Black people, like any other group, deserve to live in peace. But, far too often, racial profiling infringes upon that basic right. When someone assumes you’ve done something wrong simply because of your race or color, it makes day-to-day life more stressful. A Pew Research poll found more than eight out of ten Black people felt they were treated “less fairly than White people by police and the criminal justice system.” The problem isn’t new, as the tactics adopted by modern-day law enforcement clearly echo those established by slave patrols. However, the Trump administration amplified this problem by ordering National Guard and other federal officers to patrol cities. This boots-on-the-ground approach seems ironic in light of declining crime rates.
Officials have targeted cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and most recently, Memphis, Tennessee, where National Guard personnel were seen patrolling alongside police officers. “Trump has suggested sending troops to a handful more of cities, including New Orleans, New York City, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, and St. Louis, M.O., citing safety concerns,” according to reporting by Juliana Kim for NPR. This announcement highlights the depth and breadth of this initiative. While some have given the administration the benefit of the doubt, trusting they have the public’s best interest in mind, there’s a glaring contradiction between the social problem the administration claims we’re facing and the available data. For instance, “Trump says rising violence in the capital endangers the public. Still, the Department of Justice reported that violent crime is down by 35%, “a 30-year low.” This same pattern can be observed throughout the country.
For example, in Baltimore, where most residents are Black, “fewer people have been killed in the city for the last seven months than in any similar period in the last 50 years.” And in Chicago, a city that has been subjected to ICE raids and armed troops marching through the streets with military-grade weapons, homicides are down 32.3% and vehicular hijackings are down 49%, according to the mayor’s office. In New Orleans, there was a 60% drop in murder, and in Memphis, “overall crime is at a 25-year low,” according to those cities’ police departments. So, while the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that targeting these cities is simply an effort to keep citizens safe, the data suggest crime rates were already trending downward before their campaign. If this were a genuine effort, why haven’t officials considered publicly available data? What is this show of militarism really about?
To justify the increased presence of federal troops patrolling civilian areas, representatives of the administration have characterized their targets as dangerous. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said, “the gangbangers that you deal with, they think they’re ruthless. They have no idea how ruthless we are.” Such rhetoric is an effort to justify officers’ use of force and treat suspects as guilty on sight, overlooking their right to due process. Kash Patel, the Trump-appointed FBI director, used similar language, claiming the city of Chicago had an army of “110,000 gang members.” This is an over-generalization with racist connotations, given the racial makeup of the area. When someone assumes you’re not a citizen or that you’ve broken the law simply because of your race or color, you are more likely to be subjected to repeated stops and searches.
A recent Supreme Court decision has made it easier for federal authorities to adopt discriminatory methods. In Vasquez-Perdomo v. Noem (2025), conservative justices lifted a lower court’s ban on ICE agents targeting individuals based on “their apparent race or ethnicity,” the language they spoke, their location, and the type of work they performed. While the government’s litigation of this case was a direct effort to carry out the president’s mass deportation orders, such a policy opens the door for them to target Black citizens and other racial or ethnic minorities. A political analyst, John McCray Jones, suggested, “ICE agents now have the legal cover to stop, question, and detain people based on appearance, language, accent, workplace, or any other marker that ‘looks suspicious to them.”
Isn’t it illegal to discriminate?
The 14th Amendment established the “equal protection” clause, guaranteeing citizens equal treatment under the law, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations. However, racism persists in this country, particularly in the criminal justice system. Consider, for instance, that police have been given leeway to determine when they consider it “reasonable” to use force against citizens. A study published in the Boston University Law Review suggested the standards within constitutional case law are deemed “irrelevant in preventing racial disparities in use of force,” because “they fail to anticipate the circumstances of fatal police shoots (Fagan et al., 2020). Legal precedent has failed to protect Black citizens’ rights. So, while we often colloquially say that racial discrimination is illegal, proving ill intent, especially given the social grace afforded to police officers, remains an uphill battle. Despite Black citizens enduring more stops and searches, arrests, and more violence from officers, some deny that the system perpetuates racism.
