This is a noteworthy moment. What you’re about to read happened in the State of Illinois, which is a hotbed of brutal ICE raids nowadays. The employee who captured the photo above and the entire ICE raid is Ricardo Mendez. He was an employee of Menards, a Midwestern chain of home-improvement stores whose billionaire owner, John Menard Jr., is a GOP megadonor and Trump supporter. Mendez says he was “doing my part” as Governor J.B. Pritzker has asked citizens of Illinois to do. And doing his part landed him in the unemployment line; which makes him a victim of the ICE raid as much as the people who were hauled away. Daily Beast:
Like so many in the city since “Operation Midway Blitz” began in September, Mendez had been “on the lookout” since federal immigration officers “started taking over,” he told the Daily Beast.
When he saw the masked officers in unmarked vehicles drive into the lot, Mendez decided to pull out his cameraphone and start recording—“to do my part,” he said—as Illinois governor JB Pritzker has repeatedly asked people.
What came next was brutal, as the Puerto Rican security guard filmed two Border Patrol agents smashing the window of a white Ford pickup with their batons.
“The poor guy was surrounded by agents, workers, and customers,” said Mendez, 27, who added that the incident was so dramatic and shocking that other store staff also came out to film.
The officers then pulled out a Hispanic man before handcuffing him, and bundling him into an unmarked red vehicle.
After the man was detained, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in a separate unmarked blue Chevy Tahoe threatened to tear-gas anyone who intervened, Mendez says, before they all drove out of the lot as one ICE officer can be seen in his video flipping him the bird.
But despite Mendez having done what he believed any good citizen should have, he says a supervisor “sent me home” after Mendez objected to his superior’s demands to stop filming and go back to his position at the shop door.
Mendez, who claims that Menards’ bosses demanded store staff who had filmed the episode delete their footage, was then fired altogether the same day, according to a termination notice obtained by the Beast.
This is as ugly as it gets and especially on American soil. I fail to see how Trump thinks that this kind of activity will result in votes in the November election. Or, maybe that’s why he’s confining the excesses of ICE to so-called blue states, because he figures that those states are lost causes anyhow, might as well raise holy hell and go beyond all bounds of reason.
I don’t see that as a good policy. I think that the damage that Trump is doing is going to haunt the GOP for many years to come.
With everyone having a recording device in their pockets, this type of thing is going to come out, no matter how much they try to suppress it.
Needless to say, everyone in the area of a “Menard’s, PLEASE BOYCOTT this anti-American Business/Corporation!” TYVM!!
Ricardo deserves someone to pick him up for their orkforce stat. Preferably in another home-improvement firm where business should inevitably increase in reaction to the Menard company’s actions. Where you spend your dollars also counts as a vote
Ricardo deserves someone to pick him up for their orkforce stat. Preferably in another home-improvement firm where business should inevitably increase in reaction to the Menard company’s actions. Where you spend your dollars also counts as a vote
Having been born in and lived my first 26 years there in my heart I’ll always be an Illinoisian. So with that in mind I’d like to suggest any folks back in Illinois who live near one of these home improvement stores use the dump known as Menard Prison in Chester (not far from where I grew up) as inspiration for some signs for protests. The original prison was opened back in the 1870s as I recall and prior to Gov. Ryan commuting all death sentences in the state in 2003 housed Death Row.
I knew a couple of guys who went to work there and they said it was a dump. Before leaving my hometown for the Marines I was part of a collection of former college basketball players that would go to the federal pen in Marion but also to Menard to play games against teams made up of prisoners. Marion was a lot nice place!
Maybe some wealthy person back there could have big poster board sized signs made for local groups organizing protests. A huge picture showing Menard prison in it’s worse light, with the Menard’s home improvement chain logo stamped on it! That would be quite the sight for anyone pulling into the parking lot to see! Especially if the logo were modified to include a reference to them being asshole buddies with ICE.