Like cruelty, that is the point
The Nazis were meticulous about their record-keeping. Not so Donald Trump. He famously absconded with hundreds of classified government records and stored them in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. He demolished the East Wing of the White House without so much as a “by your leave” from officials entrusted with caretaking our national historic landmarks. Dotting i’s and crossing t’s is not exactly Trump’s idiom. Neither is professional law enforcement.
Secretary Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and her Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons are nothing like professional law enforcement. From the bad-faith criminal indictment of Democratic officials in Chicago; to the indiscriminate firing of tear gas and pepper bullets into crowds; to the arresting of anyone agents spot with brown skin (including U.S. citizens); to arrest threats against Americans legally monitoring ICE in their neighborhoods; to tricking out masked ICE agents in green camouflage and military tactical gear instead of DHS uniforms; law enforcement is not the point of DHS actions. Nor is obeying the law they purport to uphold. Terrorizing the civilian population is.
Federal immigration officers are using chemical irritants to disperse protesters in ways that violate American policing norms and are testing the boundaries of use-of-force laws, video footage from Chicago shows, in some cases hitting demonstrators directly with the munitions.
Since September,
… federal officers have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists. They have thrown tear-gas canisters near stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women and older people to the noxious gas. And on numerous occasions federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters — in one case, striking a pastor in the head.
The use of tear gas has persisted in recent days despite a court order forbidding officers from using chemical agents against demonstrators and journalists unless they pose a safety threat. Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official leading the Chicago operation, was videotaped throwing a tear-gas canister into a crowd. In another incident, immigration officers deployed tear gas as families were walking to a Halloween parade.
The big-numbers-obsessed Donald Trump and white nationalist, deportation tsar Stephen Miller are more interested in sweeping up and out as many warm, brown bodies as possible as quickly as possible. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights be damned. Splitting up families and traumatizing children be damned. Humane treatment be damned. Professional law enforcement norms (and proper vetting and training) be damned.
The through line here is an intimidation campaign being carried out in front of our kids, or even targeting our kids. Maybe you missed it in the crush of other horrific headlines, but earlier this week, after federal authorities released tear gas just before a parade on the city’s Northwest Side, a U.S. district court had to declare to our federal government that children should not be tear-gassed for the crime of showing up to holiday celebrations: “Kids dressed in Halloween costumes walking to a parade do not pose an immediate threat to the safety of a law enforcement officer,” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, a man who hates Halloween for children but loves to cosplay for work every day, in a hearing Tuesday. “You can’t use riot-control weapons against them,” she continued. “These kids, you can imagine their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.”
Federal judges be damned too.
This post by David Bier of the Cato Institute grabbed me by the throat this week.
Right up front: I am not an attorney.
The agent makes sure to cite 18 USC 111 not once but twice as intimidation. He’s counting on the woman to not know what it says. That code section requires that an offender must have “forcibly” impeded, intimidated, or interfered with the federal agent. “Forcibly” is the first word in subsection 1. The DOJ’s Criminal Resource Manual on 18 USC 111 emphasizes that “the element of force” or “a threat of force” is “an essential element of the crime.” Or there is no crime. The agents above are making an empty threat to get her to stop filming them.
Here’s another example.
These are not uniformed law enforcement professionals as much as unqualified, undertrained administration thugs preparing Americans for seeing troops in the street as soon as Trump can concoct a semi-plausible excuse for invoking the Insurrection Act and putting active duty troops in the streets. (See update below.)
When someone suggests that this is what Americans voted for last November, show them these.
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This is America on Trump.
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UPDATE: Via Jason Satler. Here’s the full speech.
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Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
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