Yes, soldiers are frequent perpetrators of atrocities and proud about comiting those atrocities. They are also easy to convince civilians are their enemies. Especially when frustrated, bored, hungry and sleep deprived.

It stems from leadership - and current leadership wants them to be like that. So, they will become like that.

Well they're training on that now. With rubber bullets they are breaking down the emotional barriers to pointing assault weapons at US Citizens, feeling the hate flow through them, and pulling the trigger

If you read 'ordinary men' or watch the documentary, basically anyone can be trained to even execute innocent people by putting them in a suit and promising to name call them or feed them worse food if they don't do it. Something like 2M jews were killed outside of the gas chambers by essentially regular citizens who would see no worse punishment than social shaming and less desirable duties for refusing, and whom didn't even really want the job in the first place.

'Illegal immigrants' however would sell better, especially if they were 'provocative'