RABID ANIMALS

Stephen Miller calls this “ruthlessness.” Kristi Noem calls it “security.” The Constitution calls it unlawful. America calls it what it is: a raid by rabid animals.

Opinion by Friendo Media Editorial Staff

They came in the night. U-Hauls lined up like armored carriers. Helicopters over the roof. Doors kicked in at 2 a.m. Children yanked from sleep. Neighbors zip-tied in vans with no explanation.

The government called it a “targeted operation.” The residents called it what it was: a gang raid.

When the agents left, they left behind blood, broken doors, and baby shoes. They left stolen belongings, trashed apartments, unsecured hallways. They left hell in their wake.

And they called it law.

This is not law. This is rabid. It is the Miller doctrine in action: shock, fear, and spectacle.

These agents behaved like the very animals they accuse immigrants of being. Foaming at the mouth. Tearing through homes. Leaving decay behind.

The cruelty is the point. The theater is the point.

Stephen Miller has been telling us who he is for years. This week in Memphis he bellowed like a warlord, promising “real cops with guns” and pledging that the U.S. government would show “how ruthless we are.” He was not outlining a plan for safety. He was declaring a siege.

And South Shore got a preview.

The 2 a.m. raid was not policy. It was seemingly Miller’s dream come to life. Helicopters dropping agents. U-Hauls rolling in. Doors smashed. Citizens dragged limbless in the dark. Blood, baby shoes, and broken homes left behind.

When Miller roared that “they have no idea how hardcore we are,” he was not magnifying. He was manifesting.

This is the doctrine Trump’s DHS under Kristi Noem is now putting into practice. Miller may not hold the title. But his blueprint is alive in every broken door, every zip tie, every family shoved from their doorway.

Chicago has seen this before. In the 1960s it was COINTELPRO agents smashing into homes of Black Panthers, murdering Fred Hampton in his sleep, calling it a police action. Before that it was the Red Scare raids that broke into immigrant apartments with the same justification of “safety.” Long before that it was slave patrols, dragging people out of their beds in the name of “law.”

This is not new. It is muscle memory.

And it is not just American muscle. Listen closely to Stephen Miller’s sermon of ruthlessness, his promises of shock and awe, his obsession with making fear into public ritual. It is not strategy. It is theater.

Goebbels understood this well, during the Nazi Germany occupation of Europe. Fascism requires spectacle. It requires the population to see the broken doors, to watch neighbors dragged into vans, to breathe in the smoke and rubble and call it order. It is terror disguised as protection. It is persecution marketed as safety.

That is why NewsNation was invited along for the raid. That is why Miller’s voice rises to a scream. The cruelty is not a hidden byproduct. It is a performance.

Goebbels, too, knew that violence without a spotlight is wasted. The spectacle must be seen. The blood must be narrated. The fear must be broadcast.

That is why NewsNation was not a bystander in South Shore. They were a guest. They were embedded, given front-row seats to a midnight assault on families, so they could package it as a triumph of order. The same tactic plays out on Fox, on talk radio, in endless clips online. Each raid becomes a highlight reel for authoritarianism. Each broken door is turned into a commercial for cruelty.

This is not journalism. It is propaganda. It is the fascist playbook, dressed in the language of “law enforcement.” Goebbels called it “total war.” Miller calls it “ruthlessness.” Noem calls it “security.” The script is the same.

The point is not truth. The point is terror.

The story in South Shore is not just about migrants. It is about citizens.

Citizens held without charges. Families ripped from sleep without warrants. Property destroyed without remedy. The very Constitution the agents claimed to defend was trampled under their boots.

Stephen Miller calls this “ruthlessness.” Kristi Noem calls it “security.” But the Constitution calls it unlawful. And Americans call it what it is: a raid by rabid animals.

When Dan Jones came back to his apartment, he found his mattress gone, his iPad gone, even his air fryer gone. In its place were garbage, strange clothes, the smell of mold. A man who had lived quietly, worked hard, paid rent, came home to find his life scattered like trash. He stood in the ruins with tears in his eyes and still tried to close the door behind him.

Down the hall, an Army veteran — blind now after decades of service — was left to feel his way through broken glass and busted walls, still telling himself this was once a good place to live.

These are not the faces of fugitives. They are neighbors. They are citizens. They are the people the Constitution was supposed to protect.

This is not the enforcement of law. It is the suspension of it. The Fourth Amendment promises the right to be secure in one’s home against unreasonable searches and seizures. That promise was broken. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments promise due process. That promise was mocked.

The agents who came in the night called it a mission. The right wing media networks called it a victory. But the residents who lived through it called it what it was: hell.

And that is the truth. Not the propaganda, not the press release, not Miller’s shouting. The truth is written in the baby shoes left in the rubble, the blood stains on the floor, the zip ties abandoned beside strollers.

Chicago has been here before. It has seen police murder freedom fighters in their sleep. It has seen raids on immigrants and labor organizers. And every time, the city’s people learned the same lesson: solidarity is survival.

So yes, this was a raid. Yes, it was an act of conquest. But it was also a reminder. That we only make it out of this if we stand together — the veteran and the migrant, the longtime tenant and the new arrival, the neighbor who still has a door and the neighbor who doesn’t anymore.

Because the truth is simple. We belong to each other. And no raid, no propaganda, no rabid animal in uniform can change that.