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Roaming Charges: The Delicate Sound of Plunder

9 14
06.06.2025

Tocador de laúd grotesco, Jacques Callot,1621.

“If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.”

– Steven Wright

What’s happening here?

1. A hunter-killer team raid in Fallujah

2. An ICE raid on a taqueria in Minneapolis, MN

We were told that the deportations would focus on criminals (not students, children, and people who cut lawns, scrub floors, pick strawberries, or work construction) in order to protect public safety. But that was never the point. They were never going to achieve “mass” deportations by just targeting noncitizens with criminal records. According to the conservative Washington Examiner, at a recent meeting with DHS and ICE officials, Stephen Miller, irate at the “low” number of deportations, screamed: “What do you mean you’re going after criminals? Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” It’s not about “public safety” but a public spectacle of terroristic daily arrests of anyone, anywhere at any time…

Back in March, the Trump administration bragged about raiding a big Tren de Aragua gathering” in the Texas hill country outside of Austin. Forty-five people were taken into custody, including children. But they’ve said little about the big bust since. There’s a good reason: the gathering wasn’t a meeting of gang leaders, but a birthday party for a five-year-old boy. None of the people taken into custody by ICE had a criminal record. None of those arrested have been charged with a crime in the two months since their detention.

As Stephen Miller pushed immigration officials at DHS, Border Patrol and ICE to maximize arrests and detentions, internal ICE emails reveal that bureaucrats ordered officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11″ for arrests by interviewing and arresting “collaterals,” ie., people who ICE incidentally came across who were not the subject of any warrants.

Congratulations, ICEtroopers, looks like you took down a real menace to society: Martir Garcia Lara, age 10, and his father were detained and separated after they showed up for a hearing on their immigration status. “He’s alone and he’s not able to return home,” said PTA president Jasmin King. “We have not received any information on why they were detained. All we know is that Martir is just a fourth-grader who’s by himself, without his dad, without a parent, and just in a place that he probably doesn’t know, so we can only imagine what he might be feeling.” Martir has attended Torrance Elementary since the first grade.

ICE agents are posing as employees of electric power companies in order to gain access to people’s houses. (This is the crime of perfidy under international law.) Maybe this is the real reason the Trump administration wants more “electricians” instead of “LGBTQ Harvard grads”…

Real Community Policing…Bolt........

© CounterPunch