CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Roaming Charges: When Farce Repeats Itself

“History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.” – Jean Baudrillard, The Agony of Power

“History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.”

– Jean Baudrillard, The Agony of Power

Put yourself behind the wheel of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero’s white Kia. You’re 25-years-old. You’ve been living in the United States for three years. You’ve played by the rules, as you understand them. You haven’t made trouble for anyone. You haven’t broken the law. You’ve tried to settle in.

You came to Maine from Colombia looking for a safer and fuller life for yourself, for your wife and your infant daughter, the girl you called your “little princess.”

You didn’t come to Maine to deal drugs, join a gang, rape or rob anyone or leech off the system. You came to work and make a new home for your family. You applied for and received a permit to work legally in the United States more than a year ago. The permit was authorized by the Trump-run government.

Your love for animals led you to get a job cleaning a veterinary clinic each morning. It wasn’t your dream job, but it was a good start for a good cause. It wasn’t enough to get by on, so you got a second job delivering groceries and food in the afternoon and early evening in your white Kia.

You were doing okay. Your daughter had just turned three. You and your wife, Karo, had made a new life for yourselves. The transition was a challenge, but you did it.  You and Karo were learning the language. Getting a good feel for the way of the land and the way things were supposed to work here. You were trying to fit in. You were starting to feel at home.

You felt safe here in coastal Maine. You’d heard about ICE. You’d seen the shootings and arrests and protests. But somehow here in Biddeford, you felt far removed from the terrors visited upon immigrants in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago. This was a quiet city. You and your neighbors cared about each other. You felt safe; you felt secure.

You grew up as a middle-class kid in Bucaramanga, Colombia. A big city in the mountains. Colombia had been through wars. It had been plagued by gang violence. Riven by political corruption. You’d been through it. Things were more stable now. But for how long?

You’d grown up playing soccer. You did well enough in school. You served in the Colombian military and survived the experience mostly unscathed. Your dad sold truck tires. You installed windows. You had a bulldog you cherished named Draco. But it just wasn’t enough. Not after you fell in love. Not after your daughter was born. You wanted a better life, especially for your kid. So, you took up a friend’s offer to come north to Maine and work for him.

You got up early Monday morning. You played with your daughter. You talked with your wife. You drank your coffee, ate your breakfast and got ready for work.

It looked like a nice summer day as you walked to your car. You started the engine, pulled onto the street and headed out to do your job.

You had no idea that ICE was coming for you. Why would you? You were here legally. You hadn’t committed any crimes. You weren’t wanted by law enforcement. There were no warrants out for your arrest or removal from the country.

Before you reached the first intersection, you were surrounded by cars and men with guns. They were shouting. Why were they shouting? What did they want? What had you done?

One of the men is pointing a gun at you. He says stop. You say you are trying to stop. You say it loud enough that a neighbor hears your voice. The man pointing the gun at you may hear it, too. Surely he does, doesn’t he? But this man doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know anything about you. That you’re here legally. That you’re on your way to work. That you just said goodbye to your daughter and her mother. This man doesn’t know that you’re not the man he’s looking for. But he doesn’t care. He’s got you in his sights and he’s not going to let you go. You hear a shot. It’s the last sound you hear before everything goes black. As your body slumped to the whole, your Kia kept going, in slow, aimless circles before coming to a stop.

Your wife and your daughter were in the apartment where you lived when they heard the shots that killed you. Your daughter dropped her pink backpack to the floor. Karo ran to the window. She saw the white Kia lodged against the curb. The windshield was shattered with bullet holes. Then she saw you. She saw your body, at least, flat on the pavement. Your body is all bled out. There’s a bullet wound to your head. “Mi amor, mi amor,” Karo screamed.

These men who shot you, who killed you, who murdered you, lied about you before they even knew who you were. They said you were “illegal.” They said they had a warrant to pick you up. You weren’t illegal. They didn’t have a warrant for you. You weren’t the man they wanted. They lied about you after they killed you. They said you tried to kill them with Kia. They said you were going to run over other people. They said they had no choice but to kill you. These men, these law enforcement officers, lied to cover their own asses. 

At 7 in the morning, the phone rings at your parents’ house in Bucaramanga. It’s the day of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, the patron saint of Colombia. The neighbors hear screams from your parents’ house. It’s your mother’s voice. She’s saying, “It can’t be. It can’t be. I’d give my life for my son. Why did they shoot him?”

Has any recent political movement been vindicated more decisively than the much-derided Defund ICE! campaign?

ICE claimed they shot 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, to protect the public from a speeding car. But shooting the driver in the head doesn’t stop a car; it merely stops them from steering or braking the car, putting the “public” in even more danger.

The ICE agent who shot Guerrero was a new recruit. There are 10,000 of these “new recruits”. And many of the seasoned “veterans” have only been around a year…

ICE has shot at least 17 people while they were inside their vehicles.

