As millions of Americans turn out today to tell Donald Trump HELL NO YOU’RE NOT A KING, his government keeps reminding us why we have to be out in the streets in front of our state capitols or town halls or wherever there’s room for us to make noise and be seen. (Find a rally near you!) Trump’s ICE fuckery and attempts to send military forces to protect us from dancing frogs and unicorns (oh, and free speech) continue, so let’s take a look at the latest developments.
The federal government doesn’t keep track of how many US citizens it grabs and detains, so the nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica said, “We’ll do that, then!” In a report released Thursday, ProPublica said it has found more than 170 cases (and counting) where immigration agents have detained citizens, in some cases roughing them up, ignoring identification showing they’re citizens, and even holding them for days without allowing them to contact family members or an attorney.
You know, it’s almost as if those “alarmists” were right when they said that if the government gets away with denying due process to immigrants, then there’s little to stop it from throwing American citizens in the slammer and ignoring their rights, too.
The piece begins, as it must, with a reminder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kegstand’s infamous proclamation last month that a little racial profiling is just fine, even if it results in citizens being wrongly arrested, because “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” And then everyone looked at him over the tops of their glasses like Tommy Lee Jones and said, “The fuck are you talking about? In what reality?”
ProPublica’s reporting adds to the mounting evidence that Kavanaugh is full of shit, as the term “Kavanaugh stops” works its way toward dictionary publishers’ December “Word of the year” lists, where it will be joined with the related term “Kavanaugh raids,” and eventually, inevitably, “Kavanaugh shootings” of US citizens. (Oh, wait, we’ve already had one of those, just not any deadly ones. Yet.) In a brief, brutal overview, ProPublica notes that Kavanaugh’s sunny assessment of ICE Officer Friendlies is “far from the reality many citizens have experienced.”
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.
About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones. […]
Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the family’s attorney until a congresswoman intervened.
Among the 170 citizens were at least 50 who were nabbed because federal agents questioned their citizenship; nearly all of them were Latino. And sorry, Justice I LIKE BEER, not all of them were immediately released with a smile and an apology because they were citizens.
But don’t worry, DHS Propaganda Minister Tricia McLaughlin offered a blanket statement: “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement.” So really, no problem.
The report also notes that DHS can arrest citizens who allegedly assault or interfere with officers; they make up the bulk of the detentions, about 130 cases, including several highly controversial arrests of elected officials. OMG the White House is right! There’s an epidemic of attacks on our brave … wait a damn minute:
These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. […] In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time.
OK, but the government alleged that they had assaulted officers, so all’s fair. Everyone’s probably guilty of something, as we all know.
It’s a damning report; you should go read the whole thing.
We missed this when it was published in September, but it’s worth mentioning since it’s on the theme of The Fuckers Always Lie: The judge in Rep. LaMonica McIver’s case released videos of the May 9 ICE clustercoitus outside a New Jersey detention center that resulted in the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. (The initial charges against Baraka were dropped when parking garage lawyer turned US Attorney Alina Habba decided to charge McIver with “assault on ICE goons” instead.)
Hey, guess what’s new in one of the videos? It turns out that, shortly before encountering Baraka at the entrance to the ICE facility, someone says to the arresting officer, Ricky Patel, “She wants to grab him,” which strongly suggests that orders from some “she” higher up told ICE to arrest Baraka before Patel and the other ICE Chuds encountered Baraka and decided, hmmm, he was … trespassing, yeah, that’s it! Here’s the relevant excerpt of the video, which starts inside an office before the goons head out to see the officials who were there, legally, to inspect the facility:
Start of video excerpt: Ricky Patel says, “I’m going to walk right to the Mayor now.”
0:18: Ricky Patel says, “you know me, I’m not saying no to shit.”
1:25, in the parking lot: someone else says, “She wants to grab him.”
Once the group finally encountered the officials, Patel threatened to arrest Baraka for “trespassing,” prompting one of the mayor’s aides to say “we got invited in,” which DOJ eventually said was the case.
Gosh, why won’t anyone believe this administration when it insists people are brutally assaulting and interfering with its brave immigration goons?
This story is originally from August, but it’s in the news again this week after social media went nuts about body cam video posted to YouTube, showing a tattooed guy claiming to be an ICE agent getting really snippy and racist with Miami County Sheriff Office (MSCO) deputies who pulled him over for drunk driving. With his two children, aged seven and nine, in his truck.
