Podcast Summary:

How Is This Better?
Episode: Is ICE More Like the Gestapo or Slave Patrols? Yes.
Host: Akilah Hughes (COURIER)
Release Date: February 20, 2026

Episode Overview

In this episode, Akilah Hughes examines the frequently drawn parallels between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and historical authoritarian forces like Nazi Germany's Gestapo and pre-Civil War American slave patrols. Bringing in expert historians and public voices, the conversation challenges the way Americans choose their historical analogies—questioning why we "exoticize" current homegrown forms of state violence—and makes the case for confronting the true, often uncomfortable, roots of American oppression. The episode explores ICE’s current excesses, the cultural function of historical comparisons, and what lessons we can and should learn to build a better, more just future.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. ICE as a Contemporary Threat

• ICE operates with what Hughes calls "loosely regulated" authority, frequently exceeding legal boundaries, violently detaining or deporting individuals—often U.S. citizens or those with a right to be in the country ([00:30-01:18]).
• Hughes and others note viral videos and recent deaths at the hands of ICE, highlighting the agency's disregard for constitutional protections and an incentive system based on arrests.
• Quote:

  "They're breaking random people's windows, threatening violence, actually murdering people regardless of citizenship, and shirking the Constitution based on the lie that they somehow have full immunity to abuse whoever they want..." — Akilah Hughes ([00:58])

2. The Gestapo Comparison

• Gestapo comparisons abound, but Hughes and guests argue this allows Americans to see ICE’s actions as foreign or unprecedented, distancing them from the nation’s history of domestic terror ([01:22-02:15]).
• Quote:

  "I'm asking what good it does to try to exoticize what is so clearly homegrown terror." — Akilah Hughes ([01:22])

3. The Slave Patrol Parallels & American Roots

• The episode features historian Ashley “the Baroness” Barron, who emphasizes that ICE more closely resembles slave patrols than the Gestapo ([02:12-05:22]).
• Barron underscores the American refusal to confront its own legacy—slavery, Jim Crow, ongoing racial violence—preferring to look to European analogies ([04:19]).
• Quote:

  "America has this image of looking like the best and the greatest and we do no wrong. But we're not that. We've never been that. This country has never been that." — Ashley Barron ([04:19])

4. Official & Viral Recognition

• Congresswoman Summer Lee puts the slave patrol comparison in the Congressional Record, noting:

  "It allows people to say that what we're experiencing right now is in some way unprecedented. But this isn't a new phenomenon ... what we're seeing is America doing American things." ([05:31])

5. Historical Continuity of Authoritarian Policing

• Akilah presents a timeline of U.S. state violence:
  • Slave patrols
  • Executive Order 9066 (Japanese internment camps)
  • Palmer Raids (arrests of suspected radicals)
  • Operation ___ (1954 mass sweeps of Mexicans, including U.S. citizens) ([07:29])
• Insight:
  • The U.S. has a deep history of officially sanctioned, often racialized, mass violence and surveillance, reducing the need for foreign analogies.

6. Gestapo Explainer & Context

• Claire Aubin (historian of Nazis & immigration) gives a concise Gestapo background: secret police active 1933-1945, renowned for surveillance, informants, arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings ([10:38-12:20]).
• Aubin notes the comparison is "useful" for making evil legible to those who learned about Nazi atrocities in school but cautions it's not a perfect fit.

7. Why Americans Reach for Nazi Comparisons

• Nazi analogies are more accessible for many due to education—"Nazi equals evil" ([14:15]).
• Slave patrol analogies demand Americans confront the nation’s own systemic racism, which is more uncomfortable ([14:59]).
• Aubin asserts both comparisons have value, but insists:

  "The ideology that animates them is what unites them, because it's predicated on the existence and enforcement of a racial or racialized underclass by a group that's in power." ([15:36])

8. Lessons from History: Steps Toward Authoritarianism

• Aubin (drawing on Christopher Browning) argues understanding "human capacity for violence"—and for compliance—is vital: atrocities happen through incremental changes ([16:17-18:00]).
• Post-atrocity, underlying racist ideologies often persist unless actively dismantled ([18:05-19:16]).
• Quote:

  "What we need to solve is like racism... we need to clear out the water we're swimming in. Otherwise we solve this one problem, and then it just reappears." — Claire Aubin ([19:05])

9. Thin Progress, Recurring Patterns & Structural Change

• The conversation debates whether U.S. society has ever made real, lasting progress given how easily old systems of oppression resurge.
• "Mask off" moments: periods when state violence is open and undeniable vs. lower-level, everyday oppression ([21:47]).
• The paradox of law enforcement: agencies tasked with enforcing the law often end up inventing new justifications for oppression ([23:01]).

