The new “America First” ethos combines that same dual dynamic of narrowing down and raising up. Since its beginnings in 2003, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has grown into a poorly trained, lavishly funded paramilitary force with a stated mission to purge the country of so-called undesirables. It recruits explicitly on the basis of enthusiasm for far-right conservative politics.

The Department of Homeland Security uses imagery associated with white nationalism in its messaging. The force was, until last week, occupying a major US city in an operation explicitly labelled as a “surge”—a name evoking American military action in Afghanistan—conducting door-to-door raids in search of anyone who does not meet the arbitrarily changing definition of what it means to be a resident in good standing in America.

These dynamics are laid bare in each fresh outrage that occurs.