OUR DAILY THREAD: Trump's Wish Is Their Commando
The age of impunity
THE SET-UP: Beware of Bortac and Borstar. And no, I am not talking about twin frost giants who battle Thor in the latest Marvel movie mediocrity. Bortac and Borstar are more properly known as the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) and the Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR). Prior to the second coming of Trump, these Fort Bliss-based units “were once reserved for desert rescues, executing high-risk warrants, conflicts with armed drug cartels, and manhunts.” But now, as a new investigation by Wired just revealed, they’ve become the shock troops in Trump’s crackdown on immigrants:
Under Donald Trump, however, they have been sent into the streets of major US cities. The result is the largest known deployment of BORTAC and BORSTAR agents in US history, a fact made difficult to pin down due to the government's secrecy around their operations. Many of the agents’ identities have remained hidden from the public. The decision to use offensive, heavily armed paramilitary units for street-level immigration sweeps in American cities is a first—a bellwether of the Trump administration’s project to militarize domestic law enforcement operations.
That militarization was on full-display last September when four members of BORTAC spearheaded a controversial, early morning raid (assault?) on an apartment building on the South Side of Chicago:
As feds in body armor rappelled down from a Black Hawk helicopter overhead, others crashed through the building’s doors with battering rams, rounding up residents at gunpoint.
Already this story is nuts. There was no need to pretend to be special forces dropping in to Osama bin Laden’s compound, but that’s what they did:
A group of burly, masked agents wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, and toting suppressor-equipped M4 rifles, moved through the hallways in a rapid, tightly organized file. Padraic Daniel Berlin, a 34-year-old Michigan native and son of a Detroit firefighter, held Yoda, his Belgian Malinois, on a leash. David Dubar Jr., a 53-year-old onetime construction worker, followed closely behind him. Their team leader, Corey Myers, a Marine veteran from the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, checked apartment doors. Paul Delgado Jr., a standout cross-country runner in high school, was the final member of the entry team.
They were hunting down Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang Trump trumped-up into one of America’s most pressing problems. If you believed him, you lived in an America menaced by an army of clinically insane criminals who’d been freed from their straitjackets and sent to occupy apartment buildings around the US. That was the intelligence the BORTAC team received a couple hours prior to the mission:
Gang members were supposedly occupying the building and storing grenades, handguns, and rifles on the second floor, where a suspect with an open warrant for firearms possession lived. This intelligence was never released or substantiated, and Illinois later launched an investigation into whether the property owner had sent baseless claims to the feds.
And what did they find?
At every door approached by his team, Berlin yelled, “Police! Speak to me now or I’ll send the dog!” In a second-floor unit, the BORTAC team detained one man. Further down the hall, Myers noticed “signs of forced entry” and smashed open the door. Tolulope Akinsulie, an undocumented immigrant from Nigeria, happened to be hiding in the bedroom. Without issuing a warning or verbal command, Berlin let go of Yoda’s leash and the Malinois pounced, sinking its teeth into Akinsulie’s leg as he screamed in agony. Yoda bit Akinsulie repeatedly in the leg, hip, and hands before Berlin called the dog off and his team placed the man in cuffs. Akinsulie, who was not a target of the raid and has no known history of violent crime or gang affiliation, was treated for his injuries and taken to the Broadview Processing Center to face removal proceedings.
The raid netted 37 arrests. How many were Tren de Aragua? The Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t say. But an investigation by the Illinois Department of Human Rights has cast doubt on the raid’s premise. It turns out that tenants were battling the landlord in the months prior to the raid. They believe the raid was a set-up by the landlord to remove tenants, which it ultimately did. Tenants’ rights activist Josh Karsh told WLS-TV News in a January report on the raid’s aftermath:
"If these allegations are substantiated, appears that the landlord and property manager may have been using the federal agents as sort of a private eviction force. If that can happen in this building, and it can happen somewhere else, yeah, I mean, it's incredibly egregious."