10. Debate Over Nuanced Analogies

• The hosts warn against "splitting hairs" over whether a detention center is "literally" a concentration camp; state violence should be condemned regardless of historical labels ([24:14-24:33]).
• Quote:

  "Go tell a 6 year old this thing that you're saying to me." — Hughes ([24:37])

11. Accountability, Transition, and the Future

• What happens when the era of ICE ends?
  • Aubin expresses concern that, like many Nazis, American perpetrators may simply "melt back into society" without reckoning or justice ([27:56-29:43]).
  • Historical "Truth and Justice" efforts, such as tribunals in post-apartheid states, rarely occur at the state level and face major challenges ([30:15]).
  • Questions remain on dealing with those who abetted or ignored abuses, and on how to prevent abusers from reintegrating and reoffending.

12. Who Becomes an Abuser?

• ICE, like historical authoritarian organizations, actively recruits people with a "predilection for violence" and a willingness to enforce racist systems ([31:17]).
• Even when permitted to quit, many individuals remain complicit, unable or unwilling to break from the ideology.

13. The Bottom Line

• ICE is not singularly the Gestapo or the slave patrols—it’s a uniquely American fusion and continuation of many oppressive systems ([33:16]).
• The unifying force: racism and the belief in, and enforcement of, false hierarchies.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "ICE isn't just like the Gestapo. They're closer to slave catchers. And once that clicks, a lot of people get real uncomfortable real fast." — [01:50], Ashley Barron cited by Akilah Hughes
• "America has this image of… the best and the greatest and we do no wrong. But we're not that. We've never been that. This country has never been that." — [04:19], Ashley Barron
• "Gestapo, sure. But also collaborationist groups… slave patrols… paramilitary groups. We have actually a huge number of historical comparisons that we can draw from." — [13:43], Claire Aubin
• "The ideology that animates them is what unites them, because it's predicated on the existence and the enforcement of… a racial or racialized underclass by a group that's in power." — [15:36], Claire Aubin
• "What we need to solve is like racism… we need to clear out the water we're swimming in." — [19:05], Claire Aubin
• "There is active recruitment of people who already have a predilection for violence, who already share the prejudices they're looking for… and that is something that I think we're seeing here with ICE." — [31:17], Claire Aubin

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:30–01:18 — Introduction to ICE raids and recent abuses
• 01:22–02:15 — Questioning Gestapo comparisons; opening theme
• 02:15–05:22 — Ashley Barron on American historical blindspots
• 05:31 — Rep. Summer Lee introduces the "slave patrol" framing into Congressional Record
• 07:29–09:35 — Timeline of U.S. state terror: slave patrols, Japanese incarceration, Palmer Raids, and more
• 10:38–12:20 — Gestapo explained by Claire Aubin
• 14:15–15:36 — Why default to Nazi analogies; ideology over historical details
• 16:17–18:00 — Human capacity for violence & incremental descent into atrocity
• 19:05–21:10 — The persistence of racist ideology after atrocities
• 21:47–23:01 — Cyclical "mask off" moments and the false safety of ordinary times
• 23:01–24:33 — The paradox of "law" in law enforcement
• 24:37–25:05 — The logic and limits of historical analogies
• 27:56–29:43 — Post-atrocity reckoning, or lack thereof
• 31:17–32:13 — Profiling perpetrators; personal agency vs. systemic abuse
• 33:16–End — Conclusion: ICE is both Gestapo and slave patrols (and more); only fighting the underlying racist ideology ends the cycle

Conclusion

How Is This Better? delivers a searing and nuanced look at the roots of ICE's tactics and how Americans use (and misuse) history to interpret modern state violence. The episode’s experts advise that analogies—whether Gestapo or slave patrol—must not be used to distract from ongoing structural racism inherent in American institutions. Real progress, they argue, will only come by confronting and dismantling the racist, classist ideologies that continually reproduce such oppressive systems.

For listeners who want a single takeaway:
ICE cannot be understood solely by foreign comparisons. Its actions are the continuation of a deeply American tradition of white supremacist violence, and only facing this homegrown legacy will allow us to change it.