Quick Hitter: Who Are These Masked Men?
Seriously. Who are these agents that are rolling up and grabbing people nationwide? Are they Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO, a division of ICE)? Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)? Other agencies? No one knows. Well, obviously someone knows, but the government is refusing to tell anyone who they are, using the (bullshit) excuse that allowing the agents to be identified puts them at risk.1
It seems that every day we see more and more clips of masked men with no visible ID terrorizing brown people on the “free” streets of America, mainly in cities and blue states, although they are grabbing people in nearly every state. They are getting more aggressive with their tactics, and over the last few days we have seen another troubling trend: the vehicles that they roll up in are more and more showing up without license plates.
We are also seeing more and more cases where these agents are chasing down, detaining, even disappearing American citizens, usually for the “crime” of filming the kidnappings. Just this week an LA man, Job Garcia, was arrested and held for over an hour for simply filming agents. (link is paywalled). Who knows how many times citizens have been chased down by masked men only to be let go?
The lawlessness of these raids is only part of the problem We also have the agencies flat-out lying about incidents. For example, last Wednesday a 20-year old Wal Mart employee was arrested when he tried to intervene with a kidnapping in the parking lot of his store. Federal officials claimed that the man had assaulted officers by punching one of them, but security video of the event does not corroborate this.
In another viral event, several vans of agents showed up at Dodger Stadium and requested access to the parking lot, only to be turned away by LAPD. When the story broke, ICE claimed that they were not there. So, who was it? Are we making distinctions without tangible differences? Someone was there, and was turned away.
Which brings me to perhaps the most serious consideration to date: the fact that criminals are starting to claim to be ICE agents in order to attack, rob, assault and worse. I can’t see how this can be avoided, because as long as the “official” agents can mask up, not identify themselves, and wear mismatched clothing how are civilians supposed to know who is really ICE and who is not?
I am somewhat surprised that there has not been more serious blowback on these officers, but I fear that it is only a matter of time before an otherwise law-abiding citizen is going to kill one of these agents. To be honest, I believe that the administration wants this to happen. While that may seem over the top, it would serve to allow further escalation both of their methods and the violence with which they carry them out.
It’s kind of amazing that the people who are choosing to put on the masks continue to do so. Do they not realize that they may actually be bait? Are they truly benefitting, financially, from each person they detain? Or is it as simple as the idea that none of them believe that anything bad is going to happen to them.
I don’t know where DHS is finding all of these “agents”, although I have my suspicions. After all, over 1500 violent criminals were recently released back into the population, maybe some of them feel that they owe the current admin. I do have to wonder what kind of people these are, and how we got to a place in this country that fosters this kind of behavior, but that’s the subject of a much longer piece than this.
Now more than ever,
Take Care and Stay Strong. Together.
I don’t know, but maybe not allowing your agents to act like the Gestapo probably puts them more at risk than identifying them.