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection, would not say if the Black Hawks used in the raid were from the U.S. Army, National Guard, or a non-military department.
Videos from the scene taken at about 2 a.m. show masked agents arriving in the back of Budget and U-Haul moving vans carrying military-style rifles. They brought the residents out of their apartments; some were naked, using plastic handcuffs or flex cuffs. Many were children who are now traumatized.
An American citizen with a local arrest warrant and four U.S. citizen children of immigrants were caught up in the raid, Homeland Security reported. The children were taken into custody to be “put in the care of a safe guardian or the state,” the agency said. Not only have these children been traumatized by mistreatment by law enforcement, but now they must endure separation from their parents. The cost is astronomical.
A militarized city creates a climate of perpetual fear. Walls go up, eyes avert, people internalize powerlessness. As more generations grow up in this environment, the toll is not just social — it becomes structural: underinvestment, alienation, and normalized violence.
When a president proposes using the military to crush domestic dissent as Trump has, he is not simply promising to “get tough.” He is rewriting the contract between the state and society. Trump has explicitly threatened cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Portland, New York, San Francisco, and Oakland with military deployment. He lumps them together as “very unsafe places” run by “radical left Democrats.”
He positions his own administration as the only thing standing between order and chaos, except that his militarization program brings disorder and more chaos. This is Donald Trump’s “retribution” for how he feels he was mistreated by being indicted and tried on many counts of felony. He views this “crackdown” as a form of revenge.
When force becomes the default response, the state transforms into an occupying power rather than a governing one. Political opposition becomes treason, dissent is transformed into rebellion, and peaceful protest becomes a justification for a crackdown. To permit ICE and militarization to operate unchecked is to concede that dissent is criminal, inequality is a problem to be suppressed, not addressed.
Democracy is weakened if not destroyed by wanton state violence.
Violence is a complex social issue. It is not reduced to a binary of order vs. chaos. The cities that maintain safety do not do so by storming the streets — they do so by cultivating cooperation. This is a methodology entirely foreign to the Trump administration. For them, the world is a continuous bare-knuckle competition where you must crush your opponents and dominate those who resist you.
Investing in mental-health services, community-based violence interruption, focused deterrence, trauma healing, youth programs, and restorative justice are evidence-based, proven strategies. They work, but these approaches are more complex to grasp than tanks and tear gas. They build legitimacy, not fear. They lean into relationships, not coercion. And they leave behind a more profound peace.
Law enforcement professionals emphasize proactive crime prevention, community engagement, and data-driven strategies, such as “hot spots policing,” to reduce crime and violence. They advocate for a shift from punitive measures to preventive actions, focusing on factors such as socio-economic development, partnerships with community groups, and increasing the certainty of apprehension rather than just harsh punishments.
That is how you reduce crime in cities. Clearly, this is not really Trump’s goal.
For Trump, these tactics are for the weak, and they are not a spectacle, because in addition to revenge, Trump loves governing by spectacle. Trump’s call to militarize cities is not a promise of security — it is a vision of domination, retribution, and increased violence and chaos.
ICE’s role only deepens the stakes: when immigrant lives become the canvas for raids and intimidation, the result is fractured trust, hidden violence, and a society split between watchers and the watched.
We must reject the illusion that more force equals more safety. We must insist that public safety be rooted in justice, compassion, and democratic accountability. Otherwise, the cities will become battlegrounds that tear us apart.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson summed up the situation by quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who understood directly the effects of a militarized city.
“Militarism is a sickness. Unfortunately, this president is full of that sickness… There are no circumstances under which the deployment of American soldiers should be sent into cities across America.”
