In this post, I want to discuss why ICE’s current behavior matters to everyone, whether you are democrat, republican, libertarian, or something else.
To explain this, let me tell you about several recent events in the news, some of which you are probably aware.
One: On March 15 of last year, ICE deported a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant from El Salvador, who had been granted asylum from a U.S. judge. Garcia fled to the U.S. from his native home of El Salvador because he was trying to escape being forced into an El Salvadoran gang.
Garcia is a father with children who worked a construction job and has no criminal record.
But ICE officials accused him of being a member of the Tren de Aragua gang and deported him to El Salvador, without any due process (a basic human right everyone possess in the U.S.)
He was housed in a prison known for human rights abuses.
When U.S. courts ordered ICE to bring Garcia home, ICE initially refused.
After much pressure, they eventually did bring him home.
ICE continually claimed Garcia was a criminal and tried to deport him again, although they were unable to provide evidence substantiating these claims.
Garcia was eventually pardoned because judges found there was no credible evidence he was, or ever had been, involved in criminal activity.
(Update: A judge has allowed Garcia to go free right now as she considers immigration issues.)
You can read a post I wrote about Abrego Garcia here.
Two: On September 30 in the middle of the night, ICE agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter onto the roof of a Chicago apartment building they claimed was the center of Tren de Aragua gang activity.
Without any search warrant, ICE broke down doors to apartments, many of which contained children.
Again, without a warrant, they arrested and zip-tied people from the building. Some of these people were Eleanor McMullen-Webster and her husband.
Eleanor is a 64-year old black woman, and a U.S. citizen, who is a retired caterer from a local university with no criminal record.
In fact, ninety-seven percent of the people arrested in the raid had no criminal record.
In the end, ICE arrested only two people involved with a gang.
Three: On January 20, without any warrant ICE broke down the door of the home of an elderly U.S. citizen, a Hmong man, who had broken no laws and was simply sitting in his house with his family.
Map courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. You can read more about the Hmong people here.
They arrested him and dragged him outside in freezing temperatures in his underwear and slip-on shoes.
Without any explanation or any charge of crime, they drove him “into the middle of nowhere” and reviewed his identification.
Then they brought him home.
Four: On September 8, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, U.S. citizen and a mother who had just dropped of her son from school.
Good had stopped her vehicle in the middle of the street to observe what appeared to be an ICE operation in her neighborhood.
There were several vehicles in the street, and cars could still get around Good’s vehicle.
She was peaceful and congenial.
At one point, ICE agents surrounded Renee Good’s car and ordered her to get out of her car, an order which they may not have had authority to make.
One of the ICE offers stood in front of her car and started filming the incident on his phone, two actions which concern many law enforcement experts.
(You can read analysis of the situation by former ICE agents here.)
Picture of Renee Good, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Some of Good’s last words were to the ICE agent who shot her. She said, “That’s fine, Dude. I’m not mad at you.”
At this point, Good turned her steering wheel away from the police and tried to drive away.
In the process, her car made contact with the officer standing in front of her car and recording her.
This officer then shot her at least three times through her windshield.
A bystander who was also a doctor tried to go and check on her.
But ICE refused to allow him to do so. She died on the scene.
Leaders in our government, such as the President and Kristi Noem, have called Good a domestic terrorist, although they have produced no evidence to confirm this.
Good had no criminal record, and her family and former husband testified that Renee had never been involved in any kind of terrorist, or even protest, activity.
Government officials refused to open an investigation into Good’s killing.
I recently discovered that Renee was a childhood friend of one of my personal friends.
My friend posted pictures from their teenage years of Renee and her friend group smiling and laughing.
She was a regular, everyday person just like you and me.
Five: On Saturday, January 25, ICE officers shot and killed a 37-year old man named Alex Pretti.
Pretti was peacefully protesting again ICE in Minneapolis.
He was carrying a holstered gun, which he was registered for and permitted by the laws of his state to carry in public spaces. (You can read a discussion of this issues here.)
He was recording ICE activity on his phone, which he is legally permitted to do.
ICE pushed a woman to the ground and peppered sprayed her face. Pretti stepped between ICE and the woman, trying to help the woman.
His gun was still holstered, and he was recording police behavior on his phone.
