Writing in the Washington Times, columnist Don Feder called the recent disturbances in sanctuary cities the first steps of a left-wing attempted American revolution. He likens them to the early stages of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. Indeed, what is happening in Minnesota resembles a fledgling insurgency with organized crowds deliberately inciting ICE and other federal agents into overreaction. If this is in fact a low-level nascent insurgency, ICE should treat it as such and implement the kind of counterinsurgency doctrine that the British used to nip the Chinese communist-led revolt in Malaysia in the bud and that the Americans eventually adopted in Iraq. (RELATED: Minnesota and the New Nullification Crisis)
Emerging British doctrine saw that the best way of disrupting a revolution early was by political and police action rather than going straight to military involvement, which might further inflame the situation. That is a lesson we might keep in mind before resorting to military intervention in Minneapolis. The problem we face in cities like Portland and Minneapolis is that the local police are forbidden to assist in addressing the situation. The worst of the worst are then safely submerged in the sea of the immigrant population. They are, in turn, abetted by outside agitators; in this case, by leftist organizers. This leaves ICE and other federal agencies alone to deal with the problem by themselves. This is contrary to the situation we faced early in Iraq when we stupidly disbanded the Iraqi police as being incurable Ba’athists.
I would suggest that the feds adopt classic counterinsurgency tactics.
How then should we proceed before committing federal troops? I would suggest that the feds adopt classic counterinsurgency tactics. Quite frankly, what they are doing now is exacerbating the problem. I have been involved in four insurgency situations. Some have been handled fairly well, and others poorly. Below, I will offer some suggestions on best practices I’ve seen employed.
First, try community policing.
This is what local cops should be doing, but are not allowed to in the case of immigration enforcement. A first principle of good counterinsurgency is to separate the bad guys from the law-abiding population. This means a 24/7 police presence in the target areas. ICE should rent places in the area to use as neighborhood bases of operation. Security in these outposts should be tight, but agents should be walking the streets in small groups without riot gear. ICE presence should be noticeable, but should not be patrolling in body armor, which should only be used in targeted raids where armed resistance is expected. A few agents at a time, in ICE windbreakers, talking to shopkeepers, locals, and police, and attending community meetings, makes it much safer to approach and pass on information about criminal elements. Eventually, the agents will find it much easier to target the real bad apples.
By establishing patrol bases in a neighborhood backed up by reaction forces in 2007, the Americans learned not just the Iraqi lay of the land but to recognize when things were not right. Just as American soldiers learned to recognize Sunnis from Shiites, federal agents will eventually be able to differentiate the good citizens from the bad actors and outside agitators. Minneapolis is not Baghdad, and the threat level is not nearly so high, but urban neighborhoods all have their individual character. Becoming part of the community helped turn the situation around for U.S. forces.
Where possible, ICE should help with day-to-day community exigencies. Helping residents shovel snow in places like Minneapolis may seem like a small thing, but it would assist in lowering the tension. It is hard to abuse someone who just helped get your car out of a snowbank or gave you help charging a dead battery. Attendance at community meetings, sporting events, and school presentations will eventually let the agents be seen as part of the landscape. Most residents do not want hardened criminals in their neighborhoods, but are afraid to be seen talking to squads of heavily armed federal agents. In most cases, this fear is warranted. They are likely to be targeted by leftist protesters or by criminal elements in the immigrant community.
Mass arrests and sweeps are counterproductive.
As reporter/historian Tom Ricks points out in his book The Generals, mass arrests and detentions in the early stages of the Iraq occupation made more enemies and created more insurgents than they eliminated. Not only did they lead to the debacle of Abu Ghraib, but the overwhelming amount of interrogations -even by torture- yielded no actionable intelligence.
If ICE establishes an ongoing presence in urban neighborhoods, it will eventually pay off in a higher and better quality of detentions, arrests, convictions of actual criminal immigrants, as well as the deportation of naturalized American citizens who have abused the privilege of citizenship by engaging in criminal activities.
Winning the information battle.
The highly organized and media-savvy leftist opposition is winning the information battle by deliberately provoking ICE and other federal agents into overreaction and then portraying them as jackbooted thugs. Recent polls show a decreasing support for immigration enforcement and ICE as an organization.
Better intelligence would allow targeted raids on the residences of real criminals by in-and-out raids at night. This would lower the opportunities for the left to foment incidents and public confrontations.
In Iraq, it took four years for our military to adapt to a counterinsurgent strategy. The initial shift of approach by General Petraeus was riskier than the domestic immigrant situation, as the leftists had not yet begun to employ lethal violence as a policy. A counterinsurgency approach would make that shift on their part much less appealing.
The long-term fly in the ointment here is that the Trump administration still maintains the ultimate objective of getting rid of all immigrants who entered the country illegally. It will be hard for ICE to square that circle. However, if President Trump and Secretary Noem can show real success in getting rid of the worst of the worst among the immigrants in a quantifiable manner, it might give the president top cover to modify current policy in a way more acceptable to the American public. A new approach would require patience. We did not turn Iraq around overnight, but the results justified the strategic change. Right now, ICE is using a hammer. What is needed is a scalpel.
READ MORE from Gary Anderson:
If We Want to Help the Iranians, We Should Disrupt the IRGC
Regime Modification in Caracas
Stop Building Battleships, Start Building Fear
Gary Anderson observed counterinsurgency operations in Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Iran. He was the first to state publicly that there would be an Iraqi insurgency as Baghdad fell in 2003 in a Washington Post op-ed.
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
