Because the structure of the “Ice Gulag” is currently supported by all three branches of the Government, opposition must target all three aspects: apprehension, detention, and removal.

The Ice Gulag series centered on how the Trump Administration led by DHS has created a vertically integrated structure that relies on a massive multi-year appropriation from Congress, the newly recruited paramilitary detention force, the Roberts Court Shadow Docket decisions, the active cooperation by Big Tech, and the ability to operate without fear of serious legal consequences to apprehend, detain, and remove thousands of undocumented individuals currently residing in the United States.

Assault on the Constitution and Rule of Law

While the series focused on the terrible impact this structure has had on documented and undocumented individuals within the United States, the Gulag effort is also a fundamental and dangerous assault on the rule of law and the constitutional principles that provide the basis of our democracy.

The administration’s coordinated effort to deny basic fifth amendment due process rights to all non-citizens threatens the basic rights that we all enjoy as US citizens. The violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on illegal searches and seizures is not limited to warrantless break-ins but includes collection and analysis of massive amounts of data. The denial of these basic rights applies indiscriminately to refugees, those seeking asylum, Dreamers, those in the process of obtaining permanent residence status, and those in the United States under Temporary Protected Status. The mass ICE and CBP roundups that we have seen in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis also have swept up US citizens in Supreme Court sanctioned “Kavanaugh stops”. DHS has taken aggressive measures intended to discourage protests and actions to document activities of masked and armed ICE agents in public spaces. Last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, DHS officers have taken to X to publicize the arrest of 279 people accused of attacking federal officers, of which 181 were US citizens. Close to half of the publicly accused US citizens were never charged with assault. Most appear to have been arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights in protesting ICE actions that have routinely violated our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights against warrantless searches and seizures and deprivation of liberty without due process.

Assault on Civil Liberties

As part of the removal program, ICE has created a vast domestic surveillance network contracted out to such powerful high-tech companies as Palantir. The ICE database, assembled with no judicial oversight and seemingly no internal DHS oversight, includes vast troves of US citizen data, to include license plate collection, protest activity, facial recognition data, and DNA samples. In addition to contractor collection and analysis of massive amounts of bulk data, it has been widely reported how heavily armed ICE and CBP forces have followed protesters, engaged in aggressive driving, and appeared at protestors’ homes, all intended to intimidate citizens. Individuals who have had their faces scanned by ICE have received notices from DHS cancelling their access to TSAPre screening at airports; others have been told they are now domestic terrorists.

It’s Up To Us

Following a series of disastrous appearances before Congress that exposed the incompetence and corruption that has been a hallmark of DHS, the President fired Kristi Noem. Noem’s replacement is Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin. Given the results of Senator Mullin’s recent hearing, it is doubtful that we can anticipate any meaningful reforms at DHS, and we can look forward to the continuation of what is now a wildly unpopular aggressive program of mass apprehension, detention, and removal.

In Minnesota, the pushback has started, as local prosecutors have begun criminal investigations into the behavior of individual members of the ICE detention force during its deployment to Minneapolis.

• As demonstrated by the millions who turned out across America on March 28 for the “No Kings” protests, it is important for individuals and communities to continue to organize, protest, and report on the inevitable abuses that occur when the ICE paramilitary detention units arrive in force.

• It important to demand investigation of the cruel conditions that currently exist in the detention facilities that seem to operate with no independent oversight.

• It is important that local communities continue to object to turning warehouses into massive prisons intended to hold thousands of detainees.

• It is important to show support to brave communities like Minneapolis, which this year has borne the brunt of ICE aggression.

• It is important to call out members of Congress who are not actively promoting legislative measures to limit ICE’s abusive behavior directed against both undocumented individuals and US citizens.

• It is important to continue to highlight the impact of Shadow Docket decisions by the Supreme Court.

And throughout, let us always remember the unwilling sacrifices of people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who wanted only to exercise their First Amendment rights and instead became victims of ICE brutality.

James Petrila spent over thirty years as a lawyer in the Intelligence Community, working at the National Security Agency and, for most of his career,at the Central Intelligence Agency. He has taught courses on counterterrorism law and legal issues at the CIA at the George Washington University School of Law. He is currently a senior advisor to the Institute for the Study of States of Exception and is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

Ours are the unequalled machines of war, a military superiority that in the hands of an unbalanced president and a hormonal defense secretary are just begging to be used. Those machines now seem to be in the lead, dragging the politicians and administration figures behind, a military machine that virtually drives policy by itself, by the fact of its very existence.

The recurring themes of this war are several. They have been (1) an overbearing impulsiveness to strike militarily, (2) the lack of a strategic plan for a region that literally pulsates with religious and ethnic violence and instability, (3) the lunacy of going to war without the legitimacy derived from a collective of like-minded allies, and (4) an adolescent’s puerile fascination with a communications package that is excessively riddled with terms of violence, lethality, Old Testament reckoning and chest-thumping claims of determination. These are themes that are transparent to other nations, most conspicuously the Iranians. None strengthens our claims of moral determination and each reminds us that Trump pointlessly tore up a functioning 2018 diplomatic settlement and unwisely eliminated further diplomatic negotiations as a possible solution.

