Still, as a veteran of the Russian opposition, I’ll indulge in one bit of my own analysis.
In 2016, Vladimir Putin created Rosgvardiya—a new, militarized domestic law enforcement apparatus. Russia had no shortage of police agencies; it inherited several from the Soviet Union, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). So what made Rosgvardiya different? It operated directly under Putin’s authority.
Unlike Putin and Rosgvardiya, Trump did not create ICE. However, the 50% boost in ICE’s ranks that Trump is pursuing under OBBBA would change the face of any agency. Now that Gavin Newsom has taken Trump to court over the latter’s deployment of the California National Guard, the president is likely looking for more hassle-free and pliant institutions to do his bidding, and ICE could be the perfect outlet for those ambitions. If nothing else, ICE’s behavior in the past half year ought to make a dramatic expansion of the agency the object of intense public scrutiny.