Egregious isn’t the half of it. As Wired discovered, the violence described above was standard operating procedure during Operation Midway Blitz:
A WIRED review of over 78 incident reports from Operation Midway Blitz found that BORTAC and BORSTAR agents were, as a group, the most violent of the hundreds of federal agents deployed to Chicago. In these documents, CBP employees recorded over 144 discrete uses of force by CBP personnel from September through early November. Sixty-two BORTAC and BORSTAR personnel were involved in these incidents over an eight-week period. Of that group, 25 were involved in two or more incidents, and 16 more used force at least once during this period. Of the 234 federal law enforcement personnel WIRED identified in these reports, BORTAC and BORSTAR agents represent almost a quarter of all personnel involved in documented confrontations with civilians during Operation Midway Blitz.
“Confrontations” is one way of putting it.
BORTAC’s and BORSTAR’s uses of force in Chicago included punching and kicking protesters, throwing tear gas, macing civilians, firing pepperballs and 40-mm foam rounds into crowds, shocking people with tasers, unleashing dogs on deportation targets, and shooting unarmed civilians, killing at least one of them. This violence tracks with a loosening of the Border Patrol’s use-of-force guidelines following Gregory Bovino’s directives, as reported by the American Prospect.
Thanks to a sartorial style that gave-off Gestapo vibes, the since-dismissed Bovino became a focal point of criticism. But his removal isn’t likely to change a culture the recently-deposed head of DHS not only encouraged, but also repeatedly covered-up with bald-faced lies. That said, it may not be fair to lay all the blame on ex-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem or Bovino or the BORTAC team.
The impunity they’ve displayed during the “almost theatrical uses of force that litter newscasts and social feeds” accurately reflect the example set by the President throughout his decade of dominance. His ability to evade accountability, which his most devoted followers see as God’s handiwork, has only emboldened him.
Perhaps that’s why Trump has repeatedly told the world of his intention to commit war crimes. When he says he will bomb Iran’s electricity plants and desalination plants as punishment for not agreeing to his ever-changing set of demands, he is telling the world he doesn’t care if it’s “illegal” to destroy Iran’s vital civilian infrastructure. He’s telling the world he not only operating above the law … he’s operating in spite of the law. In fact, he’s contemptuous of it.
We’re talking about the Commander-in-Chief, folks. He sets the tone down the chain of command and for self-styled, “tip of the spear” commandos like BORTAC, Trump is a giant orange permission slip they essentially carry with them wherever they go.
The same may ultimately be true of the ghoul Trump tasked with remaking US Military in his own image … or, more precisely, in the image he constructed for himself in his book, American Crusade. Both in his book and in his briefings on the destruction of Iran, Pete Hegseth talks about violence, a.k.a. “lethality,” with a passion that borders on necrophilia. Whether that translates into trouble if and when he puts boots on the ground of a hostile nation remains to be seen.
However, Hegseth’s reversal of the US Army’s suspension of personnel who took two Apache attack helicopters for a joyride to Kid Rock’s house was a loud and clear signal that Trump’s impunity can and will be extended to troops who do things their C-in-C likes. That’s why Hegseth undermined the chain of command. It didn’t take long for Hegseth to act after Trump told a reporter he liked Kid Rock and he’d look into the Army’s suspension. Pete ended the investigation and lifted their suspension. And with that intervention he let it be known that there are no hard or fast rules that cannot be broken. Whether you’re raiding an apartment building or bombing a desalination plant, the same principle now applies … there is no principle that trumps Trump. - jp
Pete Hegseth is imbuing violence with a religious righteousness | Arwa Mahdawi
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/28/pete-hegseth-violence-religion-israel-iran
ICE violence, Iran war show just how little Trump cares about human lives
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5804836-trump-administration-contempt-life/
Opinion | ICE violence is not unprecedented; it is fundamentally American
https://dailyillini.com/opinions-stories/columns-opinions/culture/2026/03/26/ice-violence-fundamentally-american/