Together, they weave a picture absent Kissingerian strategy, and proud of the ascent of unparalleled military force, an assembly of power made of technologies from an earlier era devoid of drones and emerging asymmetrical warfare. Together the picture features an uncharacteristic venom issuing from the oracle of the great United States of America, a changing democratic superpower that had been generally known for its fairness, equanimity and humanity.

What dominates everything now though is not tough-minded, morally banked and determined Churchillian leadership, but the punishment that we are wreaking on Iran everyday. To this is added a failure to describe in our public commentary (of which there has been a great deal of modest at best informative value) our version of an end-state to our war making.

Defining History of all ages has made it abundantly clear that when you mess around in the Middle East you are poking a hornet’s nest, and doing so with near unknowable consequences, and that you had better think it through. The Second Gulf War in Iraq and Afghanistan are good anti-models.

On the other hand, where things are not so clear is from the confusion that follows when the Secretary of Defense stakes out a rigid, if unconvincing, determination to see the war through to ultimate victory, only to be consistently undermined by The President’s confused, illiterate blather and his repeated setting of deadlines followed by indeterminate delays.

Whether US Forces assault and hold ground on Kharg Island, Qeshm or Bandar Abbas, the United States will be embarking on an escalation of huge importance, marked by equally enormous uncertainty. The same conditions that have been at work to muddle the air war’s purposes up to now will be present so much more profusely once ground forces are introduced. The risks of American casualties in the air war were there but in terms of general conflict minimal, however sad losses are. Once we are on the ground those risks explode. At the extreme end of risk would be an attempt to seize the highly enriched uranium presumably buried deep in colloquially named PickAxe Mountain. Even were such an operation mounted and successful, US casualties will be agonizingly hard to accept regardless of the outcome.

And you can rest assured that the long-term plans by a wounded Iranian rump government, or even just a series of some 40 radical Revolutionary Guard Satraps, will be to exact its grievances at any cost. And with considerable confidence we can say that the follow on to this war will fuel Iran’s ultimate determination to get that elusive nuclear capability one way or another, as the existential guardian against another attack, as written in the Pyongyang book of strategic defense.

William R. Piekney served as US Naval officer for four years and served in the CIA for 30 years in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He was under deep cover early in his career and later was station chief numerous times, including West Africa, Pakistan and Egypt. As a member of the Senior Executive Service he directed the Agency’s African operations and then East Asia operations, traveling extensively to those regions to maintain and develop relations with host intelligence and security services. Overall he has spent nearly fifty years in the U.S. Intelligence Community and in related national security affairs. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

As published below in the Pensacola News Journal Pensacola News Journal (Part of the USA Today Network) March 29 2026

Making sense of the shambolic actions of the Trump administration is a daunting, full-time task for American voters, whether MAGA, Democrat, Republican or Independent.

Deliberate disruption at home metastasized internationally on Feb. 28 with the launch of war against Iran, an undertaking seemingly inadequate in its military and diplomatic planning, political preparation of the nation, and analysis of the second- and third-level consequences of starting a war in the volatile region.

Two questions continue to demand coherent answers: “Why?” and “To whose benefit?”

Instability in world energy supplies, surging gasoline prices and possible terrorist attacks in the U.S., mounting civilian casualties in Iran and the region, deep dismay among allies and partners, and no change in Iran’s nuclear posture are the initial results of the war. The conflict could widen regionally and even globally, as China sees its Iranian oil deliveries threatened, Russia continues to undercut the U.S., and other countries are affected economically or by war-related violence.

How to understand what is happening and why?

One starting point: the Administration’s own National Security Strategy document, released just last November. One would hope that the document answers those questions and confirms how America is being made great again. Rather, it showcases the administration’s muddled thinking, jingoistic public bluster, and lack of serious people with a credible grasp of our dynamic yet unchanging 21st- century world.

The strategy simply defies rationality regarding its purpose and implementation. Its presidential cover letter claims that “America is strong and respected again – and because of that, we are making peace all over the world”, with Iran-Israel included in the list of conflicts resolved. The document’s 29 pages disingenuously assert the need for a radical reorientation of U.S. foreign policy to achieve a more secure America: ”…motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words—“America First.” President Trump has cemented his legacy as The President of Peace.”

The document’s regional priority is the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and “a readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere…”. The administration’s Jan. 3 action to seize Venezuelan leader Maduro and its ongoing pressure on Canada, Mexico and increasingly Cuba demonstrably flow from that.

On Asia, the strategy addresses rebalancing the U.S. economic relationship with China. states the need for a “robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific” and recognizes Taiwan’s critical economic and geographic roles.

Europe comes next. The strategy does not mention Russia as a threat to the U.S., but asserts the need to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia” and that NATO allies increase defense spending to meet their security responsibilities in their region. The strategy does recognize that “many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat” but argues that Europe’s problems also include the twin specters of migration overwhelming countries and political liberty being sapped by (alleged) “censorship and repression”.

Finally, the Middle East (followed by cursory attention to Africa).

