Anyone ever lived in a police state?
Courtesy: Bachir Atallah via CNN.
In a foreign airport in 1977 was the first time I saw police with submachine guns on the tarmac. I thought, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” How many Americans lately are having the same thought in their own country?
The first time I recall police with submachine guns in this country was 10 days after September 11 when departing Boston’s Logan Airport. And when I landed in Atlanta? One MARTA cop with a service pistol.
Now this from the Harve, Montana Weekly Chronicle (April 18):
A judge and attorney from North Dakota said Thursday that he was one of possibly all the passengers on an Amtrak Empire Builder train questioned by federal officers about their citizenship Sunday while the train was stopped in Havre.
Judge Baer identified the officers as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but ICE representative Alethea Smock told the Chronicle “this was not an ICE activity.” Harve lies about 30 miles south of the Canadian border.
Jason Givens, U.S. Border Patrol public affairs specialist, confirmed this morning that it was Border Patrol agents who boarded the train Sunday in Havre.
[…]
“Enforcement actions away from the border are within the jurisdiction of the Border Patrol and performed in direct support of immediate border enforcement efforts and as a means of preventing smuggling and criminal organizations from exploiting existing transportation hubs to travel to the interior of the United States.”
No joke
Baer told the Chronicle he’d stepped off the train during the stop to stretch his legs when two officers in paramilitary gear approached. They asked Baer and others if they were U.S. citizens.
“It was intimidating,” Baer said.
He said he told them he was – he first asked if they were joking, he said, and they repeated the question – and when he said he was they went on to the next passenger.
Baer, a longtime attorney and district court judge for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arika Tribe, said another official in uniform appeared to be supervising the operation but did not enter the train.
Others did. Baer presumes they went through the train and asked other passengers the same question.
He said they didn’t ask for documentation of his citizenship and moved on once he said he was a citizen.
“They took my word for it,” Baer said. “I presume if my skin was a little darker I might have had to come up with some documentation, but that’s only my own guess.”
This is not the first time issues of citizenship have arisen in Havre in Department of Homeland Security actions.
Two women – both U.S. citizens who had been living in Havre for several years – were detained and questioned by a U.S. Border Patrol agent when he heard them speaking Spanish in a Havre convenience store.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2020 reached an out-of-court settlement with the women – who said they moved away from Havre because of the backlash they received for filing a lawsuit – on their lawsuit alleging their Fourth and Fifth amendment rights had been violated.
A photo attached to a social media account of one of Baer’s colleagues, another judge and attorney, shows armed agents identified as POLICE and ICE inside a train. But the source and circumstances of the photo attached to Judith Roberts’s Facebook post are unclear.
Baer said he has long connections with immigration issues – his grandfather was a U.S. Border Patrol special agent – and he respects that job.
“That our borders are being protected is important. Like I said, my grandfather, that was his full-time job till the day he died,” Baer said.
“I have full respect for that and the need for that, but we also have judicial officers to stand between the judgment of the (law enforcement) officers involved and the actual rights of the individuals being appended,” he added
“It’s the constitutional safeguards that we want,” Baer said.
He said he has been riding the train for decades and he has never seen federal officers come on the train to ask if people are citizens.
He said a conductor on the train Sunday told him that in the conductor’s 40 years, he has never seen anything like it.
This sort of thing is happening to more and more Americans. For example, CNN from last week:
Bachir Atallah told CNN he and his wife, Jessica, were driving back into the US Sunday evening after visiting family in Canada for the weekend when U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped them for a secondary inspection at the Highgate Springs checkpoint in Vermont.
Atallah, who is originally from Lebanon, said he was told to park his Range Rover and hand over his keys. When he asked the officer why, the officer placed his hand on his gun and told him to exit his vehicle, Atallah said. He said he was then handcuffed and led into a cell, where his belongings were confiscated. He said his wife was put into a cell across from his.
“Seeing my wife’s mascara running because she was crying, it was heartbreaking,” Atallah said. “It wasn’t humane.”
“I feared for my life,” Atallah told CNN after being detained for hours. CBP denies Atallah’s account:
While detained, Atallah said he gave CBP agents the passcode to his phone after they asked for it. Despite his pleadings, agents never told him why he and his wife were being detained, he said. He said he was never read his rights.
“The traveler’s accusations are blatantly false and sensationalized,” CBP officials said in a statement to CNN affiliate WMUR. “CBP officers acted in accordance with established protocols. Upon arrival at the port of entry, the traveler was appropriately referred to secondary inspection – a routine, lawful process that occurs daily and can apply for any traveler.”
I was asked to pull over for secondary inspection once in Idaho while returning from Canada with a buddy. Two guys in a Toyota Corolla. Agents popped open the trunk, asked a few questions, and we were on our way. No handcuffs. No detention. But that was 1982.
In Donald Trump’s America in 2025, this sort of thing is becoming more common. So are DHS denials of detainee accounts (Popular Information):
On April 8, Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen, was wrongfully incarcerated by immigration authorities in Arizona, who claimed he was an undocumented immigrant. He was held for 10 days at Florence Correctional Center, a privately run immigration detention facility, before being released on April 17.
These facts are not disputed.
On X, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said, “Hermosillo’s arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions and statements.” According to DHS, “Jose Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson Arizona stating he had ILLEGALLY entered the U.S. and identified himself as a Mexican citizen.” DHS also released what purports to be a transcript of Hermosillo’s conversation with a Border Patrol agent signed “JOSE.” In the transcript, Hermosillo allegedly said he was born in Mexico, was a citizen of Mexico, and entered the United States illegally.
Hermosillo tells Popular Information a different story:
Hermosillo said that he never told the officer that he was born in Mexico, was a citizen of Mexico, or entered the country illegally. And he would not have said those things because they are not true. He signed the transcript released by DHS because the officer ordered him to “sign everything.” But Hermosillo did not read it, because he cannot read.
[…]
Other documents created by the officer have inaccuracies. For example, the criminal complaint says that Hermosillo was detained “at or near Nogales, Arizona.” But Hermosillo was detained in Tuscon [sic], which is more than 70 miles from Nogales. John Mennell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Border Patrol, said that it was an “unintentional” error.
Regarding Baer’s questioning, Roberts adds:
This isn’t about politics—it’s about the erosion of rights we’ve taken for granted, and the slow normalization of military-style policing tactics in everyday spaces. Even if technically permissible, these actions reflect a disturbing shift in the balance between civil liberties and governmental authority. The normalization of militarized immigration enforcement in public spaces, without individualized suspicion, risks setting dangerous precedents that erode the freedoms we are sworn to uphold.
This is not about ideology—it is about the integrity of our legal system. I am compelled to speak up because there is no justification for circumventing the very rights and principles that define our democracy.
The question is not whether you “have something to hide.” The question is how much unchecked authority we’re willing to allow before we can no longer call this a free society.
We’re not in Kansas anymore.
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