ICE Atrocities And The Resistance: A Roundup!
ICE times, not nice times.
Since Donald John Trump was somehow elected and inaugurated 47th president of the United States, ICE has become its own military force, richer than most of the armies of the world. The Bountiful Blowjobs For Billionaires Act allocated $75 billion to ICE over the next four years, a largesse that surpasses the annual military budgets of Iran, Turkey, Spain, Mexico, Iran, and at least 23 countries in the top 40 military spenders.
And this force is intentionally, purposefully lawless, from again and again rushing deportees to foreign prisons as fast as possible to get them beyond the reach of judges, down to telling its masked agents that they have a “constitutional exception” letting them detain US citizens for bullshit reasons, and to gas protestors, journalists, priests, local EMS and law enforcement, and children at a Halloween parade, whoever and whenever they want, with no warning. And, witnesses say, ICE will punish anyone internally who speaks up.
And the purging of any ICE agent who speaks up (or isn’t reaching arrest quotas) seems to be going down right now. NBC reports that Special Government Official/DHS head Kristi Noem’s everything, Corey Lewandowski, has submitted a list to Trump of regional leaders at ICE that he wants fired and replaced with Border Patrol people, amounting to a takeover of ICE by Border Patrol, led by Gregory Bovino. Get a load of this guy.
You may remember him from terrorizing and roughing up fruit pickers in Southern California, and now he’s moved on up to Chicago! Which is considered part of “the Border,” meaning that ICE doesn’t need warrants to stop people, not that it’s kept ICE from doing that anywhere anyway. And thanks to Brett Kavanaugh and his five ghoulish friends on the Supreme Court, racial profiling is just fine, too. So ICE has been terrorizing and bullying any slightly swarthy resident, and anyone who pushes back against their neighbors being dragged off into vans by masked men. You ANTIFAs were worried about the government going around checking papers? They don’t even do that! Throw them in the paddywagon, and ask questions later.
Christ, it’s awful.
The elderly, crippled, pregnant, walking across a Walmart parking lot while brown, ICE doesn’t care. Pregnant, bleeding out from a miscarriage, they will shackle anyone. Gotta make Stephen Miller’s monthly quotas!
And speaking of traumatic treatment, the president of South Korea, by the way, says that all factory construction in the US will now be “significantly postponed” following the arrest and detention of its workers by ICE, and how workers now refuse to go back to the US, as they’ve been given no assurances the same thing won’t happen again.
Which would seem to leave the $350 BILLION-with-a-B in investment money South Korea pledged to Trump in July in exchange for a lower tariff rate now hanging in limbo. But what does Trump care? His vision for the US’s future seems to be not unlike North Korea’s, an angry, isolated state tilting at foreign-enemy windmills while spying and making war on its own citizens, buying his family designer purses while everybody else starves.
And make no mistake, the regime sees this as a WAR against not only undocumented immigrants, but all of the citizens. From AI Trump crouching in front of a burning Chicago skyline or spattering citizens with poop, to Pete Hegseth calling the Chicago operation “Operation Midway Blitz” in homage to the Battle of the Midway. Where my ANTIFA grandpa was killed, as it happens.
And it will continue on, Trump says, if cities want to be invaded or not.
But a lot of people are not fucking having it.
Federal Judge Sara Ellis has five hours worth of questions for Gregory Bovino today, and some queries for two of his underlings, too. Like, why does ICE keep tear-gassing people, including BOVINO HIMSELF tossing a tear-gas canisters at elderly people with no warning, and against her order? And it would seem that agents have not been following her order to keep their body cameras on, either. Follow along at the Sun-Times!
And in the case of troop deployments to Portland, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals changed its mind and is keeping federal troops out for now, following the DOJ getting busted LYING to the court about the number of National Guard troops that had been deployed to Portland. Why might have they done that? Could it be to try to subvert a court order by claiming that there was no troop buildup, and that hundreds of troops were already in Portland when they weren’t? They’re having an en banc hearing about it!
No matter what the regime claims, though, Gregory Bovino, Pam Bondi et al. cannot rewrite the law. At least not until the Supreme Court’s six conservative ghouls leap in from their shadow docket to do that! But until that dark day, agents breaking the law are still breaking the law, and Bovino could still personally be held accountable for contempt for defying a court order on camera, God and the Supreme Court willing.
And, DHS is still trying to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that poor innocent father who got rushed to El Salvador against a court order, though they haven’t succeeded yet. Now they want to send him to Liberia, even though Abrego Garcia has said he is fine with being sent to Costa Rica.
“Any insight you can shed on why we’re continuing this hearing when you could deport [Abrego Garcia] to a third country tomorrow?” Judge Paula Xinis asked government attorneys. They did not, as it wouldn’t help them any to pipe up, “the cruelty is the point, your honor!”
ICE is masked and flaunting court orders because they know what they’re doing is illegal, and wrong, and that they would be frozen out of dating apps and polite society if everyone knew that they were terrorizing children and old people all day. The regime knows that accountability someday is a real possibility, and that’s why they’re trying so hard to avoid it. As much as Pam Bondi keeps huffing and puffing she’s gonna LOCK UP Nancy Pelosi or Lori Lightfoot or whoever gets in ICE’s way, RR GRR!
Our brain is full now, so let us conclude with these young volunteers in Chicago! Volunteers like them have been trailing ICE teams there and in other cities, trying to warn people, and filming. And protestors keep showing up, everywhere that ICE is.
Keep up the filming! Keep the evidence! Filming shouldn’t bother them if they’re not doing anything wrong, right?
[NBC]
Every regime that loses its soul starts by convincing itself that cruelty is law enforcement. What’s happening with ICE isn’t immigration policy; it’s the normalization of dehumanization. Once the state learns it can gas citizens and call it patriotism, the border moves inward.
Blessed be the ones who keep filming, who keep naming what power wants forgotten.
ICE is practicing Authoritarianism the right way.
By Ezra Klein