as the article notes, the thing about this fearmongering campaign is that there's no evidence it will work. Trump tried it in 2018 and it flopped. polling doesn't indicate that people are responding positively to this fashy cosplay https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/us/politics/trump-portland-federal-agents.html

the reason, I think, is that—as @DLind wrote long ago ago—Trump has only one note to play when he's called upon to look like a Leader: Immigrants Are Coming Across The Border To Kill You. He wants reelection; reelection requires looking like a leader; so we pull out IACATBTKY

The difference is that IACATBTKY has now become a kind of all-purpose floating anxiety that isn't actually attached to the border as such or immigrants as such, but rather encompasses any perceived threat or dissent

The other piece of the puzzle is that Trump is under threat and wants to FEEL big and strong, and the only way he knows how to do that is by acting like a dictator