If you’re like me, you don’t want to think about anything Trump is doing that you don’t have to think about. The horrific domestic police called ICE, for example, appears to have quieted down. So we can erase it from our minds, right?
Wrong. ICE has not quieted down. It’s even worse. It’s just become less visible.
ICE has quietly doubled its immigrant arrest quota. It’s now arresting 2,000 people per day.
But you’re not hearing about it because the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, has decided to quietly spread ICE agents around the country instead of targeting one Democratic-controlled city at a time.
Rather than fueling media spectacles, lawsuits, and community backlash, ICE is now going about its ruthless business in more hushed tones.
But every day, more of our neighbors — and more people who are in the United States legally — are being swept up at immigration check-ins, traffic stops, workplaces, and public spaces. Raids have intensified in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, McAllen, Brownsville, New York City, Newark, Passaic, Plainfield, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Nashville, Charlotte, Chicago, and even in Minneapolis.
Local media continue to report what’s happening, but the national media seem to have lost interest. Among raids reported by local media are:
The mass arrest of more than 30 workers at the Scholar Crafts plant in Birmingham, Alabama.
The arrest of at least three people during immigration check-ins at New York City courthouses last week in violation of federal court orders explicitly barring such arrests.And so on.
Refugee communities are bracing for additional ICE raids in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision revoking Temporary Protected Status of asylum seekers from Haiti and Syria, which could affect at least 356,000 people. (Haitian asylum seekers in Springfield, Ohio, are expecting “the mother of all ICE raids” after Stephen Miller voiced enthusiastic support for “finally removing all those Haitian illegal immigrants.”)
Community groups in Texas expect increased crackdowns after the conviction of eight activists on domestic terrorism charges following an incident last year in which a police officer was shot during an anti-ICE protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center. A ninth defendant in that case, Ines Soto, was sentenced last week to 50 years in prison for “providing material support to terrorists” because he had transported political pamphlets in his car.
Fifteen Minnesota protesters also pled not guilty last week to conspiracy charges stemming from protests in January. Activist and healthcare worker Isaac Sant, one of the accused, said the trial was “a naked attempt to silence our voices, to squash dissent and to have a chilling effect on organizing here in the Twin Cities,” which, he noted, “is not going to work.”
Meanwhile, ICE’s budget has tripled. The House narrowly voted in June to direct roughly $70 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for ICE and Border Patrol — more than three times its last annual budget. The money comes with few stipulations on how and when it should be spent. It includes:
$38 billion for ICE to hire, pay, train, and equip its officers and agents. That includes $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for immigration enforcement work like hiring more attorneys, supporting local law enforcement who coordinate with ICE, and technology like body cameras;
$22 billion for Border Patrol to pay, train, recruit, and equip agents and personnel. That includes $13 billion specifically for immigration enforcement work;
$5 billion for border security technology and screening, including artificial intelligence.
ICE is now using facial recognition technology and has already scanned thousands of immigrants’ and protesters’ faces. This kind of street-level surveillance raises profound legal questions about what are in effect warrantless searches.
The Department of Homeland Security appears to be creating a vast database of people who merely object to its actions.
How else to explain how federal agents tracked down Rochester resident David Streever last month when he was visiting New York City with his daughter? They gave Streever a warning notice alleging that he had potentially violated the law when he wrote a three-paragraph email to Todd Lyons, former head of ICE, criticizing ICE’s mass deportation program and comparing Lyons to a Nazi.
Similarly, during New York State’s primaries in June, ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse to question Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker. Gonyea, an American citizen, says the agents were concerned about an Instagram post she supposedly made in January identifying Jonathan Ross as the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good during the federal incursion in Minneapolis this winter.
Well, I’m criticizing ICE for these violations of the First Amendment rights of Americans. Come arrest me for my public criticism!
The Trump regime continues to open new detention centers, including a 528-bed holding facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to an airport hub in Alexandria, Louisiana, to speed up deportations. ICE is calling the facility a “staging area,” not a detention center, and says people would only be there a few days at most. But immigration advocates worry that children could be held at the new facility for weeks or months.
ICE is bigger and worse than ever, although the major media have stopped reporting on it. Not only is ICE’s reign of terror intimidating many undocumented immigrants and their families — preventing them from seeking the healthcare they need or attending school or going to court — but ICE is also sweeping into its maw many American citizens who are protesting Trump’s police state
Coverage:
Trump’s war on immigrants is ramping back up and it’s flying under the radar
The plan wasn’t working. Less than a year into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration’s signature initiative — facilitating the mass deportation of “millions and millions” of immigrants, as he once put it — had become a political liability. A surge of federal agents to Minnesota proved to be the apex of a flashy, combative strategy that tried to steamroll any opposition — and failed.
But now, according to The New York Times, the seeming lull in arrests that followed the winter’s chaos has given way to a renewed effort to round up as many immigrants for deportation as possible — without drawing the same level of attention. The shift shows both the limits that the administration has faced in its deportation spree and its determination to continue apace despite the president’s approval ratings on immigration tanking. Without the same amount of spotlight-seeking from immigration officials, however, the White House hopes to deny opponents the clear targets to organize against that last year’s deportation campaigns provided.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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