At that point, the ICE officers wrestled Pretti to the ground and shot him.
Government officials such as Kristi Noem and the President claim that Pretti threatened police with a gun and the officers shot because they feared for their life.
But, again, videos taken by bystanders (and witness testimonies) suggest that Pretti’s gun was holstered during the entire incident; that he did not resist arrest; and that the police shot Pretti after they disarmed him.
Government officials such as Kristi Noem and the President claim that Pretti was a domestic terrorist, although they presented no evidence to support these claims.
Quite the contrary, Pretti worked as a nurse in a veteran’s hospital, and he had no criminal record except for a few traffic tickets.
Alex’s VA picture, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Affairs. Picture from Wikimedia Commons.
After his death, Pretti’s parents wrote that their son was “a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital.”
They added that their son “wanted to make a difference in the world”, adding that “The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting . . . Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
These five incidences, which are a sample of many such instances, suggest a consistent, troubling pattern by ICE.
The first three instances indicate unnecessarily brutal behavior which violates the rights of U.S. citizens, people granted legal asylum in the U.S., or undocumented immigrants who do not pose any credible threat to the U.S.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The fourth and fifth instances demonstrate ICE shooting people legally observing or legally recording the behavior of ICE to hold them accountable.
In addition, with the shooting of Good and Pretti, the President and his officials like Kristi Noem excused the shootings by labeling the victims terrorists.
They did this without any evidence to confirm such dire claims.
These behavior pattern should concern everyone, if you are democrat, republican or anyone who cares about the U.S. constitution, justice, and morality.
The writers of our Constitution purposefully built basic rights into the Constitution and created the three branches of our government to serve as a check to one another.
They did this because they knew it was easy for rulers to become obsessed with power and use this power to benefit themselves at the expense of their subjects.
Such behavior demonstrates tyranny.
Rulers who behave in this way rule like a dictator.
This is why the Founding Fathers built into the Constitution the right to free speech, to peaceful assembly, and the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances.”
All these rights appear specifically in the first amendment.
These rights help ensure that rulers serve the people and do not become tyrannical or dictators.
Now, the Constitution certainly requires people to be lawful.
But it also requires the government to behave lawfully, and it certainly makes the government accountable to its citizens.
So, it should concern everyone when ICE appears to regularly be violating people’s rights and evading accountability.
And it should concern everyone when the President and his appointed officials appear to encourage and excuse this behavior.
Such behavior should concern everyone because once the President, or any other official, normalizes such a violation, they undermine the checks on their power the Constitution intends.
A ruler who undermines such checks on their power can violate anyone’s rights, including yours and mine.
There is a temptation to think that if the ruler is one we voted for, then we are safe.
Maybe we think he is on our side.
But a ruler who purposefully violates people’s rights is not on anyone’s side.
He only cares about himself and building his own power.
So, nobody is safe, not even his supporters.
For instance, such a tyrannical ruler would do things like send soldiers to attack a completely peaceful country like Greenland, just because he can or thinks he can.
Picture of Greenland, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
And he would not care at all about people who died in this needless vanity war.
That’s because he cares only about his own power, so people—even his supporters—are expendable.
So, everyone should be concerned
Interestingly, some of the political officials who served under Trump in the past recognize this problem.
For instance, John Mitnick who served “as the general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Trump’s first administration”, recently spoke out about these very issues after the shooting of Alex Pretti.
Mitnick said, “I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty . . .”
(You can read more about fascism here.)
I also appreciate a growing list of current Republican representatives and senators who have expressed public concern and outrage about ICE’s recent behavior and lack of accountability.
Some people argue that protestors deserve to be shot or arrested because they are getting in the way of the police.
But the point here is that protesting or recording police or government action is protected by our law and does not in itself entail getting in the way of police.
It obeys the law and embodies ideals in our Constitution.
These actions are some of the only ways we have to exercise our first amendment rights to peaceful assembly, free speech, and petitioning the government to redress grievance.
And in fact, because citizens in the U.S. are supposed to hold our government accountable, it is our responsibility to do some of these things–or actions like them–when the government behaves tyrannically.
Additionally, blindly submitting to all authority is unwise, unjust, and immoral because it enables tyranny.
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