February 3, 2026

Unsupervised ICE: Built for Violence as Hiring Surge Overwhelms Supervision

I want to flag a new data-driven analysis because it puts hard numbers behind what is now visible across the country in the outcomes of ICE enforcement.

Over 2025, ICE rapidly hired thousands of new agents. In the process, three basic law-enforcement principles—standard safeguards meant to prevent abuse—were willfully set aside during the hiring surge.

• New agent hires overwhelmingly lacked the promised prior law-enforcement experience and overall recruiting standards were lowered below customary norms.

• The training academy largely stopped filtering out recruits who should not be in the field.

• First-line supervision was allowed to collapse, as documented in today’s article.

Using public OPM workforce data, I tracked ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations month by month through 2025. In just nine months, the ratio of agents to first-line supervisors jumped from about 6 in February to more than 11 by November. At the same time, the share of agents with less than one year on the job exploded from under 3% to more than 25%. Project numbers forward to December 2025, and you are looking at roughly a 12-to-1 ratio with about one-third rookie agents.

That means fewer experienced supervisors trying to manage far more inexperienced agents—exactly the conditions that lead to abuse and loss of control.

This piece is Part 3 of a series, but it stands on its own and includes all the data, tables, and sources.

Here is the full write-up:
https://newsletter.aprogressiveway.com/unsupervised-ice-built-for-violence/

Curious what others here think about the supervision numbers, and how they connect to the hiring and academy failures in Parts 1 and 2. I know charts and ratios do not help people already suffering at the hands of ICE, but my hope is that this work helps opponents fight more effectively—politically and historically—against what has happened under Trump.

January 29, 2026

Everyone Graduates ICE Killing Academy

Two out of three recruits who once would have washed out are now put in the field

In Part 1, I showed that 66.5% of ICE's surge hires have no discernible prior law enforcement experience —contradicting the administration's claim that 85% are seasoned professionals. But even if ICE is hiring people with no police background, maybe the training academy catches the problems? Maybe the accelerated 6 days a week for 8-week ICE Academy crash boot camp course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) weeds out those who should not carry a badge and a gun?

What do you think?

Among ICE officers who left during their academy tenure, 74% quit. Only 26% were dismissed by the institution. This is not a good sign.

Normal law enforcement academies show the opposite pattern—the institution removes more people than quit. At ICE, the pattern is inverted—early exits are disproportionately voluntary quits rather than institutional removals.

What Academies Are Supposed to Do...

**snip**

January 28, 2026

Two-thirds of new ICE recruits likely have no prior law enforcement experience--here are the receipts

I understood ICE would be a serious problem the moment its toxically masculine acronym was announced in 2002. Two decades later, we have its roving SA troops in Minneapolis, killing two civilians during their federal 'enforcement' operations in the city.

ICE is now clearly a dangerous agency. And while ICE agents kill civilians, the administration's primary defense is that these are seasoned professionals rather than hastily assembled recruits, claiming 85% of its surge hires came in with prior law enforcement experience. But when agents with lethal force discretion are deployed into communities, claims about their experience are not merely spin - they are the administration's argument that the violence we experience is justified.

The data, however, tells the truth:

66.5% of ICE surge hires have no discernible prior law enforcement experience.


**snip**

January 15, 2026

Albert Speer Wants Design Credit for the Washington Commanders' New Stadium

Albert Speer Wants Credit

My first thought after seeing renderings for the proposed Washington Commanders NFL stadium was “Albert Speer.” The columns around the perimeter—they looked fascist. Fascist architecture creates building spaces massive enough that human scale is lost, symbols of ongoing oppression made of concrete and steel that say you are nothing within the state. These columns have less to do with supporting the roof and more with putting people in their place.

I may be biased, considering my long-standing belief Trump and his administration are all Hitler fans. So what if there are so many columns—perhaps it just reflects the neoclassical style ubiquitous in the District of Columbia? Trump likes columns, so HKS Architects put them in to keep him from making trouble on Truth Social. My reaction could just be the hair trigger I have for Trump’s Nazi connections.

Then, I found this May 2025 The Architect's Newspaper article —"Donald Trump’s 2027 NFL Draft plans for the Washington, D.C. National Mall echo stadium by Albert Speer."

I cannot describe Trump's NFL draft venue planning any better than the article itself:



**snip**

January 7, 2026

Could Greenland Join Canada? From Satire to Strategy

https://newsletter.aprogressiveway.com/send-michael-myers-to-greenland-on-secret-mission-revised/


Editor’s note (January 2026):
What began as Trump satire in March 2025 led to an unexpected question: if Greenland seeks independence, what forms could that sovereignty actually take—and why joining Canada may be the best option. Reader responses and follow-up research on my first article pushed its companion post into unexpectedly interesting territory. Given Trump's renewed attention to Greenland, it felt worth revisiting.

I wrote a piece a few days ago on Greenland joining Canada. Being no expert on either country, this began as pure Trump satire, not a genuine proposal. However, after cursory research to make the piece feel more real, this idea sounded, surprisingly, plausible. Readers had interesting notions and actual supportive replies.

What is independence really?

One thread in responses was that Greenland wants independence, not another country. This got my geek up concerning what independence means. Again, no expert, but as it stands Greenland, with home rule, is still a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark maintains sovereignty, controlling foreign affairs, defense, currency, and immigration, and could end self-governance because it granted self-governance. A first step to independence is cutting off Denmark’s sovereignty from Greenland, with the world’s recognition. After that, there are choices.