ICE agents recently raided a Chicago apartment building where many Black people and immigrants live. They arrived on Black Hawk helicopters under the cover of night. A PBS report noted, “agents went door-to-door, woke up residents, and used zip ties to restrain them.” Robert Johnson, a Black American detained by ICE agents that evening, described his experience to reporters, saying they broke through his front door and refused to provide a warrant when he asked for one. They detained him along with others. Altogether, the group of masked federal officers arrested thirty-seven people and detained many others, separating small children, even those who were citizens, from their parents. While authorities claim they were searching for so-called “illegal immigrants,” reports suggest Black citizens were caught in the crossfire.
The author Toni Morrison once said, “In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.” Policies that treat White people as default citizens, and Black and Brown people as perpetual outsiders, seem to substantiate her claim. When the dust settled, many residents could prove they had legal status. Yet, this was secondary to the harassment some endured as a result of federal agents questioning their right to be here. The Fourth Amendment affirms “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” But there is nothing reasonable about judging someone based on their race or breaking into someone’s home without a warrant. Furthermore, these policies don’t instill a sense of security in black communities. On the contrary, this over policing robs them of the peace afforded to others.
The government could redirect funding from increased city militarization to underserved communities, building on the progress these cities have made in recent years. Instead, the current administration has proceeded, full steam ahead, with its boots-on-the-ground approach. Either leaders within Trump’s administration have failed to consider data from local police departments, which demonstrates that violent crime and theft are down in many of the areas where they’ve assigned troops, or they’re intentionally ignoring this information because doing so allows them to portray these cities as unruly and on the brink of open rebellion. Reports suggest some federal agents used “chemical agents near a public school,” and handcuffed “a Chicago city council member at a hospital.” We’ve seen tanks on the street, armed men. While the nation prides itself on being a global steward of democracy, the scenes are more akin to what we see in an authoritarian regime.
Trump suggested that leaders he disagrees with, such as Major Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, should be in jail due to their political differences with his administration. Johnson stated, “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested,” likely referencing the 1989 case, where authorities wrongfully accused young Black teenagers of raping a White woman in New York. At the time, Trump took out a full-page ad calling for the death penalty to be brought back and used in this case. He refused to apologize after DNA evidence exonerated them. The governor of Illinois referred to his tactics as “authoritarianism.” While his supporters have pushed back against that framing, how else would someone describe what’s unfolding in American society? It certainly isn’t a full-throated democracy or even a constitutional republic where the rights of citizens are equally protected. Civicus, an international alliance that promotes democracy, placed the United States on a human rights watchlist a few months ago, over concerns including “deployment of military to quell protests, growing restrictions placed on journalists and civil society,” as well as efforts to target anti-war protesters.
A Gallup poll suggested 83% of Black adults who were “dissatisfied with police-community relations where they live,” supported “major changes to policing.”
Black people deserve to live in peace, without a proverbial boot on their neck. But far too often, the racial profiling permitted in our society robs them of that simple entitlement. Black people are more than twice as likely to be killed during police encounters as white people. Police departments in Black communities are more likely to acquire military equipment, according to a study published in Criminology. Jump-out squads, specialized police units, have a reputation for aggressively targeting black communities, as well as those where other minorities live. These officers are typically in plain clothes and do not drive marked police vehicles. The DC Justice Lab suggested 94% of those stopped by these specialized units were Black, and that in two-thirds of cases, “no contraband was retrieved.”
After everything the nation has endured, it’s rather disappointing that some people continue to support racial profiling. In a just society, law enforcement would not target individuals based on their race or the color of their skin. Militarized police forces wouldn’t disproportionately target black communities or feel they could enter their homes without a warrant, as ICE agents reportedly did in Chicago. Black people have warned for generations that racism targeting citizens was a stepping stone to full-blown authoritarianism, that none of our rights are secured unless they all are. In his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, Martin Luther King Jr. noted that some Americans claimed, “democracy is not worth having if it involves equality. The segregationist goal is the total reversal of all reforms, with reestablishment of naked oppression and, if need be, a native form of fascism.”
Some people in this country do not believe in racial equality. As a result, they would readily abandon the tenets of democracy to maintain the status quo that affords White people privilege. Others, who adopt a colorblind racial worldview, overlook the impact of race. No matter how high into the sky research study findings and first-hand experience testimony are piled, they claim there’s nothing to see. To create a society where Black people live in peace, we must first confront the barriers they face in their communities, including racial profiling. As long as it’s socially and perhaps even legally acceptable for law enforcement to suspect individuals of being criminals or non-citizens based on their appearance, then we can’t say we’ve progressed as a nation.