Fair Observer’s Video Producer Rohan Khattar Singh and Young Voices spokesperson Sophia Hamilton discuss the resurgence of political violence in the United States, mainly aggressive raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their conversation traces how immigration enforcement, expanding surveillance, collapsing dialogue and deepening partisan hostility have formed a single, combustible ecosystem. Hamilton argues that America is entering a period where institutional distrust, punitive rhetoric and social media pressure are equally eroding civil liberties and public safety.

Infamous ICE raids

Khattar Singh begins with the raids that have ignited the fiercest public backlash. Hamilton explains that the issue splits Americans into two camps: those who want undocumented immigrants “deported by whatever means necessary,” and those who view the raids as unlawful and indiscriminate. The turning point came when federal agents began detaining day laborers in broad daylight outside Home Depot stores in Los Angeles — not the criminals the government initially claimed it would target.

The agents’ appearance intensified public fear: Many wore face coverings, concealed identification or looked, as Hamilton describes, like “random men on the street.” When US President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines over objections from California’s state and local leaders, demonstrations exploded. Similar anger surfaced in other cities, amplified by the viral footage of a raid at the Hyundai Motor Company’s Georgia plant, where South Korean workers were arrested and deported.

The backlash has forced ICE to become more infrequent and covert. The raids continue, she says, but with far less publicity.

Khattar Singh and Hamilton turn to the deeper issue: a legal immigration system so slow and expensive that would-be applicants wait years, even as it remains comparatively easy to enter the country unlawfully. Hamilton stresses that violent offenders shouldn’t be on US soil, yet the current guerrilla tactics sweep up noncriminals, sometimes deporting people to countries they have little connection to. The gap between stated goals and actual outcomes drives fear and public distrust.

Rising surveillance in America

Khattar Singh shifts to a second trend: the tightening of US border scrutiny. Phones, social-media posts and political memes are now cited in visa denials, including a case where a traveler was reportedly barred after officers found a meme of US Vice President JD Vance.

This has triggered great concern that the US is drifting toward a surveillance-heavy model more associated with authoritarian states. Yet she believes the private-sector dimension is equally troubling. Americans have traded away control of their personal data to tech platforms, making it easy for the government to access information indirectly. Hamilton notes that many people “don’t really think about the security of their data,” or assume it is already so compromised that privacy no longer feels recoverable.

Free-speech norms, Hamilton argues, are deteriorating alongside these trends. Americans flip-flop because they support expression only when it aligns with their own views. This division creates fertile ground for censorship impulses on both the left and the right.

Polarization in America

Hamilton and Khattar Singh then examine why political seesawing has intensified. Using Virginia as an example, Hamilton highlights how federal dynamics can override party identity. The state’s large population of federal workers suffered job losses and months-long unpaid labor during the historically long government shutdown, which lasted from October 1 to November 12; Hamilton recalls constituents concluding, “I totally get it,” when they voted against the incumbent party.

This back-and-forth pattern mirrors a national cycle: Trump to Joe Biden to Trump again. With each shift, long-term policymaking becomes more difficult. Hamilton argues that continuity now comes from the administrative state — the vast bureaucracy of unelected officials who issue thousands of regulations annually while Congress passes only a handful of laws. She calls the system “ginormous” and “bloated,” and warns that delegating so much power to agencies the people didn’t elect distances government from democratic accountability.

The result, she suggests, is a country governed by permanent staff while elected leaders trade control every few years — a structure that exacerbates polarization rather than moderates it.

Politics on college campuses

The conversation closes with the place where polarization has turned deadly. The killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus, Hamilton says, should have been a national reckoning. Instead, many people celebrated it, including educators who later lost their jobs. For Hamilton, it proved that political hatred has merged with social-media performance culture.

She recalls watching members of Congress pursue “gotcha” moments on social media during hearings instead of listening to experts — behavior students inevitably model. On campus, that dynamic produces hostility rather than dialogue, with speech codes, disinvitations and ideological litmus tests tightening the space for open debate.

Hamilton argues that universities must begin by treating “all speech as equal,” regardless of ideology. Suppressing either side, she warns, fuels resentment and can escalate into violence. She also rejects the idea that speech itself is violence; words can lead to violence, but disagreement is not harmful. Cutting off friends or classmates over political differences, a trend she sees among young people across the spectrum, only deepens the divide and stunts personal growth.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.