They’re there to “liberate” the people from their elected representatives.

…what’s even more significant than authorities detaining a U.S. senator for asking a Cabinet secretary a question at a news conference is Noem’s ominous remark immediately prior to Padilla’s interruption.

“We are not going away,” she warned. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

They are there to liberate “the city” from its elected officials. Not the people of the city but the city. The city is a Platonic essence, a glorious concept that rises above the dross of mere human flesh, so it must be liberated from the choices its ignorant population made. Noem and her enforcers are there to liberate LA the way the Nazis entered Paris to liberate it. Noem is not the Yanks entering Paris in their tanks and jeeps, Noem is that other team four years earlier.

When she says “we” are going to “liberate” Los Angeles from the “socialists” and the “burdensome leadership” of the governor and the mayor, is she merely talking about continuing with ICE’s sadistic, haphazard raids in which undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, including women and children, and even legal immigrants and U.S. citizens have been ensnared in the name of protecting the homeland from a fictitious foreign invasion of terrorists and hardened gang members? Or is the secretary speaking more literally and indicating the Trump administration intends to remove — or otherwise render moot — democratically elected state and local officials who oppose the federal government’s brutal incursion into their jurisdictions?

The meaning of what she said is quite clear – she means the latter. Whether she means it literally or not is less clear. It is not, however, so muddy that we don’t need to be afraid.