Scott Thomas Deiseroth, 42, was charged with DUI and two counts of child endangerment.
According to the sheriff’s office, another motorist called them the afternoon of August 13 to report a pickup truck driving recklessly near the Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys. Deputies who responded saw the truck “driving into oncoming traffic and swerving heavily,” and pulled it over, after which they said in their report they smelled “strong odor of alcohol.” Deiseroth also “misidentified his location and gave an erroneous travel direction,” but c’mon, we all get a little uncertain about where we are and which way we’re going on a long straight bridge over the ocean, don’t we?
Here’s a brief excerpt of Deiseroth being a total dick and talking down to the mere county cops, since he’s federal and obviously that make him more important. And yes, the guy can’t even stop himself racial profiling when he’s off duty and schnockered, yelling at one deputy several times, “Are you Haitian?” The other deputy tries to defuse the belligerent bigot, far more politely than necessary, saying, “it doesn’t matter where he’s from,” to which the big tough DHS shithead shoots back, “Yes it does.”
After he was arrested, the kiddos were collected by a family member, and MCSO said it reported the incident to the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Kristi Noem’s finest. If you can stomach it, the full video is on YouTube.
We’ll close with a couple of brief reminders that we do NOT have to put up with our rights being taken away by bullies who want to make the US a white ethnostate. On October 6, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson issued an executive order forbidding the use of city property by ICE — including a ban on letting the goons set up staging areas in parking lots next to city buildings, schools, libraries, and parks. As a follow-on, Cook County now has a similar executive order refusing the use of county facilities and properties, too. The order was signed Thursday by County Board Chair Toni Preckwinkle, and we’re fairly sure her name is neither from a Dickens novel nor generated by AI. She said the order was necessary to protect residents from federal mass deportation actions that have “instilled fear rather than promote fairness and justice.”
And at the federal level, we sure would like see a lot more members of Congress follow the example of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who on Friday demanded some answers from Kristi Noem about what actually happened in the October 4 shooting of US citizen Marimar Martinez in Chicago.
As Greg Sargent details at The New Republic, DHS has lied about damn near everything concerning the incident, in which Martinez was shot five times by Border Patrol agents, but fortunately didn’t come away with life-threatening wounds. DHS claimed agents shot her after being “boxed in by 10 cars,” but the criminal complaint says there were only two cars. DHS said she threatened the officers with a “semi-automatic weapon,” but the gun is nowhere to be found in the complaint, and there aren’t any gun charges against Martinez, either. (She’s charged with assault and attempted murder using a “deadly weapon,” but that appears to refer only to her car.) DHS claimed that Martinez drove herself to a hospital, but the complaint says she was taken in an ambulance.
For that matter, it’s not even clear Martinez actually threatened the agents with her vehicle. As the Chicago Sun-Times reports, Martinez’s attorney, Christopher Parente, said at a hearing that body-cam video (not released yet) showed
an agent turning a federal vehicle left into Martinez’s vehicle, after which an agent says, “Do something b—-.” The agent then exits the vehicle and shoots at Martinez.
Parente said Martinez had “seven holes” in her from the shooting and that agents were in such a hurry to take her into custody at the hospital that they had to return later when Martinez began bleeding from her wounds.
“I think there’s a danger to the community, but I don’t think it’s Ms. Martinez,” he said.
Murphy wants all that clarified, and he also wants to know whether rightwing shit-stirrer Laura Loomer was given photos of Martinez’s bullet-riddled car, which Loomer claimed on Twitter were obtained from a “DHS source.” Murphy is calling for the release of the body cam footage, and for any information the government has to back its claim that Martinez “doxxed” federal agents.
No, DHS isn’t going to comply with those requests. And Republicans in Congress won’t investigate. But Murphy is providing exactly the kind of pushback more Dems in Congress should be doing all the time. And how about we restore a Democratic majority to Congress next year, so they actually will have subpoena power?
Stay safe and hydrated at the No Kings rallies, folks. Wear layers!
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Alina Habba Gonna Lock Up A Congresswoman Now
[ProPublica / emptywheel / CBS News / Chicago Sun-Times / TNR / Sun-Times]
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