The Anatomy of the Enabler: Why It Happens

The “American Quislings” are not just the politicians who trade principles for power and monetary gain; they are also the administrators and agents who act as the hands of a cruel administration. The tragic deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, or the scooping up for detention of a child in a bunny ears hat, are the physical manifestations of a toxic convergence of leadership and institutional culture.

Here is some of the psychology that seems to be at work in DHS and ICE…

Dehumanization - Brutality requires the psychological erasure of the victim. When leadership uses terms like “infestation” or “vermin,” it creates a cognitive shortcut, suggesting moral exclusion – the belief that certain groups exist outside the “moral circle” where rights apply. Harming them no longer feels like a crime; it feels like “cleaning up.”

Situational Power: The “God Complex” - As seen in the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, absolute authority over a powerless group can breed sadism. It revealed that asymmetry of power – the total control over food, sleep, and movement can make an officer feel entitled to use force to maintain dominance. There is a secondary consequence of the uniforms and gear helping officers lose their individual identity. They are no longer “Bob, the husband and father”; they become “The Authority,” a shift that reduces personal accountability.

“Us vs Them” - Isolation from the public can create a fortress mentality which invites retaliatory aggression. In this mindset, a lack of compliance is viewed as a personal attack on the “brotherhood” and brutality becomes a tool to “restore the natural order” of dominance. Moreover, when agents feel vilified, internal bonds strengthen, making loyalty to colleagues more important than legal or ethical standards.

Systemic & Peer Pressure - When officers are pressured to hit deportation numbers, human beings become “units” on an assembly line. Speed and volume are prioritized over safety and dignity. And officers who are privately horrified may remain silent, assuming that peers support the status quo. This silence can be interpreted by aggressive officers as permission.

Burnout & Compassion Fatigue - To survive high-stress environments, some officers “numb out.” When empathy is depleted, it is often replaced by cynicism and hostility. In this state, an officer may lash out violently because they have lost the ability to process the human stakes of their actions.

A Conclusion

With all those psychological factors at play - a cocktail of fear, addiction to power, isolation, and institutional conviction - it seems unlikely that an epiphany is going to flare up from the bottom. The machinery is built, intentionally or not, to keep individual conscience in check. It’s the Quislings at the top that we need to influence to change all this; only by transforming the leadership that rewards cruelty can we hope to heal the culture in the field.