On Tuesday, Susan Collins told Maine voters that she had used her persuasive powers to convince ICE to place a moratorium on traffic stops. Trump just cut her off at the knees…The question is, who will Collins apologize to, Mainers or Trump?

Congress appropriated $20 million to equip all ICE agents with body cameras. None of them was in either Texas or Maine.

Reporter: The ICE agents who killed a person in Maine yesterday were reportedly not using body cameras. That’s despite DHS officials coming to Congress and repeatedly saying they want to expand body cam usage. Does there need to be accountability? Mike Johnson: Uh, I don’t know anything about this event. I was a little busy yesterday. You guys can mock me for not knowing that. I worked about 22 hours.

Reporter: The ICE agents who killed a person in Maine yesterday were reportedly not using body cameras. That’s despite DHS officials coming to Congress and repeatedly saying they want to expand body cam usage. Does there need to be accountability?

Mike Johnson: Uh, I don’t know anything about this event. I was a little busy yesterday. You guys can mock me for not knowing that. I worked about 22 hours.

Speaking of accountability, maybe Johnson’s son got the urge to watch a lot of porn last night and the Speaker had to stay up late talking him, uh, down, as part of their “accountability partner” agreement …

Sen. Ralph Norman: ICE agents are here to protect this country, to get the illegals out… PabloReports: But they’re shooting people in their cars on the streets— Norman: That’s your opinion.

Sen. Ralph Norman: ICE agents are here to protect this country, to get the illegals out…

PabloReports: But they’re shooting people in their cars on the streets—

Norman: That’s your opinion.

Either Senator Norman doesn’t believe ICE is shooting people in their cars on the streets, which is hard to believe, or he doesn’t believe the people ICE is shooting in their cars on the streets qualify as “people,” which is easier to believe…from him.

This is similar to the intellectual double-think posed by the politicians who supported the Fugitive Slave Act, where escaped slaves were accused of stealing themselves.

“I would shut down ops until we got a handle on shit,” an ICE official told PunchUp. “Not doing traffic stops. Not blocking the vehicles. If they run. They run. Find them later. Don’t force a bad position.”

ICE and the FBI tried to smear the innocent man they murdered in Houston by leaking to the press earlier this week that Lorenzo Salgado’s white van was transporting meth. But the bags of a “crystal-like” substance turned out to be a crystal-like substance known to the scientific community as…salt.

Fox News’ Jesse Watters appears to suggest that ICE is justified in shooting undocumented immigrants to keep them from voting Democratic. “We used to win landslide elections in this country. Remember Nixon? Remember Reagan? 49 out of the 50 states? All of a sudden, we bring in this foreign-born population, Democrats are all of a sudden competitive. They didn’t change how persuasive they were. They just imported everybody that lived outside of the country. That’s why they want them here.”

In the 20th century, the Democrats won presidential elections in 1912, 1916, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1960, 1964, 1976, 1992 and 1996.

Half of Trump’s cabinet members couldn’t pass a real “English test.” These people are likely to drive anyway and businesses are likely to hire them to do so, for even less money. But why would you want them to drive without licenses or insurance? In what bizarro world does that make sense?

Dave Matthews: “I don’t know why we let some people make excuses for why we should kill each other. There’s always reasons for why we should kill each other. I don’t know what’s wrong with us or why we’ve lost our way. Or maybe we’ve just always been like this. We just got better at making excuses to kill each other. This father and grandfather who was murdered by ICE in Houston, Texas. Then they say he’s not even the guy they were looking for. Well then, don’t pull the trigger, you assholes. It just makes me mad. I want to send this to the memory of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.”

Hegseth wants to force all members of the US military 30 and older to take testosterone tests, including women. How does this square with Hegseth’s views on bodily autonomy? Mandatory T-tests but not vaccines or flu shots!? Forget the Mindshaft Gap, America is losing wars because of a T-level gap with more manly-men countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea and Vietnam! (Soldiers getting lectured on their T-scores by Hair of the Dog Hegseth would make a great Monty Python sketch.)

What is the optimum T-level for a drone operator?

Rep. Tammy Duckworth on Hegseth’s Great Testosterone Hunt: “Well, it sounds like gender affirming care to me. So I’m glad he has come around to supporting gender affirming care.  Frankly, this is just more performative bullshit from the least qualified secretary of defense in our nation’s history. He’s failing at the war in Iran. He has no strategy. He has no plan. He needs to be focused on that and less on testosterone.”

Here’s Hakeem Jeffries’ letter announcing that he will vote against a resolution introduced by Thomas Massie that would cut off all aid to Israel, a measure that is supported by more than 70 percent of people who identify as Democrats…

In the end, nearly half (103) of the Democrats in the House,........

© CounterPunch