Shame Shame Shame: What American Justice Looks Like

Today in our deportation police state: ICE goons in combat gear like they're on recon in Fallujah abduct 4th-graders and dishwashers at taco joints; Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a big-time human trafficker; and tear-gas-and-assault-rifle-laden National Guardsmen roam L.A. in a "massive overreach of authority" by a racist, flailing "chaos-junkie" - "BRING IN THE TROOPS!!" - intent on using Americans' righteous anger as a pretext for the unbridled despotism he hungers for with tanks and Marines on the way.

The festering authoritarianism has been escalating for weeks as public opinion turns against a rancid regime's blundering "policies," from a big ugly bill cutting vital services to sowing fear by abducting the guiltless brown people who do much of this country's work as their families and neighbors weep, grieve, and protest. "You’re going to see (more) enforcement than you’ve ever seen," bragged racist ghoul Tom Homan, who admits many victims have committed no crime except paperwork failures. “We’re going to flood the zone." Facing a malign, doubled quota of 3,000 arrests a day - 'cause these are numbers not humans - Deputy Chief Nazi Stephen Miller reportedly just "eviscerated" minions too focused on finding alleged criminals, "screaming" they need to go after more innocents: "(He) wants everybody arrested. 'Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?"

With many Hispanic workers concentrated in a few fields - construction, restaurants, landscaping, farm work - ICE thugs have in fact doing often-brutal sweeps of those workplaces. In Tallahassee, a horde descended on the site of a college student housing complex to terrorize - "GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!" (and stop building stuff amidst a housing crisis) - and arrest about 100 people; neither ICE nor the company seems to have any idea why they targeted the site or who they abducted. The resulting mayhem is often similarly, simultaneously inept and terrifying, from the so-called DOJ quietly deciding to allow ICE goons to do warrantless searches if they suspect the presence of any dreaded "alien enemy" to Homeland Security releasing a list of immigrant “sanctuary” jurisdictions so riddled with mistakes they later said oops never mind and took it down.

Still, the mindless rupturing of families and communities soars. ICE agents arrested 4th-grader Martir Garcia Laura, 9, of Torrance, CA, when he and his father went to a scheduled immigration hearing; each is now detained in separate facilities.In Milford, MA, they arrested high school honors student Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, who came here from Brazil at age 5, on his way to volleyball practice; he was released after families turned out to declare, "Hands Off Our Kids." In Tucson, residents complained goons were pretending to be Tucson Electric Power workers to ensnare a longtime neighbor from Honduras (TEPtold the goons to stop); ICE lurk outside courthouses to grab immigrants whose cases are abruptly dismissed as organizers take shifts to warn them it's a trap; while there, ICE were so eager for victims they mistakenly detained a deputy U.S. Marshal. Atypically, they let him go.

Many others still languish. In D.C., Chief Judge Boasberg of the U.S. District Court is still trying to keep alive and get habeas corpus relief for the 130 mostly innocent Venezuelans summarily disappeared to El Salvador's hellish CECOT, comparing their plight to Franz Kafka's The Trial in which K., like them, never gets one. Even more bizarrely, ICE atrocities have "reached the art house film phase of ironic cruelty" with the news of eight immigrants - from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico, South Sudan - originally banished to Sudan until a judge said nope not on my watch and halted the flight, thus stranding them and the 11 ICE agents who kidnapped them in an airless shipping container at a US Navy base in searing, malaria-ridden Djibouti; the brilliant move by the sages of our police state was so rash and random they didn't even get any shots, so there are a lot of bathroom trips.

Echoing authoritarianism from Nazi Germany to McCarthy's Red Scare, the stupid, baneful, xenophobic fear-mongering keeps coming: Foreign students banned, foreign scientists harassed, research destroyed, universities assaulted by the moronic likes of Ice Barbie who, straight-faced 'cause her face can't move, charges Harvard is "coordinating with Chinese Communist Party officials on training that undermined American national security." Asked on Fox News to "lay out" the Marxist threat, she babbles, "Oh, they absolutely. Harvard has perpetuated Communist China priorities and students on their campus...participating in para-military activities that supported them and feeding information back to our enemy which is Communist China," and look even their leader's daughter has a degree from Harvard and a "They Died Hungry" sign decrying genocide and what the fuck.

Seeking to cover up their hateful ineptness, they also quietly brought back Kilmar Abrego Garcia (sans fake MS-13 tattoos) more than two months after illegally shipping him to El Salvador. In a bravura deflection, they then threw a wild concoction of after-the-fact, Godfather-level charges at him, claiming he was part of an international trafficking conspiracy who over a decade hauled thousands of "illegals" from Texas into the rest of the country - children, women, men, for good measure "many of whom were MS-13 members" - to "further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States." The indictment stemmed from a 2022 traffic stop by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for speeding in a vehicle with eight individuals and no luggage. He claimed they'd come from a construction site, and the officers let him go without a charge or a ticket. Now, if convicted, he faces 10 years in prison for each "alien" transported.

