One can think of Trump's ICE raids and the program of mass deportation as a LAPSE into barbarism. The U.S. under MAGA has gone fascist.
One could also think of these assaults as a RETURN to colonialist origins, i.e., a continuation of longstanding programs and practices of cleansing, purification, and expropriation.
Perhaps we are seeing not a sudden departure from democracy, but a re-assertion of what Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has called "the US state religion."