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EXPOSED: How Israel is Directly Connected to ICE // Katie Halper
Katie Halper | Trusted Newsmaker
Inside the Security Pipeline Linking Israel, ICE, and U.S. Operations Abroad
When former U.S. Army Green Beret Anthony Aguilar decided to speak publicly, he did not frame his account as ideology or opinion. He described it as a matter of record. What he claims to have witnessed overseas, particularly in Gaza, mirrors tactics now appearing inside the United States through immigration enforcement and domestic surveillance. His testimony, supported by public training records, government contracts, and reporting from Latin America, points to a shared security model operating across borders.
This investigation examines how counterinsurgency methods developed abroad have migrated into U.S. domestic enforcement, and how Venezuela, Gaza, and immigration policing are increasingly connected through shared doctrine, training, and political intent.
A Whistleblower From Inside Special Operations
Aguilar served in U.S. Army Special Forces, where he worked closely with allied military units during overseas deployments. According to Aguilar, his breaking point came after observing Israeli military practices tied to civilian areas and humanitarian infrastructure. He alleges civilians were directed toward aid locations that later became lethal zones, resulting in mass casualties.
Aguilar says the most disturbing aspect was not a single incident, but the normalization of these tactics. Civilian harm, he argues, was treated as operationally acceptable so long as strategic objectives were met. Video evidence circulated publicly following these events intensified scrutiny, showing civilians killed in areas described as safe.
Training Exchanges and Shared Doctrine
Records show that Israeli security agencies have conducted training programs with U.S. law enforcement for years, often framed as counterterrorism cooperation. These programs include crowd control, surveillance, intelligence gathering, and population monitoring techniques developed in occupied territories.
Former officials and civil liberties groups say those tactics did not remain overseas. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has increasingly adopted militarized approaches, deploying advanced surveillance, intelligence fusion, and rapid-response enforcement units. Journalists and activists documenting ICE activity report being monitored, photographed, and followed, behavior previously associated with foreign counterinsurgency environments.
From Gaza to U.S. Cities
Aguilar argues the similarities are not accidental. He describes a feedback loop in which tactics tested on foreign populations are refined and reintroduced domestically. In this model, civilian communities are treated as potential threats rather than constituents, and enforcement shifts from rule-based policing to control-oriented operations.
Legal experts warn this blurs constitutional boundaries. Practices designed for war zones do not translate cleanly into civilian law enforcement without eroding protections for speech, press, and assembly.
The Venezuela Connection
Journalist Camila Escalante’s reporting on Venezuela provides a parallel case study. Her investigations document how sanctions, covert operations, and information campaigns are combined to destabilize governments targeted by Washington. She describes Venezuela as a long-running laboratory for hybrid warfare, where economic pressure, psychological operations, and selective force work in tandem.
Escalante argues that these same mechanisms increasingly appear domestically. Protest movements, migrant communities, and independent journalists are subjected to surveillance, narrative framing, and intimidation that closely resemble foreign operations once reserved for adversarial states.
Criminalizing Dissent
A central theme emerging from Aguilar and Escalante’s accounts is the redefinition of dissent. When protest, migration, or journalism is framed as extremism or national security risk, extraordinary enforcement becomes easier to justify. Aguilar points to ICE surveillance of reporters and activists as evidence that this shift is already underway.
Press freedom organizations note that intimidation does not require arrests to be effective. The mere presence of armed federal agents documenting journalists can chill coverage and discourage scrutiny.
A Security Model Without Borders
The evidence suggests the issue is not one agency or one country, but an expanding security framework shared among allied governments. This framework prioritizes control, intelligence dominance, and rapid suppression over civil liberties. Once normalized abroad, these practices face few barriers to domestic adoption.
Aguilar describes Gaza, Venezuela, and U.S. immigration enforcement as interconnected fronts of the same system. “These are not separate stories,” he says. “They are the same playbook, used on different populations.”
The Cost of Exposure
Speaking out has carried consequences for Aguilar, including professional backlash and public attacks. He says those risks are outweighed by the danger of silence. As security cooperation deepens and oversight weakens, he argues, transparency becomes the last line of defense.
The question raised by these revelations is no longer whether foreign counterinsurgency tactics are coming home. The evidence suggests they already have. The remaining question is whether democratic oversight will reassert itself before emergency powers become permanent features of everyday governance.
