Has America had enough?
“Anti-ICE Protests Spread Nationwide” reported The New York Times on Saturday:
Mounting outrage over an ICE agent’s killing of a woman in Minneapolis spilled into streets across the country on Saturday, as crowds of protesters mobilized against what they called the excesses of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
The “Ice Out for Good” campaign held demonstrations in small towns and major cities, including some that have been central targets of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The protests came three days after an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen at the wheel of a car, during an encounter in South Minneapolis.
More than 1,000 anti-ICE protests are reportedly taking place across the country.
During a Sunday morning Bulwark chat between Bill Kristol and Sam Stein — “Is the Minneapolis Killing an Inflection Point for Trump?” — Stein recounts driving out Saturday to Shenandoah farm country in the rain [timestamp 33:10]. When he drove into a small Virginia town of maybe 1,000, Stein found 50 people with signs protesting ICE and Renee Good’s death along the highway in pouring rain.
I’m mildly hopeful. Given short attention spans, I’m not holding my breath. On the other hand, DHS shows only signs of ramping up its violence, not only against anyone who looks (to agents) like an immigrant, but against citizens as well. We don’t need to see their faces. They don’t give a damn if we have our “papers.” If this is a tipping point, I want to see more anti-DHS momentum.
Blue state lawmakers have had enough of ICE thuggery:
State legislatures across the country are accelerating efforts to shape immigration enforcement policy after the deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman by a federal agent, raising tensions between local leaders and the Trump administration.
From California to New York and Illinois to New Jersey, they’re pushing a range of bills aimed at limiting enforcement and protecting people targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while turning up the rhetoric with comparisons to the Gestapo.
Some policies were moving before an ICE agent fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother last week. But her death has been cited by lawmakers as reason to squeeze ICE out of their states.
Politico offers examples from across the country, and this from New Jersey state Sen. Britnee Timberlake:
“Anyone who is an ancestor of a Holocaust survivor will tell you, this is how it starts,” Timberlake said. “If you don’t believe me, just ask the children of the 37-year-old woman from Minnesota, a white American citizen, who was just shot and killed by ICE.”
Tokyo Rose Garden shot back, calling such language (but not ICE thuggery) “gross”:
“From comparisons to the modern-day Nazi gestapo to glorifying rioters, the vilification of ICE must stop,” she said.
Timberlake, in response, told POLITICO “if they want to stop parallels to the Gestapo and Nazi Germany, then they should stop behaving that way.”
Not. Gonna. Happen. As mentioned on Saturday, DHS is recruiting men inclined to behave that way. Recruiting posts characterize their job as repelling violent, nonwhite invaders:
DHS is looking to pay racist bullies to get drunk on power. It has a $1 million campaign to recruit thousands more agents from “gun rights supporters and military enthusiasts” (read: militias) as part of a “wartime recruitment” strategy.
That war is against you. DHA recruits need not have a college degree. They are undertrained, undisciplined, armed, and the sorriest excuse for professional law enforcement since Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke. Trump 2.0 is not recruiting law enforcement. They are building Trump’s personal army of armed thugs.
On the congressional front, Democrats have filed five Bivins-related bills this term to strip qualified immunity from Trump’s federal Enforcers. The bills would make it easier for citizens to personally sue federal agents for civil rights violations: H.R. 4944, H.R. 6091, H.R. 6493, S. 3187 and S. 3470.
Reps. Dan Goldman (N.Y.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) have announced their own bill is in the works to dial back qualified immunity.
None of these bills have a prayer this term, of course. But I’d be inclined to present the stack to any DHS agent threatening me and ask him if he knows what the statute of limitations is in this state.