His lawyer says the regime is "playing games" with the courts. "They'll stop at nothing, even the most preposterous charges imaginable, just to avoid admitting they made a mistake," he said. "This is an abuse of power." Though Abrego Garcia is the only "conspirator" named in an alleged "conspiracy" and the regime tossed in other grisly claims - murder, minors, drugs - absent from the indictment, Pam Bondi trumpeted at a presser, "Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice.” Asked what had changed since the traffic stop, she said, "Donald Trump is now president...Thanks to the bright light that's been shined (sic) on Abrego Garcia, this investigation continued with actually amazing police work, and we were able (to) stop this international smuggling ring." Too stupid to comprehend irony, she added, "This is what American justice looks like."

Not quite, say over 70 judges, lawyers and law professors who've filed an ethics complaint against Bondi with the Florida Bar accusing her of “serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law" and political bias that weaponizes the DOJ, from firing a lawyer for telling the truth about a deportation made "in error" to threatening lawyers who fail "to zealously pursue the President’s political objectives.” And Bondi continues to offend: The indictment led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a longtime federal prosecutor in Tennessee, most recently the chief of the criminal division, who charged that the case against Abrego Garcia was pursued for political reasons, period. For 15 years, "The only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons," he wrote in his resignation letter. He didn't need to add, No more, with ghouls and lackeys in power.

And for now, they are. They are orchestrating massive, mindless, vicious assaults on brown people, sowing fear, terrorizing communities, rupturing families, disappearing the nice taco guy who daily dices the red chilis in a nationwide campaign of "pure public intimidation," cosplaying as soldiers in a racist, inequitable war, "cruelty disguised as policy." Last week they raided the Taqueria y Birreria Las Cuatro Milpas, a south Minneapolis taco joint in a majority-Latino neighborhood rocked five years ago by the police murder of George Floyd. A phalanx of ostensibly law-and-order federal acronyms - FBI, ATF, HSI, DHS, DEA - gathered in full combat gear, camo fatigues, guns, masks, with their flash grenades, tear gas, zip ties, stationing their squat HSI Bearcat armored car with mounted sound cannon in front of the popular restaurant, below its awning breezily urging, “Make Tacos, Not Walls.”

A crowd of wary residents began to assemble. Police, who weren't notified of the feds' action, hastened to clarify it was "not related to immigration enforcement" but what Homeland Security called “a groundbreaking criminal operation" to "confront complex, multidimensional threats" - drug smuggling, money laundering, trafficking. There were no arrests, but people were pissed by the "small-dick Nazi energy" of so much kitted-out law enforcement in the hood. "Imagine needing all that military gear to protect yourself from taco-makers," said one. "This is an intimidation campaign." Also: "That armor isn't designed to handle guacamole...DO YOU FEEL SAFE YET, CITIZEN?...Great to see a Mexican restaurant in Afghanistan." "We are a whisper away from Jim Crow," warned A.G. Keith Ellison. “If they want to inflict fear (and) discourage cooperation, they achieved both those goals."

In San Diego, it was both worse and better. At dinnertime last Friday, having gotten a tip about possible undocumented workers just like at Hell-a-Lago - a tip from 2020 that resurfaced months ago - ICE stormtroopers kitted out in full, bulky, combat gear stormed the popular restaurant Buona Forchetta in South Park for alleged "violations of hiring and harboring illegal aliens and false statements." After their big-bang entrance, they handcuffed the entire staff of about 20 before arresting four workers for the crime of trying too hard to find a job. Outside, meanwhile, over 250 angry residents gathered to protest "cops cosplaying like they were taking down Osama bin Laden" under the false pretense of "safety" against, not criminals but a community's wait staff and health aides and abuelas watching the kids. "This isn’t safety," said one City Council member. "It’s state-sponsored terrorism."

"Someone must have told these guys they were gonna be invading Fallujah," marveled Rachel Maddow of agents "in full battle rattle with helmets and long guns and flak jackets and goggles and masks...This was bananas. The whole neighborhood came out to say, 'This is what you're coming to save us from? The terrible menace of, like, the nice waiter at our favorite restaurant?’" As a GoFundMe launched to raise money for those abducted and DHS insisted they're "working day and night to remove murders (sic), pedophiles and gang members from our communities," the furious crowd confronted goons who, unclear on the ethics of shooting middle-aged white people, set off flash grenades and nervously backed away. "Shame shame shame!" yelled residents chasing them to an unmarked Gestapomobile. "Yeah, back up! Get the fuck out, you fucking Nazi cowards! Go!" Go, San Diego!

