"Haben Sie Ihre Papiere bei sich?" “Do you have your papers with you?”

 "Haben Sie Ihre Papiere bei sich?"

The title above translates from German as, “Do you have your papers with you?” In Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, such documentation would be checked to focus on a person’s identity, residency, compliance with racial laws, racial status, political loyalty, and proper registration, especially for Jews or those suspected of disloyalty.

The movie classic Casablanca opens with a scene where Nazi officers search a hotel for refugees. The first line of the film is spoken by a police officer to a civilian he stopped on the street: "May we see your papers, please?" The civilian produces a document, but a second police officer declares that it "expired three weeks ago" and begins to tell the civilian he is under arrest. The civilian attempts to flee the police but a gunshot is heard and the civilian falls to the ground.

This enforcement of laws and the checking of identity papers was known as Ausweiskontrolle. It was carried out by both uniformed and plainclothes security agencies. The Geheime Staatspolizei aka Gestapo were the secret state police and were the political police force of Nazi Germany. There was also the SS or Schutzstaffel who wore paramilitary uniforms with white armbands. They could demand to see the papers of anyone anywhere. They were Hitler’s enforcers.

The goal was control, ensuring everyone fit the Nazi racial and political framework, with documentation used to categorize, target, or allow passage, often leading to harsh consequences if papers were missing or deemed "incorrect".

Today in America, under the guise of correcting years of lax immigration policy under an outdated, underfunded, and overwhelmed system, immigrants and citizens alike are being treated like the people in Nazi controlled areas of the early twentieth century. Armed and masked secret police with Gestapo-like tactics are now roaming our streets and demanding to “see our papers.”

They are doing this without probable cause. Their justification is mainly that, by using racial profiling and targeting areas where immigrants are known to travel, shop, and work, they can stop, question, and detain anyone who does not comply with their demands or who cannot provide documentation that satisfies them. Just as Trump is quoted on saying that his power is limited by, "My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me," so too, it seems, the power of ICE is limited only by individual officer morality.

In their lust to fill quotas they will gather up U.S. born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal foreign-born citizens of other countries, and some people who are undocumented. Some end up the victims of violent arrests, detention, incarceration, and in rare instances they are shot, wounded, or killed.

I have seen news reports where over 20-armed ICE and other federal agents and numerous armored carrier vehicles were used to arrest a single non-violent immigrant with no criminal record in his home. How much did this operation cost for a single person in these situations? Estimates vary widely but can run tens of thousands of dollars. The ICE estimate is $17,121 per person, though most calculate that figure is much higher. If you factor in salaries, logistics, detention, transportation, and court costs, most estimates are around $25k per person.

The ICE budget went from $3.3B in 2003 to $9.6B in 2024. In 2025 it went to $28.7B with Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. ICE is the center of the new “Deportation-Industrial Complex” with over $170B in its budget for the next four years.

As I watch the nightly news, I find that I can only take a few minutes before I have to change channels or shut it off. I find it too upsetting to watch as armed masked goons, authorized by the President of the United States, walk through communities and drag citizens from their cars and out of their homes and away from their jobs in handcuffs, if they are lucky enough to not get shot and killed, just so this group of marauders can “check their papers,” and make their quotas.

I asked AI to compare ICE with the Nazi SS and it came back with: “Comparisons between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the SS (Schutzstaffel) or Gestapo of Nazi Germany are a subject of significant political debate, historical analysis, and public controversy. Historians and commentators point to both sharp differences and concerning parallels, primarily as a warning against authoritarian drift.” They went on to clarify with, “ICE's operations do not involve genocide.” Well that makes me feel so much better.