Greenland could go it alone as one of the smallest countries in the world, by population, with its vast exploitable resources. That does risk descent into oligarchy as extraction-based economies tend to do, if there is not a sovereign wealth fund to distribute benefits to everyone. Or, Greenland could use its newfound agency and choose to integrate into another country in a way that enshrines its sovereignty and provides the democracy its people want to live in. Admission to Canada would be a negotiated process where autonomy is the condition of joining the federation. And Canada, constitutionally, provides much more autonomy than would ever be possible as a U.S. state.

**snip**

January 6, 2026

Napoleon Dynamite and Why I Am Leaving Substack

https://newsletter.aprogressiveway.com/p/6bf0dfa1-1965-4e3e-ad40-5fccfdc5f7bc/



**SNIP**

December 31, 2025

Why Social Media Keeps Getting Worse: A 19th-Century Law Explains How it Happens.

https://erichensal.substack.com/p/the-science-of-enshittification-i

Back in 1834 at the University of Leipzig, Ernst Heinrich Weber had a question: how can we study human sensation like any other physical phenomenon? Until Weber, sensations were seen as too subjective to measure. Asking subjects “is this rock heavy” yields different responses based on a particular subject’s strength. Weber’s insight was to study how humans differentiate—is A heavier than B, or is C brighter than D? That was measurable.

Weber discovered that the smallest detectable difference between two sensations was not a fixed amount, but depended on the baseline comparison itself. Selecting the heavier between one- and two-ounce weights was easy, but choosing between 10 lbs. 1 oz. and 10 lbs. 2 oz. was not. The greater the stimulus, the greater the difference needed before a subject can tell the difference. That 19th-century observation now shapes how digital platforms, consumer products, and even political institutions change without provoking resistance.

Weber’s Law:

**snip**

December 26, 2025

ChatGPT Explains Why My Substack Numbers Suddenly Suck--and What This Means for Politics on Substack

https://erichensal.substack.com/p/why-this-newsletter-suddenly-feels

For some months now, I’ve had the uneasy sense that my Substack posts were being quietly throttled. Not censored, not blocked — just no longer surfacing to the kind of accidental tourists who once stumbled across the newsletter organically. At first I assumed this was a me problem: timing, topic choice, headline drift. Eventually, I did what any rational person does when confronted with an opaque system — I asked the algorithm of algorithms, ChatGPT.

After many chats over many weeks, a clearer picture emerged. Substack had changed in ways that legitimately contain posts like mine and fellow political posters into a smaller, more certain universe. I was going to write this up myself, but it’s the holidays, ChatGPT did the heavy lifting, and so: a guest column from ChatGPT

---

I’m writing this as a guest, which gives me the small freedom to say something impolite but, I think, useful: nothing is wrong with your writing. Something is wrong with the deal you thought you had with the platform.

**SNIP**

November 11, 2025

Is it ethical for Democrats to keep SNAP recipients in a protest without their consent?

]https://erichensal.substack.com/p/consent-for-protest?utm_source=democraticunderground&utm_medium=forum&utm_campaign=consent_for_protest&utm_content=discussion_post

How ethical is it to make children go without food for a political fight without any consent?

For every person talking about senators “caving” to Trump—you are not getting call after call about hungry children back home. If your voicemails were filled with people pleading for food, your attitude on “caving” would change if you could prevent that hunger. If a progressive screams about Schumer f’cking up without giving consent to protest serious thought, we must discuss ethics in political strategy—now.

It is immoral enough that shutdowns injure federal employees, putting them into difficult financial situations and creating unwarranted family stress. But within the civil service culture there has been for decades an understanding that shutdowns are always possible. These are never a surprise, giving workers time to plan and save to get through one. Then, at the end, federal employees will be paid. So, while powerless to prevent shutdowns and often forced to work without pay, it is, sadly, a hazard people knowingly accept when swearing their oath to the Constitution as civil servants. And we should thank them for their service.

For the rest of us, a shutdown presents a range of inconveniences we do not choose, from air travel reductions to closed national parks. However, Social Security checks go out and essential functions continue. But the trauma Trump inflicts on people receiving SNAP is different. Accepting SNAP benefits is not a political decision, but one made for survival. There is no history of SNAP being cut off during a shutdown. This is new ground to fight on, and people on SNAP did not sign up to fight in the first place.

**SNIP**

November 7, 2025

Why Passports have Sex -- Trump v Orr, SCOTUS, Bad Habits, and Imagination

https://open.substack.com/pub/erichensal/p/why-passports-have-sex

Why do we list sex at all on a passport? Obscure treaty obligations aside, what’s the benefit? Before photos and biometric data, sex helped confirm identity along with height or hair color. But are we still listing sex simply out of habit—one born more than a century ago?

“Habit is the flywheel of society,” said William James in his Principles of Psychology at the last century’s turn. For those less mechanical, a flywheel is a heavy wheel within an engine that is hard to get spinning but, once moving, keeps an engine’s power steady. Habit does the same for society—a set of routines we learn once, then repeat without thought. If, one day, everyone had to relearn how to bank, drive, or even when to say “good morning,” society would collapse.
Bad Habits

Social habit is necessary but also enforces oppression with a flywheel’s constancy. Consider Jim Crow. Southerners did not everyday carry an apartheid rule book on oppression; rather, they had expectations, received from their mothers and fathers, of Black folks’ place, and vice versa—this was the foundation for Jim Crow injustice.
Bias breeds bias

Progressives must see how habit holds onto our racism, sexism, classism, and every bias that oppresses someone else. People just hold onto habits and assumptions that feel so fundamental no one questions them. But questioning assumptions is critical for ending injustices. Let us take a simple, not life-or-death, example—why do girls play softball?

**SNIP**