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Now there is the "immigration enforcement operation” in the largely Hispanic Paramount area of L.A, quickly spiraling into martial law. It began peacefully at Home Depot, just like Goebbels wanted, with ICE hauling out people - "workers, fathers, mothers being terrorized" - arresting over 40 and cuffing them in the basements of federal buildings. As crowds of protesters grew, agents in full tactical gear escalated to tear gas, pepper spray, flash grenades, "non-lethal" rubber bullets. They corralled groups holding Mexican flags chanting, "Fuera ICE!" - ICE, get out - manhandled and arrested a union president, tossed a tear-gas cannister at two female ACLU attorneys who asked to see a warrant. As usual, they attacked randomly, not criminals like they keep absurdly claiming. "That's never, ever, ever been the case," said one L.A. Council member. "When they come for one of us, they come for all of us."

When Trump took the rare move of asserting federal control over California's National Guard - an act the GOP and Nazi Barbie had decried in the past as an attack on states' rights and razor wire - Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted it as "purposefully inflammatory." With LAPD and county sheriffs serving as safety but not ICE enforcement backup, he insisted, the presence of the Guard was "not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis." "They want a spectacle. They want the violence," he said. "This is not the way a civilized country behaves. It is completely deranged behavior." It is also, says a former US Army War College professor, a legally dubious, "crazy broad," "massive overreach of POTUS authority" essentially functioning as "a show of force against a powerful blue state that (MAGA) have cast as an existential threat to the rest of America" - the "stuff of dictatorships throughout history."

Dems agreed calling out the Guard is "a completely inappropriate and misguided mission" aimed at "sowing more chaos and division." Particularly ominously, Trump's memo vaguely asserts the right to employ "members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary" against protests he calls "a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” He doesn't name LA or California - Lincoln, invoking the Insurrection Act, specified it targeted rebel southern states - paving the way to use the military against protestors anywhere on American soil, a "dangerous precedent" when "forces are there to aid/abet the actors provoking the community in the first place." Typically for this evil clown show, troops also came "wildly unprepared"; photos show them sleeping on concrete floors, having arrived without plans for food, water, lodging or bathrooms, expected "if you actually want law and order instead of chaos."

But who needs toilets amidst MAGA's frantic rhetoric about "a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels," aka dishwashers and carpenters. Kash Patel: LA is "under siege by marauding criminals.” Drunken Hegseth: "Assaults on ICE (are) a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK." As usual "world-class hater" Goebbels wins the hysteria prize: Protests are "an insurrection against (US) laws and sovereignty," LA is "occupied territory" in "a fight to save civilization," California "conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.” The Mad King raved "a once great American city" has been "occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals" with "insurrectionist mobs...swarming." But once his flunkies "put an end to these Migrant riots, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.” Meanwhile, evidently admirably unfazed by said "insurrection," he attended a UFC fight in Newark later that night.

As to inconvenient truth: "L.A. is not a war zone." Kai Ryssdal, “I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.” Another: "This is beyond delusional. It needs its own terminology for how devoid of reality it is...I am out doing errands. L.A. is like it is on any other day, with a few hundred protestors in a couple of spots in a city of nearly 10 million." In A Letter to Home from A Weary ICE Agent, Peter Birkenhead writes he and his "brave compatriots, fresh from a six-week Patriotic Abduction training course at a strip-mall karate studio," await orders to confront "a force of (up to) 11 or 12 of the enemy cleverly disguised as “dishwashers,” “nannies,” and “landscapers"....armed only with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of high-capacity automatic rifles, rubber bullets, smoke bombs, tanks, helmets, Kevlar vests and night-vision goggles" to protect them from a possible small stone "hurled our way by a weeping child or hysterical mother as we pry their loved ones from their dastardly hands."

The bottom line: "Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen." In this, Trump - "Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” - has "turned to a familiar script," "casting the sprawling city of L.A. in shades of fire and brimstone, a hub of dangerous lawlessness that required urgent military intervention (to) be contained." Such rhetoric is "an authoritarian trick," says fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “You create a sense of existential fear that social anarchy is spreading, criminal gangs are taking over. This is the language of authoritarianism all over the world. What is the only recourse to violent mobs and agitators? Using all the force of the state."

As images emerge from social media of brown restaurant workers, likely soon to be abducted, helping wash out the eyes of sheriffs' deputies hit by tear gas - and as TACO man memorably, patheticallyfalls - the Marines are pointlessly sent to add to the fear and lies. Remember, notes Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, "In order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire goddamn population, you must first build the police state." As it accrues, it behooves us to maintain calm and clarity on what is and isn't real threat. From Connor Simon last month after ICE raided his Pennsylvania pizzeria: "It’s really hard to fathom that the guy making my pizza for 25 years is a gangster and terrorist, and the person who shows up in an unmarked car wearing a mask and body armor come to take him away is somehow the good guy.”