In a guest article for DIE ZEIT, the authors warn that the Trump administration’s rapid expansion of ICE echoes recruitment strategies used by authoritarian regimes.
Last week, outrage erupted after masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers stormed a Chicago daycare and seized teacher Diana Santillana over an alleged permit violation. Scenes of civilians being pulled into unmarked vehicles amid weapons and tear gas are becoming increasingly common.
ICE, created after 9/11, has expanded rapidly. Its budget has tripled to $170 billion over four years, surpassing police spending of all US states. To meet Trump’s target of 3,000 arrests per day, the agency is hiring 10,000 new officers with $50,000 signing bonuses and minimal entry requirements. Hiring standards have fallen – applicants with criminal records or poor fitness are admitted, basic training has been cut from 13 to six weeks, and fewer than half of trainees passed a recent open-book test.
In DIE ZEIT, postdoctoral researcher Christian Gläßel (Hertie School’s Centre for International Security) and Adam Scharpf (University of Copenhagen) argue that this pattern is no accident. Drawing on their research on Argentina’s 1976–83 military dictatorship where they compiled a complete dataset of all 4,287 active army officers and traced their careers – they found that poorly performing or otherwise vulnerable personnel – officers with stalled careers, limited prospects, or fear of dismissal – were disproportionately steered into the covert secret police unit: infamous Intelligence Battalion 601. These individuals, they show, zealously enforced the regime’s repressive agenda not out of political conviction but to demonstrate their loyalty and thus advance professionally. Their findings point to a systematic logic: authoritarian regimes often rely on “ordinary men” whose need to prove themselves makes them especially pliable instruments of repression.
While the U.S. remains a democracy and ICE is not Argentina’s Battalion 601, the authors warn that similar incentive structures may be taking shape. Under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), federal layoffs have created fear and insecurity, while Trump’s 1,600+ pardons – including for January 6 convicts – signal that loyalty is rewarded and wrongdoing overlooked. Oversight has weakened as 17 inspectors general were dismissed and replaced with loyalists.
Taken together, Gläßel and Scharpf argue, these moves risk transforming ICE into a force driven less by law than by incentives, fear of dismissal, and opportunities for advancement.
At its core, the piece offers a cautionary note: modern-day authoritarian drift unfolds through incremental changes, manifested in how institutions recruit, reward, and retain their staff. Human resource management, the authors suggest, is not just an administrative necessity but deeply political and highly influential for the further course of action. Their forthcoming book, Making a Career in Dictatorship: The Secret Logic Behind Repression and Coups (Oxford University Press, 2026), explores this dynamic across regimes.
Read the authors’ full commentary in DIE ZEIT here (in German).
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