Border Renditions: Slave Patrols, Secret Police, and Salvation

Are ICE renditions reminiscent of slave patrols or Nazi Gestapo? The answer to this timely, critical question is a bilateral yes. Comparisons of ICE and DHS tactics which link them to the consolidated police power of Nazi Germany and to slave patrols in the United States bear much fruit by way of historical analogy. Yet one must also recognize the white supremacist political theology shared by both of these historical precedents if one is to appreciate the gravity of ICE renditions in the 21st century. This paper explores the anti-Black necropolitical theology of chattel slavery and demonstrates its genetic link to Nazi fascism through Jim Crow, before demonstrating the continuity of both with contemporary secret police in the US. The paper simultaneously traces the role of white Christian nationalist imaginaries that, in turn, must give way to a Christian abolitionist politics of friendship.