Political Memes

This is something I've been saying like Cassandra since 2014 and the slaying of Michael Brown and the Ferguson Unrest. I was particularly outraged at the 2016 killing of Philando Castile, who had been stopped by traffic patrol forty-nine times in thirteen years. Essentially they kept trying until they got it right.

A friend of mine with family in Puerto Rico notes that this is just the norm in the US for non-whites. Police will look for an excuse to kill you. In white neighborhoods, there is a considerable risk that if they outnumber or outsize you they'll try to make an example out of you.

Granted, in the 21st century, police brutality (including officer-involved homicide) and hate crime are now being extended to white poors more often than it was. News of law enforcement responding poorly and escalating in response to mental health crises has been on the rise, though maybe it's because we're recognizing MHCs for what they are rather than excited delirium which is an offense worthy of summary execution.

But ICE has always been like the brown shirts or the SS, a paramilitary force that is loyal not to the nation or its laws, but to the current administration, and intended to target its political enemies. The story goes like this:

In the 1990s FBI wanted to transition away from being the secret police that went after the political enemies of the administration (as per during the J. Edgar Hoover years). The Sicilian Mafia had been cleared out, and organized crime was changing. Street gangs were an alleged problem but that was a matter for local departments and the DEA. (FBI fiction was getting its material from the Behavioral Analysis Unit and its hunt for serial killers.)

Then the 9/11 attacks happened. Terrorism by Islamist extremists suddenly had to be taken seriously. The PATRIOT Act was passed. DHS was formed and was meant to facilitate different intelligence departments sharing their data to create comprehensive picture. Everything was a matter of national security.

Within all that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was formed.

We already had a service to deal with immigrants. Customs and Border Patrol was intended to actually patrol the border (and regularly provided water and supplies to migrants in transit because dead bodies were messy and embarrassing). So on paper, ICE was meant to hunt down undocumented immigrants inside the borders who were causing problems. These were the rare violent felon, the murderers and rapists and the worst of the worst. Except that that they're rarer than violent criminals are in the general population. Undocumented Immigrants are statistically well behaved and keep a low profile.

ICE also investigates trademark counterfeiting and, strangely, violations of repair licenses. In the early 2010s, ICE raided several Florida repair shops whose crime was repairing iPhones without a license from Apple to do so. This was before the right-to-repair movement got speed. And then there was that time that ICE raided the estate of Kim Dotcom in New Zealand. Representatives from record labels like Columbia and Sony were present. That was weird, and it seems that ICE sometimes serves as a paramilitary contractor for corporate interests to solve their problems.

But even before Trump, ICE was a federal paramilitary force with an obtuse mission that also served as muscle for the current administration. Obama used them quietly, but Trump was way into the notion. Trump also has had a conspicuous hard-on for police brutality in general, even before his political career. Especially when that violence is directed at non-whites. But during the first Trump term, ICE was most conspicuous with its family separation policy, with children locked in cages and denied regular accommodations (food, hygiene, healthcare, etc.), and then during the George Floyd protests of 2020, where they were quick to deploy tear gas and rubber bullets in Portland, Oregon.

So ICE serving as an unregulated federal paramilitary service that targets anyone, especially perceived enemies of the Trump regime is a natural progression from what they were when the department was founded. Even when we were seeing signs of a movement towards a police state in the George W. Bush administration, ICE was there to get its hands dirty.

This began in 2001-2002 when everyone opposing the sudden establishment of outright fascist government institutions (DHS, Patriot Act, the new TSA, expanded NSA surveillance, Gitmo) was labeled an America-hating terrorist sympathizer.

You’ve been on this path for decades. I lived in the US from 1993-2005. When GWB was reeelected it was clear there was no path back and every day since then my decision to leave has been constantly justified.