Donald Trump’s rhetoric and tolerance for armed groups have normalised paramilitary-style violence as a domestic political tool. The New Republic’s framing is blunt: the United States has brought home a form of violence long exported abroad.
Trump Has Brought American Paramilitary Violence Home
The New Republic argues that since the end of World War II, paramilitary violence has been a central part of U.S. foreign policy: armed, military-style operations by forces outside the formal military, often operating with impunity. That violence was “obscured by definition and distance,” with U.S.-backed militias, proxies, and death squads operating far from American borders. No longer. The Trump administration has deployed the same logic domestically through ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. Operations like Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago put thousands of armed federal agents in tactical gear in immigrant-heavy neighbourhoods, deploying chemical weapons and conducting raids that led to controversial detentions and deaths. Minneapolis council member Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent; Alex Pretti was killed by CBP agents. Neither was a threat to officers—Good was leaving the scene as instructed, Pretti had been disarmed. Both were engaged in constitutionally protected activity. The administration has labelled both “domestic terrorists” and blocked investigations. The message is that paramilitary violence is now a tool for use against the government’s domestic opponents.
Hours after Good was killed, Minneapolis council member Aurin Chowdhury told The New Republic that the city was under siege, with thousands of armed federal agents in the Twin Cities as part of Operation Metro Surge. The piece describes masked agents in tactical gear recklessly deploying chemical weapons and detaining people including a Spanish-immersion daycare worker and the husband of a pregnant woman. At Roosevelt High School, Border Patrol agents fired tear gas into a crowd of students during a chaotic arrest. The imagery is deliberate: this is not routine policing but militarised occupation. The New Republic traces the lineage to Cold War proxy forces, CIA stay-behind networks like Operation Gladio, and death squads in Latin America trained at the School of the Americas. The point is that the same logic—unaccountable armed units, terrorising a population into submission—is now applied at home. ICE and CBP have been turned into the president’s personal armed force, with federal immunity, the ability to bypass Fourth Amendment constraints, and budgets that rival the defence spending of entire nations. Agents have been accused of illegal chokeholds, surveillance methods borrowed from the Israeli military, and high-risk tactical operations with almost no legal consequence.
From Foreign Proxy to Domestic Enforcer
Erica De Bruin, associate professor of government at Hamilton College, told The New Republic that paramilitary and militia involvement in conflict leads to higher rates of human rights violations, especially “agent-centric” ones: the individual member has discretion to use force, and the result is more extrajudicial killings, torture, and civil liberties abuses. That pattern has been documented abroad for decades. The Trump administration has imported it. The article notes that grassroots right-wing groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have taken a back seat during Trump’s second term not because they are gone but because the federal government is advancing their policy priorities. Kate Bitz of Western States Strategies is quoted: the groups she monitors have been “a little bit less active” because “the federal government is advancing, essentially, their policy priorities.” So the paramilitary function is no longer outsourced to street-level militias alone; it is institutionalised in DHS. The goal from the start, the piece argues, was to create a force that could fulfil the president’s will without interference from the “deep state.” ICE and CBP are that force.
Recording and broadcasting violence is part of the strategy. The New Republic reports that recordings of ICE operations have become fodder for Homeland Security public affairs; videos of brutalised immigrants are used as “content” to justify mass removal. Good’s killer was reportedly filming her during the incident, “mining the moments before her death for a social media audience.” Spectacular violence, undertaken with impunity and then circulated, terrorises communities and excites the base. The paramilitary ethos has long been one of America’s most unsavory exports. Now it is home.
Who Loses When Paramilitary Violence Becomes Normal
The obvious losers are the targets: immigrants, protesters, and anyone in the path of ICE and CBP operations. But The New Republic’s broader point is that the losers are democratic stability and the institutions that depend on non-violent political norms. When the government depicts its own people as enemies and uses lethal force with impunity, the norm that the state does not wage war on its citizens erodes. Voters and institutions that assume elections and protest are the legitimate channels of conflict are the ones quietly devastated: the story is framed as Trump’s doing, but the cost is borne by the expectation that the government will not treat dissent as a target for paramilitary action. The administration has experimented with military contractors as immigrant bounty hunters and floated a “quick reaction force” of National Guardsmen and law-enforcement backgrounds. The aim is a force that answers to the president without “deep state” interference. Each step normalises the next. The question is whether the public and the courts will treat that as acceptable or as a breach that has to be rolled back.
What This Actually Means
Trump has normalised paramilitary violence as a domestic political tool. The machinery—ICE, CBP, tactical deployments, immunity, and narrative control—is in place. The administration frames dissidents and victims as terrorists and blocks accountability. The real losers are democratic norms and anyone who depends on the government not to treat its own people as enemies to be terrorised. The New Republic is right to connect the dots: what was done abroad for decades is now done here. The question is whether institutions and the public will treat it as acceptable or as a rupture that has to be reversed.
What Is Paramilitary Violence?
Paramilitary violence is the use of armed, military-style operations by forces that operate outside the formal armed services and are therefore not subject to the same accountability. Historically, the term has been used for proxy forces, death squads, and clandestine units that do the dirty work of states while maintaining deniability. In U.S. foreign policy, that has included Cold War stay-behind networks, Latin American units trained by the U.S., and post-9/11 reliance on local militias in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Research shows that conflicts involving such units produce higher rates of extrajudicial killing, torture, and rights abuses because individual members have broad discretion to use force. When that model is applied domestically, the result is federal agents with military gear and minimal accountability operating against the government’s domestic opponents.
How Did We Get Here?
The New Republic traces the domestic turn to the same contradictions that produced U.S. paramilitary policy abroad: a stated commitment to order and rights alongside a willingness to use unaccountable force against perceived enemies. Abroad, that meant outsourcing the bloodiest work to proxies. At home, it has meant turning ICE and CBP into forces that bypass normal constitutional and civil-rights constraints. The Trump administration has granted them federal immunity from prosecution, the ability to sidestep Fourth Amendment guardrails, and the latitude to ignore civil rights law. Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute, quoted in the piece, described the logic from the Afghanistan era: when the military wants to protect certain values but also “take the gloves off,” you outsource to paramilitaries. The same logic now applies to immigration enforcement and the silencing of dissent. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were not armed threats; they were killed anyway, and the administration has blocked investigations and labelled them terrorists. That is the paramilitary playbook: terrorise, then control the narrative.
Sources
The New Republic – Trump Has Brought American Paramilitary Violence Home. Foreign Policy – Paramilitary and far-right violence. Minnesota Reformer – Chronology of Operation Metro Surge. PBS NewsHour – 2,000 federal agents sent to Minneapolis. Sahan Journal – Border Patrol at Roosevelt High School.