For most of American history, Americans have imagined the threat to our liberty as something that originated from a foreign entity. An invading army, a hostile ideology, perhaps a distant tyrant like Adolph Hitler or Putin. But our founders feared something closer to home: a government that would turn its power inward, using surveillance, force, and fear to control its own people.
That fear wasn’t new. A decade before the Declaration of Independence, the Sons of Liberty were already raising their striped banner to protest a government using spies, intimidation, and force to control its own subjects. That fight was burned into the founders’ memory; they’d seen firsthand how easily a government could turn on its people.
They carried that fear with them to Philadelphia. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were designed specifically to prevent the abuses they’d lived through: government surveillance, random searches, militarized police, and the silencing of dissent. They tried to build a government that could protect the country from outsiders without becoming a threat to its own citizens. That balance is now being tested in ways they would have recognized immediately.
Over the last year, ICE has been quietly transforming into one of the country’s most powerful domestic security forces. Thanks to a Trump backed bill passed last summer, it’s now the best-funded law enforcement agency in the nation, with a budget that dwarfs even the FBI and the DEA. And with that cash, ICE has been buying up an arsenal of high-tech surveillance gear you’d expect to see from the CIA, not a civilian agency.
A recent Washington Post report revealed just what ICE has been buying or deploying:
- biometric trackers
- facial‑recognition tools
- iris‑scanning devices
- cell‑site simulators (Stingrays)
- phone‑hacking software
- commercial phone‑location databases
- drones capable of identifying individuals from nearly a mile away
And this gear isn’t just for tracking immigrants. The “Post” found that ICE is turning these tools on U.S. citizens, including people protesting the government’s deportation policies. In fact, ICE leadership has openly claimed the authority to use “all available tools” to go after protest networks, a chilling phrase that includes Americans exercising their right to free speech.
By turning its arsenal of surveillance weapons on protest networks, ICE is trashing the First and Fourth Amendments, the freedoms to speak, to assemble, and to live without the government tracking your every move. Those protections were forged by men who had watched the Crown use surveillance and force to keep its subjects in line. The Sons of Liberty answered that abuse with a banner of defiance. And now ICE is testing the very limits they fought to create.
This raises a terrifying question: Why is a civilian agency like ICE being armed like an internal security force?
The answer is shockingly simple.
Trump tried to use the military to crush dissent in LA, but a federal court ruled it illegal. The military is reined in by laws like the Posse Comitatus Act, which stops it from acting as a domestic police force, and the Insurrection Act, which sets a very high bar for deploying troops on American soil. While a president can federalize the National Guard, governors can push back, and it comes with a political price.
Here’s the important part, ICE faces none of these constraints.
ICE can operate anywhere in the country, with or without state permission. It can raid homes, detain people, and run massive surveillance operations, all under the vague heading of “immigration enforcement,” which gets far less court scrutiny than criminal cases. It has tactical teams trained and equipped like military units. And it has access to data streams that intelligence agencies would envy, including commercial phone‑location data purchased specifically to bypass Supreme Court warrant requirements.
Put it all together, and you get the perfect tool: a federal force a president can unleash on Americans with almost no checks, balances, or accountability. This should alarm everyone, no matter your politics. When a president is legally blocked from using the military at home, ICE becomes his most powerful and flexible weapon.
The historical parallels between the 1760s and today are structural and our founders would have recognized the danger immediately.
They lived under a government that used customs agents, warrantless searches, and military patrols to keep its own people in line. The Sons of Liberty did not rise up against a foreign army. The Sons of Liberty didn’t take up arms against a foreign invader; they rose up against their own government when it started blurring the line between law enforcement and military force, when it used spies and intimidation to crush dissent.
The Sons of Liberty warned us that liberty is the first casualty when a state can watch, intimidate, and punish its citizens without consequence. Their “Rebellious Stripes” flag was a protest against that kind of unchecked power. A reminder that the first American fight for freedom was against an unaccountable internal security force.
Today, with its spy drones flying over protests, its warrantless phone tracking, its massive biometric databases, and the biggest budget in law enforcement, ICE represents the very concentration of power the founders feared would destroy the republic.
A government that can track you, follow you, detain you, and kill you with little, if any oversight, is not the government the founders imagined. It is something else. Something they warned us about. Something they believed citizens had a duty to confront.
When the Sons of Liberty raised their flag, they were saying a line had been crossed. That same spirit is alive today in Minneapolis, and in towns and cities across the country, where Americans are once again standing up to government oppression. And, as in the 1760s, it is the people who are reminding Trump where that line still stands.
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