ICE, ICE Baby

   

ICE, ICE Baby

With a little unneeded help from the federally called up CA National Guard

"There is nothing President Trump would like more than a violent confrontation with protestors to justify the unjustifiable - invocation of the Insurrection Act or some form of martial law." 

Sen. Adam Smith (D/CA) after Trump called up 2000 Cal National Guard troops and sent them, uninvited by the Governor, to Los Angeles to contain local protests.

"I think the president did exactly what he needed to do… You know, one of our core principles is maintaining peace through strength…We do that on foreign affairs and domestic affairs as well. I don't think that's heavy-handed…’ And to the ABC's Jonathan Karl, asking if DOD Pete Hegseth’s offer literally to send in the Marines was heavy-handed: "We have to be prepared to do what is necessary, and I think the notice that that might happen might have the deterring effect," 

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R/LA) on ABC News, June 8th.

"We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved… This is a serious breach of state sovereignty — inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed." 

Cal Gov Gavin Newsom online, June 8th.

"What we're seeing in Los Angeles is chaos that is provoked by the administration…When you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you cause fear and you cause panic." 

Los Angeles Mayor, Karen Bass, News Conference, June 8th.

The last time the federal government called up National Guard troops for local civil unrest without a request from the relevant state governor was during the 1968 Selma civil rights march against George Wallace, Alabama’s segregationist governor hell-bent on containing those marchers by any means possible. President Lyndon Johnson intended to protect the marchers, not attack them. Donald Trump’s self-invited call up of Northern California Guardsmen on June 7th was definitely not to protect the Los Angeles protestors, gathered in downtown Los Angeles and the Paramount and Compton neighborhoods. Local police seemed to have the situation in hand after ICE mass raids, for example targeting Home Depot. But Donald Trump is legendary for provoking, creating problems that only he “can fix”… and using extreme measures, catering to his white Christian nationalist followers.

Chris Truex, writing for the June 7th, The Hill describes the patterns of ICE mass and targeted immigration raids: “The cases you hear about are only the tip of the iceberg. Federal officers are fanning out across the country, conducting raids, traffic stops, even scooping people up at courthouses when they appear for immigration hearings and carting them away in leg irons and shackles — harsh treatment that you seldom see even when felons are arrested.

“This heavy-handedness and cruelty isn’t a glitch — it’s intentional, as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Tom Homan, President Trump’s border czar [pictured center above], attempt to frighten immigrants into leaving the country. Even legal residents and American citizens are getting caught up in the crackdown.

“And the worst part is, while things like barging into a congressman’s office and detaining his staffers aren’t legal, there is nothing anyone can do about it. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents force their way into your house without a warrant, slap you around and detain your family at gunpoint while conducting an illegal search, you have no way of getting your constitutional claims into federal court. As a practical matter, these agents are above the law and cannot be held accountable for violating your constitutional rights.” Courts have been loath in the last few years holding police officers liable for much of anything. It took a video of a police officer literally choking an arrestee to death (George Floyd in May of 2020) to garner a conviction against the relevant officers. The pattern of supporting police, no matter what, is back with a vengeance.

Truex continues: “The current system of ‘what happens in ICE, stays in ICE’ is the opposite of [accountability]… Unchecked by the courts, ICE’s behavior will only get worse over the next three and a half years. Even the most well-meaning bureaucracies are subject to mission creep, so you can expect Noem’s troops to expand their activities well beyond detaining immigrants. The Homeland Security officers who invaded Nadler’s office were hunting for protesters, and Homan has already threatened state officials and even members of Congress with arrest for “interfering” with ICE.

“When it comes to constitutional rights, no man is an island. The threats, performative cruelty and denials of basic due process are not attacks on immigrants. They are attacks on the rule of law itself.” Democrats ask why ICE agents do not have body cams and often wear masks? The answer was “because they can” and do not want to be later held accountable for their actions. On June 6th, House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News that Democrats pushing for ICE agents to unmask themselves are the same "people who mandated mask wearing for years in America" during the coronavirus pandemic. He added: “From the people who mandated mask wearing for years in America. It's absurd. They need to back off of ICE and respect our agents and stop protesting against them… They're trying to uphold the rule of law, and they don't want to be targeted by Democrat activists. So I'm in favor of whatever protocol." Rule of Trump, really.

Stupid analogy anyway. As LA Times Columnist, Michael Hiltzik, points out in his June 5th article on masking pandemic era children, then challenged by MAGA parents as wasteful and unnecessary: “A newly published study from data scientists at Michigan State University knocks one pillar out from under this claim. It finds that the abrupt removal in 2022 of mandates that children wear masks in school contributed to an estimated 21,800 COVID deaths that year — a shocking 9% of the total COVID deaths in the U.S. that year.”

We are a period of constitutional crisis with a rogue president, all in for the grift he can manage, craving total autocratic power. He has aligned key total loyalist appointments, notably in DOJ, HSI and DOD, to take his orders as the highest authority in the land. Say the word, and as this test case in Los Angeles with the California Guard illustrates, Trump can foment a civil war and deploy our military to give him complete control, first under martial law and later… the way “elected” autocrats always take power. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and those MAGA enablers, sycophants in Congress who know better and a blasé general public that believe it “can’t happen here,” it is happening, just as Trump intended!!!!