There are masked men rounding people up in America.
Not in the dark corners of conspiracy, not in some dystopian sci-fi film—but in real time, right now. They’re staked out at schools, loitering near courthouses, sitting idle outside immigration offices. But they’re not there for everyone.
They’re there for the brown and the Black.
They know exactly where to look. And who to ignore.
Ain’t nobody raiding Canadian expats in Aspen. No boots in white Polish neighborhoods in Chicago. Not a whisper in German enclaves out West. These “operations” are surgical—targeted racial enforcement dressed up in paperwork.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t recognize the formation.
These aren’t just ICE agents. These are the new paddy rollers.
Back in the 1700s, paddy rollers—short for patrollers—were groups of white men, often masked and mounted, deputized by the state to control, capture, and kill enslaved Africans. Their job? Enforce white order. Police the movement of Black flesh. Intimidate. Deter. Destroy.
And their authority wasn’t rogue—it was legal. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 codified their power and enlisted white society into the hunt:
“All good citizens are hereby commanded to aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution of this law…”
—Section 5, Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
It didn’t just empower patrollers. It deputized everyday whiteness.
And it came with incentives:
“The commissioner shall receive ten dollars if he shall deliver the fugitive into the custody of the claimant, but five dollars…if the alleged fugitive shall be discharged.”
—Section 8
Ten dollars for sending a person into bondage.
Five dollars if they walked free.
That’s not justice—that’s a bounty.
And what followed was predictable:
Free Black people were often kidnapped off northern streets and sold South.
No due process. No papers. No chance.
Their skin was evidence.
And that history should stop you in your tracks. Because here we are again, watching the same structure shapeshift—into ICE raids, task forces, and militarized border units.
Today’s enforcement agents still get paid to round up bodies.
Today’s private detention centers still profit per detainee.
And today’s “good citizens” still call the tip lines, nod quietly, or turn the other way.
Let me say this plain:
If you’re a Black American watching this thinking “that’s not my fight,” you better wake up.
We are not protected. We are not privileged.
We. Are. Next.
You think these patrols will stop with brown immigrants?
You think a country that built an entire legal system to enslave and surveil you just forgot?
History doesn’t misfire—it reloads.
And it’s reloading right now.
California protesters have taken to the streets in righteous anger—and what’s the response? The National Guard. The threat of U.S. military force. For protesting. For standing up. For resisting.
You know what they call that?
Control.
Same as it ever was.
Masked men, sanctioned by the state, showing up where the darkness meets the law.
And here’s the part we need to name out loud:
Some of these newly deputized ICE agents and private contractors are very likely the same men who stormed the Capitol on January 6th.
They didn’t disappear—they just put on new uniforms.
They failed to overthrow the government, so now they’ve joined it.
Think about that. The same energy that brought nooses and zip ties into the halls of Congress is now rounding up brown families with a badge and a clipboard.
White grievance doesn’t dissolve—it gets reassigned.
It gets funded.
It gets federalized.
They’ve always had a badge, a mask, and a target. And they’ve always bet on us forgetting.
But this time, we remember.
We see them.
We write it down.
Because this time, they don’t get to control the narrative.