The strategy’s text could not be more at odds with the administration’s war on Iran:

“Stopping regional conflicts before they spiral into global wars that drag down whole continents is worthy of the Commander-in-Chief’s attention, and a priority for this administration. A world on fire, where wars come to our shores, is bad for American interests.”

“Conflict remains the Middle East’s most troublesome dynamic, but there is today less to this problem than headlines might lead one to believe. Iran—the region’s chief destabilizing force—has been greatly weakened by Israeli actions since October 7, 2023, and President Trump’s June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer, which significantly degraded Iran’s nuclear program.”

“The days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over—not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment.”

“We should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it from without.”

National discussion is understandably perplexed by the administration’s preemptive attack on Iran in tandem with Israel. Given the NSS document’s assertion of Operation Midnight Hammer’s significant success, it is difficult to understand what changed since November, other than an urge to exploit the opportunity on Feb. 28 to take out an Iranian leadership foolishly gathering together to consider the results of the Feb. 26 indirect negotiations in Geneva with U.S. representatives.

When you hear leaders on both sides of the aisle question the administration’s Iran war strategy and endgame, know that they are merely reacting to events as they unfold as well as the documented confusion of the National Security Strategy.

It should come as no surprise that Trump 47 is ensuring that America First really means America Alone. This hollowing out of the U.S. role as the leader of the free world has been signaled openly for a decade now; we are simply experiencing the inevitable, despite MAGA’s unrelenting and misleading propaganda otherwise.

Let’s hope that this war ends soon and makes for a safer world and America. Meanwhile, please read the strategy document and continue to ask, “Why?” and “To whose benefit?”

Mike Mozur is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer with over 33 years of experience in the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Latin America. Mike also led a global professional association of environmental scientists and writes periodically on current political, economic, and social issues. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

In having his name on official currency while in office, Trump can boast that he’s the only living American president in the small but very famous company of autocrats.

You can buy a Julius Caesar Getty Roman Coin online (Getty Museum: $24.00).

Or a Napoleon Emperor Coin Paris Mint, for $2,309. 1812 Gold France 40 Francs.

Perhaps most enticingly, there’s a 1775 King George III – British American Colonial Copper Halfpenny Non Regal coin, for only $10.50)

President Donald Trump has plenty to think about these days, beginning with his bombing of Iran and the continuing Iranian retaliatory missile strikes that have set the Middle East ablaze. Iranian forces have essentially shut down the vital oil-and-gas shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz, a body blow to the health of the global economy. The shock waves are hitting (furious) American allies (who have been insulted, not consulted). American servicemen and women have been killed in action, with more to come, the president has said.

Here at home, American consumers are facing skyrocketing prices at their gasoline pumps, wondering what their president was thinking when he launched his newest war of choice. While that remains unclear, one thing is clear: President Trump has been busy thinking of — himself.

He’s been thinking about how to get Congress to change our nation’s voting rules so that his Republicans will win this November’s congressional midterm elections. And further thinking of how to get Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport (and other national landmarks) named after him, like he’s done (sans congressional authorization) with the John F. Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute for Peace.

There’s much more on the president’s mind: This summer’s cage fighting spectacular on the South Lawn of the White House (perhaps on June 14, coincidentally the day Trump celebrates his 80^th birthday). Holding an Indianapolis-style auto race (185 mph along the streets of downtown Washington, D.C.), to highlight this July’s celebrations of America’s 250^th anniversary. And he’s surely been congratulating himself for spending the necessary time to persuade his MAGA loyalists at the U.S. Mint to issue a 24-karat gold coin to honor his likeness.

Trump’s latest vanity project has been thoroughly analyzed on late-night television. “Now you can have Trump in your pocket, like Saudi Arabia,” quipped Bill Maher. And this just in: It seems that with Trump, expressing vanity is increasingly open-ended. As the news reports this week, the Treasury Department is now working on the unprecedented step of putting Trump’s signature on dollar bills — all new paper currency, actually.

Criticism aside, managing to get his name on official US coinage is a major accomplishment (of dubious legality for any living president). In his first term, Trump got the White House Gift Shop to offer a “Trump & Putin” medal coin to commemorate the (in)famous 2018 summit in Helsinki. Infamous in leading intelligence and diplomatic circles to this day, because that’s when Trump told the world’s press that he believed his friend Putin’s word that Russia had not covertly tried to help him defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, and not a deeply researched CIA analysis that had documented Putin’s operation. But now, success in manipulating the official U.S. Mint trumps the gift shop (which also now sells Joe Biden bobbleheads, along with many Trump touristy souvenirs).

It’s possible that any coin comparisons with the British King, who, with his tariffs on American tea, caused a famous party in Boston Harbor, might be of interest to some of the millions of American citizens who will be protesting in cities across the USA, come this Saturday’s March 28 No Kings demonstrations. Perhaps some might dress as King George Coins instead of the Turtles costumes that were prominent in last year’s No Kings’ rallies.

Greg Rushford is a former senior congressional aide (defense & intelligence) and a former Washington-based journalist who specialized in the nexus between national security and global trade politics. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.