Roaming Charges: Masked and Anonymous
Still from a video posted to X of the ICE raid in Camarillo, California, that resulted in the death of a farm worker.
We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on earth, when we’re not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarized republic.
– Gore Vidal
George Retes was pulled over by ICE as he was driving near the violent raid on farm workers outside of Camarillo last Thursday. The ICE agents broke the windows of his car and pepper sprayed him, before taking him into custody. Retes is an American citizen and disabled US Army Veteran. He was held in federal lockup for four days , during which time his family and lawyer had no way of contacting him to find out where he was or inquire about his physical condition. He was released without charges on Sunday night. Is this what Thomas Homan meant when he told FoxNews that ICE can stop people based on their skin-color and “briefly” detain them without a warrant or probably cause until ICE is satisfied they’re American citizens?
George Retes: “Clearly it didn’t matter that I was a citizen, or a veteran, or that I identified who I was. They ignored everything I said, and they just they broke my window and they dragged me out. I let them know that I was a veteran and I wasn’t doing anything wrong, that I’m just trying to get to work.”
Reporter: Congressman, do you care if U.S. citizens accidentally get detained in ICE raids?
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): “No, I’m not concerned about that.”
A 35-year-old Irish tourist to the US had overstayed his visa by three days, when he was arrested by ICE, in the closing weeks of the Biden administration. Although he’d agreed to immediate deportation, he somehow he got buried in the system or lack thereof and was moved around to three different facilities after Trump took office. Because the detention centers were now overflowing, Trump’s ICE made a deal to lease prison beds from the Bureau of Prisons in Atlanta, where he was sent with dozens of other unfortunate souls abducted by the masked secret police. He languished there for more than three months in conditions he described as inhumane. Bunkbeds lacked ladders, the cells were teeming with mice and cockroaches, the prison clothes he was given were stained with shit and blood. The toilets didn’t flush, he was denied medication and doctor visits and fed “disgusting slop.” When he finally got his medicine, the prison guards threw it on the ground instead of handing it to him. “We were treated less than human.” After finally being released in March, he was deported to Ireland and banned from entering the US (where he’d come to visit his girlfriend) for 10 years.
A man posing as a bondsman rang the doorbell of a house in Arlington, Virginia near midnight. He began asking strange and misleading questions about the residents’ mother before pulling out a gun and forcing his way into the house. The man flashed a letter from ICE, but showed no ID or badge. He rummaged through the house, broke into a bedroom, threw a young woman and her uncle Orlando on the bed and asked for ID. He then handcuffed Orlando, who had been living in the US working construction for 20 years, marched him to his car, sedated him, and drove him around for several hours until the ICE office in Chantilly, Virginia to open. Orlando was deported a couple of days later to Honduras before the family could even contact a lawyer.
A CNN poll shows support for Trump’s handling of immigration has collapsed, suffering a 19% point net swing in just five months…
Until the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Tennessee, like most southern states, made it a crime to help runaway slaves. Now it is going to criminally charge anyone who provides shelter to noncitizens. The law, which into effect on July 1, bans anyone from providing “shelter” to undocumented immigrants. Churches are even prohibited from providing services to noncitizens. The law also makes it a felony for local government officials to cast votes for “sanctuary cities,” with a penalty of up 6 years in state prison. One woman told CBS News: “My husband is undocumented, and together we have built a life in Tennessee. This bill criminalizes me just for living with him.”
Neither the state of Florida nor the Trump administration are releasing the names of the detainees locked up in cages at Alligator Auschwitz. But the Miami Herald got the list and published it today so that families and their lawyers at least know where their loved ones and clients are. In addition, the Herald’s reporters were able to document that 100s of detainees being held in these wretched conditions have no criminal record, despite the slanders made against them by Trump, Noem and DeSantis, who claimed the concentration camp in the Glades was for “vicious…deranged psychopaths”…Nearly 1/3 of the detainees have no criminal record and many of those who do have a record committed nothing more serious than driving and parking violations.
What’s going on in Florida (and elsewhere) now, where people are being racially profiled for traffic stops, then sent to places like Alligator Auschwitz without any notification of where they are or why is called is called “enforced disappearance” and it’s illegal under international law, which, thanks in part to Joe Biden, the US no longer even pretends to abide by (if it ever truly did)…
Masks for secret police, but not for public health!
ICE lawyers aren’t wearing masks to court (so far) but they might as well be. More and more ICE lawyers who appear at hearings to argue for the deportation of noncitizens and asylum seekers are refusing to give their names and, according to the Intercept, many immigration judges are letting them get away with it.
When the mask slips: Isaiah Hodgson, the ICE agent who arrested 2 U.S. citizens, including 20-year-old Adrian Martinez at Walmart and Job Garcia at Home Depot, is accused of entering the women’s restroom and approaching a female while intoxicated and armed with a handgun and a firearm magazine.
YouGov poll: 71% of Americans oppose ICE agents wearing masks.
Los Angeles Daily News: “In a scene described as “barbaric”— some two dozen children with their hands chained were videotaped shuffling single file in ICE custody. Jorge-Mario Cabrera of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles said that its attorneys had confirmed details posted with the video. The attorneys contacted the children and planned to represent them—adding the children were not accompanied by their parents.”
Malcolm Harris: “Pretty bad that all the big American cities officially offer sanctuary to immigrants because that is the supermajority position of the people living there, but not one municipal administration has enough control over their security forces to make good on the promise.”
By scrutinizing rendition flight manifests, a new report from 404 Media increased the number of people deported by Trump to El Salvador and imprisoned in Buekele’s CECOT concentration camp without trial to 281, 42 more than originally reported by CBS News. Many, if not most, of these people entered the US legally through official ports of entry, identified themselves to immigration and requested asylum. Some of their families only learned their relatives had landed in that foul Salvador prison after they saw their CECOT prisoner photos online. They received no notifications from the Trump administration. They were, in other words, disappeared.
Greg Gutfeld: “You know what? I’ve said this before, we need to learn from the blacks. The way they were able to remove the power from the n-word word by using it. So from now on it’s: What up, my Nazi? Hey, what up, my Nazi? Hey, what’s hanging, my Nazi?” Gutfeld, the former comedian whose nightly routine on Fox (at an annual salary of $7 million) has become that of bitter old white man, doesn’t have to act the part. He can play it with authenticity.
Bus drivers in LA have vowed to close their doors on ICE to keep immigrant riders safe. “I’m not going to open my doors, regardless if there’s retaliation or not. I’m going to do what is right,” a driver named Jaime told LA Public Press. “If I don’t stick to my beliefs, I’ll be failing [my immigrant mother] and I’ll be going against everything I stand for and come from.”
The US government has collected the DNA of approximately 133,000 migrant children and teens and added it to a criminal database. Even though these kids haven’t committed any crimes, they’re liked to be treated by police as suspects for the rest of their lives. Hope none of these kids get........
© CounterPunch
