A selfish and inward obsessed late empire breaks the nations it reaches out to and colonizes, as it can no longer even manage the self control it takes to preserve its objects of exploitation. By the same token, its domestic security apparatus corrupts as it operates, destroying the possibility of justice with its cruel and selective enforcement in the face of self-generated destruction.
The unforgivably cruel and reckless mass rounding up of immigrants may sound like the right course of action to the actors of empire, who trapped within their insular milieu of selfishness, inner regard, and unyielding greed, cannot imagine alternative courses of action which would consequently diminish empire.
To the imperial consciousness, all of these superfluous peoples set free by its own destructive actions make for an alarming and threatening wave of chaos, suddenly surging towards its own heartlands, and so containing them and cruelly terrorizing and intimidating them seems the only course to stop a flood that was only previously a series of manageable trickles, at least as represented in the imperial consciousness. After all, monsters must have a somewhat favorable image of themselves to represent to themselves, one which allows for their existence in the first place.
But then what effect does this have on the body politic?
When an irrigation system pressurizes, its pipes must first fill partially with water acting by gravity, flowing from the source to the end of the pipe. When that water finally reaches the terminus of the pipe, it begins to reverse direction and fill the pipe completely from that direction, and so a surge of water comes rushing back to where it started, pressurizing the pipe. Too much water and this surge can destroy the infrastructure its housed in.
In the same way, this is a nation which has always been involved in colonization, dispossession, and terror. As long as the empire could continue to expand, and there was a capacity to absorb the chaotic forces set in motion by the turbulence of this process, the integrity of the system could be adjusted and maintained to keep the process going.
Today however there is no more room for expansion, both physically and spiritually. Just as the earth and the colonized nations which sit upon it have become exhausted, the inner dynamism of the imperial consciousness - which guides the process - has become exhausted as well. As a result, this terminus, this chain of destruction across the globe, and the waves of domestic repression that accompany it, have shattered any remaining collective notion of a republic. Each new iteration of cruelty and failure achieves this shattering for a greater proportion of the body politic, both through reactionary justifications of this cruelty and failure, and radical reactions to it in turn.
To go back to the previous irrigation metaphor, these are surges which don't bode well for the greater piping infrastructure. The formations of ICE and DHS, with their related material formations, are not institutions which can be contained within the legal infrastructure - whatever that is - that they emerged from.
To risk becoming overwrought with cumbersome metaphor, it doesn't matter what sorts of conceits are harbored by the empire: this is not like burning unwanted items in a trash barrel. The fires started within the loci of the ICE and DHS agencies will spread effects that are exponential and fractal in scope. In proportion to the restless and energetic cruelty incubated within such agencies is the hatred and disgust of the entire project these agencies are a part of.
