Will Bunch: Human rights nightmares show 'the crazies' who wanted to abolish ICE were right

[Nevilledog]

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/ice-homeland-security-hsi-customs-citizens-violations-rights-20250501.html

No paywall link
https://archive.li/0yaHx


Even after 100 days of nightly headlines about federal immigration cops gone wild — smashing car windows, descending on schools and courthouses, wrongly deporting dads, or donning masks and handcuffing stunned university students on the sidewalk — the latest story out of Oklahoma City is so shocking it might prove a tipping point.

There, a shell-shocked and weeping U.S. citizen and mom who only gave reporters her first name, Marisa, told journalists about the recent night when 20 federal agents raided her family’s new home, forced her and her two daughters out into a rain-soaked street in their underwear, ransacked the place and took all their electronics and cash.

“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” the distraught Marisa told an Oklahoma City TV station, KFOR. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”

The search warrant brandished by the agents sought someone else, who wasn’t at the home where Marisa and her daughters had moved a few weeks ago. As is often the case in 2025’s stepped-up immigration raids, it wasn’t exactly clear who the agents were or even which agency they worked for. Although initial news accounts attributed the operation to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, subsequent reports suggested the officers were from ICE’s sister agency, the little known Homeland Security Investigations. The 6,000-member HSI is a cornerstone of an ascendant secret police in America.

*snip*

[highplainsdem]

1. K&R! Was just about to post this...

[dchill]

2. Yeah.

[UpInArms]

3. more from your link

Most voters forgot, or never heard, the 2003 argument by some advocates that the creation of ICE to more aggressively hunt down undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil would create a “monster” agency that would warp the entire national conversation around refugees. While it’s certainly and sadly true that waves of anti-immigration fervor are as American as cherry pie, from the anti-Irish “Know Nothings” of the 1850s through the KKK resurgence of the 1920s and beyond, the “national security” lens of ICE has taken us to a new low.

Twenty-two years later, those “monster” predictions feel understated. There’s no quick fix for the human-rights nightmare of ICE and its sister agencies, because this warped experiment has gone off the rails in so many different ways. It starts with the simple fact that what ICE is doing today goes well beyond the supposed initial, publicly supported mission of removing criminals from among the undocumented migrant population. Nearly half of those nearly 48,000 current detainees — some 46.4% — have no criminal record at all.

That hasn’t stopped ICE or HSI agents from using tactics that remind viewers of the worst days of East Germany’s Stasi — appearing in plain clothes without warning, or visible badges, wearing ski masks even in warm weather. Immigration cops have smashed an asylum-seeker’s car window with a hammer, strip-searched those teen German girls at the Honolulu airport because they lacked a hotel reservation, and arrested a student at what was supposed to be his final citizenship interview.

I wrote the following in 2001

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin

Midnight Express Revisited

By: Bridget Gibson 11/17/01


In a foreign country, a young man breaks a minor law. The rules of this country are harsh and inscrutable. At a trial in which he is allowed no representation, he is sentenced to a three year prison term. Under difficult prison conditions, he later learns that his sentence has been changed to one of thirty years. There have been no communications with others regarding his guilt or innocence. Secrecy reigns and terror is the by product.

You may say that this scenario is not the United States and you would be correct. This happened in Turkey in 1970. We have laws that prevent that type of thing, you say. You are partially correct. We DID have laws that prevented that type of thing. No longer. Our president has issued an Executive Order regarding the rights of non citizens in this country. He has stated that there will be military trials, guilt being assessed by a two thirds majority, without any evidence being offered (due to national security), and that, if found guilty, this foreign person may be executed.

At this time, our justice department has detained, without releasing their names, without disclosing where they are being held, over 1100 persons. We do not know if they are allowed to have an attorney. We do not know in what conditions they are being held. They have not been charged with any crime. At this time, it is believed that they are of Middle Eastern descent. Their "crimes" may be only that of minor visa infractions.

If these are to become the laws of this country, I wonder how many of America's friends to the south will be rounded up and incarcerated? I wonder how many people have entered this land of the free and home of the brave without going through "all of the proper authorities"? I recall that the Statue of Liberty says "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Are we not a nation of immigrants? Did not most of us descend from those who were seeking a better life in a country that was ruled democratically?

What is happening in our nation's Capitol? Our country is now being ruled by fiat, or decree. Laws are being made without discussion or debate. With the stroke of a pen, George W. Bush signed an Executive Order nullifying the judicial branch and an independent jury, which have long been our protections. Under this order, this is no longer true. There are no more checks and balances. All non citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner.

There have been times that Congress has passed legislation to negate or modify a specific executive order. However, when it has, the President has often vetoed the new law and Congress has not always had the votes to override this veto. All citizens of this country must demand that their representatives speak and vote against this tyranny. The nullification of this Order is imperative to retain our system of checks and balances.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. It's just a matter of time before ICE is targeting protesters (not immigrants)

And not immigrant protesters, but just anyone who protests Trump. Regular American citizensare going to be disappeared and sent to prison camps in Rwanda, El Salvador, and who knows where else. And many will die in these camps never having been heard from again by their loved ones.