Welcome to Trump’s Remake of Argentina’s Dirty War

For nearly a decade, Argentina’s right-wing rulers ran a campaign of repression that looks a lot like what we’ve seen on the streets of U.S. cities. The state, through the military, police, political machines, and corporate and civilian allies, hunted down anyone seen as opposed to the regime. At least 22,000 were killed or disappeared, with the actual death toll likely much higher.

The U.S. has not yet seen—and hopefully will not see—figures like that, but it is seeing similar tactics, all the same: People are being abducted, whisked out of state or out of the country, disappeared before lawyers can fight for their release. The federal government has relied on local police to deal with protesters around the country, counting on cities and states to focus more on keeping the peace rather than stopping the feds. It’s been clear for months that “immigration enforcement” was just a pretext for terrorizing liberal cities and punishing political rivals. In Minneapolis, the administration even discarded any pretense that it was doing targeted enforcement.

After the killing of Renee Good, it was widely reported that members of the masked forces in Minneapolis treated her death—now officially ruled a homicide—as a warning to the wider populace—“Didn’t you learn your lesson?” was the refrain that many protesters heard as agents mocked Good’s murder. This defiant defaming of Good happened even as officials claimed that she had attempted to ram ICE agents, which footage showed wasn’t true. After Renee Good was killed, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters that “ICE is doing what ICE is designed to do.” While he couched his comments in the context of immigration enforcement, it wasn’t hard to see the double meaning.