Nonwhites are in Trump/Miller’s crosshairs
“The horrifying videos of masked ICE agents terrorizing communities are now the signature images of Trump’s second term,” Dan Pfeiffer explains. He makes a greater point that needs making (emphasis mine):
While revenge and graft seem to be Trump’s greatest passions, it’s his revanchist, extreme anti-immigration agenda that motivates the people around him. Stephen Miller speaks in apocalyptic terms about immigrants destroying American culture. The Department of Homeland Security is amplifying white supremacist dog whistles. The policy hacks are pulling every lever of government to expel as many legal immigrants as possible and treat anyone undocumented with maximum cruelty.
Immigration has long been Trump’s political cudgel—used to beat Democrats into submission. The whole premise of high-profile ICE raids, complete with social media crews in tow, is to bait Democrats into a debate on what Trump believes is his strongest issue. He wants to position himself on the side of “law and order” and paint Democrats as defenders of criminals and drug traffickers. This is the reflexive response—delivered with maximum smugness—to any criticism of ICE’s conduct.
If reversing illegal immigration was Trump 2.0’s sales pitch during last year’s campaign, by now it is simply a cover story. The real game here is white nationalism. Examine Stephen Miller’s tweets, if you dare. Or the DHS social media feed’s white nationalist dog whistles. The one at top characterizes its task as destroying “the Flood,” treating undcumented immigrants as parasitic aliens from the HALO franchise.
But it’s not just the dogwhistles doing damage. It’s the lies in which Trump 2.0 trafficks. Marcy Wheeler shines a spotlight on the “flood” of lies from DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, known for the smugness Pfeiffer mentions. McLaughlin is so proud of it that she’s pinned one display to the top of her X feed. Daily Beast posted a long piece on McLaughlin’s playing fast and loose with facts surrounding ICE arrests.
Radley Balko points to a recent case in which “a cross-deputized federal agent” enjoys immunity for fabricating a sex-trafficking ring. The Minnesota officer, Heather Weyker, jailed an innocent woman for two years pending a trial that never took place. But Weyker acting in a federal capacity gave Hamdi Mohamud no recourse to sue for damages.
The Washington Post this morning reports that DHS is posting false and misleading (propagandistic) footage to support its pogrom against nonwhites:
Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have used similarly misleading footage in at least six videos promoting its immigration agenda shared in the last three months, a Washington Post analysis found, muddying the reality of events in viral clips that have been viewed millions of times.
McLaughlin dismissed the errors as insignificant.
This is a full-on propaganda effort:
DHS’s video operation now includes in-house photographers and videographers who routinely capture the action of ICE raids and protest responses for videos that administration officials have widely promoted online. In a video DHS posted to X this month, a man in a Border Patrol flak jacket, his camera held aloft, can be seen jogging to catch up with officers putting a detainee into an SUV.
The administration’s intense digital strategy has helped grab Americans’ attention and shape discussion around current events, with some of its videos now capturing bigger audiences on social media than mainstream news reports. A White House video claiming Chicago was “in chaos,” which used footage from other states, has been viewed more than 1.4 million times across Instagram, TikTok and X.
It is no accident that American citizens (brown ones) are being snared by ICE in its white-nationalist zeal to rid the country of undesirables. Americans are increasingly unhappy about ICE targets and methods.
A federal judge in Illinois on Tuesday took to task Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official, both for ICE’s heavy-handed tactics in Chicago and for violating her orders on not using chemical crowd-control agents:
For more than an hour, the judge, Sara L. Ellis of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, read Mr. Bovino restrictions she had previously set as part of a lawsuit over tactics that agents are using and cited examples of times his agents appeared to violate those restrictions.
They used tear gas in a neighborhood where children were about to march in a Halloween parade, Judge Ellis said. They failed to warn residents before tossing tear gas canisters at them, she said, noting an incident in which an agent threw a canister out of a car as it drove away.
The judge then ordered Mr. Bovino, who took the stand in his usual green fatigues and Border Patrol insignia, to appear at the federal courthouse at the end of every weekday to personally provide her with a report on the day’s arrests and incidents.
Which is to say, federal judges in the Midwest. at least, are tired of the lies and bullshit excuses from ICE. There is no audio, but the transcript drips with scorn from Ellis.
Ellis wants to see the footage from body worn cameras and won’t accept excuses:
Bovino told her the issue with making sure everyone has body cams is “getting the equipment” and “dispersal of the equipment.”
But Ellis is explaining how “the camera is your friend.” She then asks Bovino if he personally has a body worn camera.
Bovino: “I do not ma’am, no.”
“How about by Friday you get one for yourself?” she responds. Bovino says, “We can get that … and the training.”
AP reports a major shakeup at ICE, whatever that means.
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