Donald Trump and maga Republicans are funding ICE fascist operations without accountability! Innocent people are detained.

Frictionless fascism: Technologies being used for immigration enforcement take human agency and discernment out of the equation.

#ICEOut❗ (Maine Writer- this was a painful opinion for me to include in my blog. Reading this brought me to tears. Yet, I thank Mr. Coleman for having the courage to write this opinion based on his own experiences. Warning⚠️❗ Fascism has no limits to how much cruelty is dispensed for the purpose of seizing and maintaining power.)

Flynn Coleman is a human rights attorney and author of “A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Are.” Echo opinion published in the Boston Glob by Flynn Coleman.

One weekend in January, two boys stood quivering at Mercado Central, a Minneapolis market. Their mother had dropped them off for haircuts and walked across the street to cash a check, but she didn’t return. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took her. The boys tried to find her in the detention database but couldn’t because they didn’t know her birthdate. The agents who took her didn’t need it.

This is how ICE now operates: Mobile Fortify — a facial recognition app it deploys — can verify her identity nearly instantly. The technology makes detention possible with nothing more than what a camera captures. The system already had what it wanted. And she was gone.

In my time documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity at the international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, I learned that dehumanization requires infrastructure. 

In Rwanda, it took months of radio broadcasts to incite neighbors to kill neighbors. At roadblocks across the country, Hutu militias checked identity cards — Tutsi or Hutu — and made decisions about who would live or die. This took weeks. Even then, some refused to take part. Some hid Tutsis in their homes, risking their own lives. Human beings, even trained for atrocity, sometimes hesitated. 

Violence and dehumanization have always been limited by human friction — the pause before pulling a trigger, the moment when someone looks into another person’s eyes and cannot do the worst thing.

Mobile Fortify needs only seconds to scan a face. That’s the innovation.

This is what fascism without friction looks like. Adolf Hitler needed years of rallies, screaming himself hoarse to convince crowds, a steady drumbeat of dehumanization. 

Benito Mussolini needed propaganda campaigns. Even then, enforcement depended on human beings making decisions at every checkpoint. Mobile Fortify needs mere moments. Point your phone. The algorithm decides. The agent executes. No hesitation. No pause.

Mobile Fortify is a smartphone app that compares faces with more than 200 million photos, without individualized warrants, without meaningful consent, and — according to Department of Homeland Security documents — without any practical mechanism for refusal. Representative Bennie Thompson says ICE treats a biometric match as “definitive” — agents can ignore birth certificates if the app says otherwise. When the machine’s word contradicts yours, the machine wins.

The boys at Mercado Central could not find their mother. 😢

In fact, the government has billions of dollars in surveillance infrastructure. That power asymmetry isn’t accidental. It’s the architecture. Technology determines who can challenge decisions, who can trace targeting, who can find their parents. The algorithm designed the cage. The children cannot see the bars.

On Jan. 14, in Robbinsdale, Minn., another parent stood at a bus stop with their child, waiting for the school bus. ICE detained the parent in front of the child, in front of a bus full of elementary students. The child went to school that day not knowing if their parent would come home. The children on that bus learned what power looks like now: automated, inescapable.

America didn’t invent this template for making dehumanization systematic. China pioneered algorithmic targeting of Uyghurs in 2017. Iran deployed facial recognition for hijab enforcement. Russia built digital surveillance states. But when the United States adopts these tactics at home, it legitimizes them globally. Mobile Fortify doesn’t break new ground — it normalizes the playbook. What was once the domain of acknowledged autocrats becomes standard democratic practice.

The masked agents who surged into Minnesota have begun their retreat. The algorithmic infrastructure remains. Mobile Fortify still scans faces in seconds. Surveillance drones still circle neighborhoods. Administrative subpoenas (requiring no judge, no warrant 😢) still demand digital records — Google accounts, Discord metadata, Social Security numbers — often within hours. The facial recognition databases still hold 200 million images. 

The tech industry is spending hundreds of millions to ensure no regulation follows, building a political war chest to keep violence frictionless. The agents may withdraw. The algorithms never do.

Hundreds of children remain in detention facilities across the country. Thirteen-year-old Gustavo Santiago, detained in Dilley, Texas, wrote: “I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”

Frictionless fascism removes the last human barrier to atrocity: the pause — the moment one’s conscience might emerge from the depths. Even soldiers trained for systematic violence sometimes refuse orders. Even forces prepared for ethnic cleansing sometimes let people through. The algorithm never refuses. Never hesitates. Never witnesses. It doesn’t need years of propaganda or to convince anyone to hate. Doesn’t need belief, consent, or even your attention. It just needs a face to scan.