In early June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on Southern California. Since then, Californians have witnessed masked agents raid Home Depots and car washes, aggressively tackle gardeners and level guns at bystanders for taking photos.

The latest scene came July 7 when federal agents showed up at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles in what can only be described as a military-style parade. Officers in fatigues leapt from armored trucks, sealing off nearby streets and diverting traffic. Mounted officers patrolled the park, guns slung across their chests. After an hour, they dispersed — apparently without making any arrests.

Monday’s ICE parade underscores that the “mass deportations” agenda is not just about immigration. It’s a display of government power aimed at intimidating and disrupting the lives of immigrants and Americans alike. But the goal is not just to scare people. It’s also to frame immigration as an emergency that requires a military-level operation — as if the country would disappear tomorrow if immigration agents don’t detain day laborers at a Home Depot today.

Americans shouldn’t be fooled by the claim that the “mass deportations” agenda is aimed at making the country safer. The administration is not targeting criminals, but mostly peaceful immigrants. A recent study by the Cato Institute suggests that 65% of people detained by ICE in fiscal year 2025 have no criminal convictions. Among the convictions that do exist, most are for immigration infractions, traffic tickets and similar offenses — no violent crimes against people or property. This underscores that the administration’s concern is not to protect the individual rights of Americans, but to kick immigrants out — threat or not. (A reminder to the reader that immigration violations merely mean that a person is present in America without government permission — a victimless offense.)

ICE officers, and sometimes government officials such as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, often pose for photos and record videos for TV and social media during ICE raids. This should make Americans suspect that officers know they are not detaining the criminals that they claim pose an unprecedented threat to America. Normally, law enforcement agencies that pursue actually dangerous fugitives don’t stage photo ops. Operational security usually keeps cameras away.

The parade July 7 was simply another display of government power, paid for by taxpayers. Officers wanted to be seen, photographed, and recorded so that everyone knows the government claims unlimited force over immigrants, as if car washers and day laborers were an existential threat.

The scale, violence and publicity of these operations are meant to convince Americans that detaining immigrants is an emergency that requires a massive deployment of government force. If officials can sell the idea that our country will vanish tomorrow if these deportations are not completed today, then they can persuade Americans and Congress to grant the government more power and more money to quash this so-called emergency (as they did with the “Big, Beautiful Bill”).

And if brutally detaining overwhelmingly peaceful gardeners, farmhands and construction workers who came to America to build a life constitutes an emergency, what doesn’t?

If Americans are led to believe, against the evidence of their own eyes, that our country has been “invaded” by migrant criminals, then what else might they accept?

Maybe they can be persuaded that international trade is somehow a “national emergency” that requires the president to impose tariffs on virtually every country. Or they could be persuaded that financial surveillance of businesses for transactions over $200 is necessary to prevent criminals from moving money. Or that judges who rule against the administration should be impeached.

“Emergencies” breed panic, and when fear rules, arbitrary power grows. If Americans accept that rounding up gardeners is an emergency worth armored trucks, they’ll accept that virtually anything else constitutes an emergency. The normalization of “emergency powers” is a road to authoritarianism. Americans must refuse to take another step down it.

Agustina Vergara Cid is a Young Voices Contributor. You can follow her on X at @agustinavcid