Afraid to go shopping. Afraid to go to work. Afraid to go to school. Afraid to drive. This includes a story of a US citizen being stopped and searched by ICE. And ICE is protected because they don’t have to show ID or give a reason for what they are doing, except for “you look like someone we’re looking for”, just because they appear to be Hispanic.
What the hell is this country coming to, when you can be detained or arrested by a shadow agency that has no rules, and you have no protections? If you only have the appearance of being Hispanic, you could run into “trouble” at any time, and anywhere. This is above and beyond reasonable. This is above and beyond when ICE is terrorizing people who are US citizens! From CNN:
Reports of American citizens being detained by immigration officials highlights growing concerns over racial profiling and constitutional rights — for both the documented and undocumented — as the Trump administration’s broad mass deportation crackdown takes aim at people of all ages from children and families to suspected criminals by detaining people outside courtroom hearings, during traffic stops and in workplace sweeps.
Remember the LA protests, which seem so long ago but were closer than we remember, started when unidentified ICE members started doing large raids in an LA neighborhood? The ones that tRump called “riots” but weren’t, really? They were “so bad” that he had to send in the California National Guard, and then the Marines? Yeah, *those* protests.
Just because time has gone by, we don’t need to forget those. They were people who cared about their neighbors, their waiters, and their friends being arrested. They were people who supported the ones terrorized in those ridiculously large sweeps. They were people who drove ICE out of their neighborhoods.
Elzon Lemus and his coworker had just left their boss’ home earlier this month when they were pulled over by officers, he told CNN. With Lemus’s coworker at the wheel of their work vehicle and the 23-year-old in the passenger seat, agents approached their windows simultaneously and asked for identification, without providing any of their own, Lemus said. “If we don’t get your ID, then we’re going to have to figure out another way to ID you, and that may not work out well for you,” the officer speaking with Lemus says on video.
Lemus said he was handcuffed and searched for at least 25 minutes until officers found his identification before he was released. The electrician believes he was pulled over because he and his coworker look Hispanic, a community that has often been targeted by Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Under the Fourth Amendment, Americans are protected from random searches unless law enforcement has probable cause to believe they’re involved in criminal activity. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement to CNN, denied that Lemus was arrested or detained by ICE, and said he was not “even searched or ever placed in handcuffs.”
See what I mean? We can’t just stop there. The No Kings protests showed that the American people are tired of the lawlessness. We can rise up against that. We can show our sad excuse for a government that we know what they are doing and we know it is not right. El Presidente Imbécil is trying to take over the country and rule it as a dictator, and the Supreme Court is helping him. We can stop them. We *need* to stop them. We are a *democracy*. Thanks for sticking with me!
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It’s not true that there are no rules or protections. I saw a video online where a woman recorded an incident with guys like these. She demanded to see their badges. They tried pointing to embroidered emblems, but she persisted that those are not badges. She gave them enough of a verbal lashing, that they just left. People do not need to be intimidated by these things. Some of them are not real ICE agents, but volunteer yahoos, out there playing police.
I did not know either one of those things, and I’m glad to know them now, particularly the non-ICE yahoos part. Either way, there are people being terrorized, and it needs to stop. Hence, we the people everywhere.
why just why has ice funding not been cut? they have gone through the amount budgeted and are still out there!
I don’t know, but I would like to. Perhaps it’s because they are an extension of Trump’s arm, putting his grandiose deportation scheme into action. Do you know that they are given impossible quotas? That’s the only potential reason for any of this nonsense.
Republicons ALWAYS seem to find money to fund their little programs–even if it means they just have to print more or they have to “redirect” funds intended elsewhere. (Like Drumpf did in his first term by STEALING money from the Defense budget–intended mainly for housing–to go to his “great and glorious wall.”
In the Australian series Mr. InBetween, Ray, a professional hitman, is ordered into anger management after an incident where street punks knocked his daughter’s ice cream out of her hand. When asked by the group therapist why he did it, he replied they were being assholes. The therapist snidely said the world is full of assholes Ray…don’t you know that? Ray replied with his own question…do you want to know why? Because people let them get away with it.