We Are Here: Courts Join the Furious Chorus

Predictably, the exit of mini-Nazi Bovino did little to staunch ICE abuses - kids gassed, women dragged, skulls fractured, observers facing guns - which go on apace. But so do growing protests, testimony and court rulings against them. This week saw a spectacularly scathing one as ICE Barbie tried to strip protections from 350,000 Haitians peaceably living and working here - en route, dubbing them "killers" and "leeches." The result: "Federal judge reaches down Noem's throat, rips out her heart, and eats it raw."

Amidst a half-assed government shutdown that's funded vast venal parts of the regime but temporarily left out DHS, "metaphorically trapped on the street in its weaponized SUV," nobody's mourning the abrupt departure of former "commander" Greg Bovino, who quietly slunk back to whatever dark dank cave he crawled out of. Swapping him out in the wake of outrage over ICE's murderous abuses, it was agreed, was "like shitting your pants and then changing your shirt." "To stem a spiraling crisis, the White House replaced an asshole with a different asshole," reported Andy Borowitz, who quoted "senior asshole" Stephen Miller on what's next: "Anyone who thinks this administration is going to run out of assholes any time soon better think again. We have a very deep bench." (It includes his ignorant, hateful wife.)

The bench features Noem, Rubio, Drunk Pete and Miller himself, who's taken to not just raving that ICE stormtroopers have total immunity (NOT) but desperately advertising for them on X - "If you want to combat fraud, crime and illegal immigration, reach out. Patriots needed." It also includes Tulsi Gabbard, fresh from charging Obama with "treasonous conspiracy" in the 2016 election and running her own investigation into - as well as inexplicably joining the FBI raid on a Georgia election office aimed at - the hoary, tired, alleged steal of the 2020 election. (Really.) Finally, don't forget cartoon thug Tom Homan, Bovino's replacement, who wisely blames anti-ICE "rhetoric" for his goons shooting Renee Good in the head and Alex Pretti in the back several times, in the fine tradition of abusers everywhere who plead, "Why did you make me kill you?"

In Minneapolis, meanwhile, a county medical examiner’s office ruled the death of Pretti "homicide by multiple gunshot wounds"; it also found agents denied aid to the dying nurse by turning away a physician who offered to help. Last week, ProPublica identified his killers as Border Patrol agents Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, at their jobs 11 and 7 years respectively, after federal officials refused to release their names. An internal federal report also found Good's killers violated policies on use of force "during every step of the encounter" - from deescalation to handling guns to moving vehicles to calling her "a fucking bitch"; law enforcement experts agreed agents made "grave tactical and legal mistakes" in a “completely uncoordinated and chaotic" assault. To date, her killers have only been put on administrative leave.

Since both murders, DHS made small, contradictory shifts. Agents were told not to engage with “agitators,” aka peaceful protesters, and to only target immigrants with criminal charges - like they said they were doing all along but obviously weren't. Yet an internal memo claims they're newly free to make random, warrantless arrests to skirt court orders that demand warrants. Experts and veterans deem them inept "fake soldiers" and brazen "mercenaries"; Mayor Jacob Frey calls them "marauding gangs...indiscriminately picking people up,” and often attacking them. When Castañeda Mondragón arrived at the hospital, agents boasted he "got his shit rocked." After scans showed he had eight skull fractures with life-threatening brain hemorrhages - and staff called bullshit - agents said he tried to flee, cuffed, and "purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall."

”It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about," said one nurse bitterly, who described fractious ICE agents roaming the halls, harassing patients for their papers as fearful hospital staff huddled, and insisting a comatose Mondragón - who came here legally, started a construction company, and has no criminal record - be shackled to his bed. After two weeks, a judge ordered him released; with no family nearby, co-workers took him in for a long recovery. Across the state, a similar sense of siege reigns. While five-year-old Liam Ramos, grabbed in his bunny hat, was released, several more kids from his school have been detained, school officials, parents, grandparents, neighbors patrol in shifts outside at dismissal time as ICE agents prowl, and streets are littered with empty ghost cars - doors open, sometimes running - of other victims whisked away.

This week, it happened twice. Footage by Ford Fischer shows agents swarming a car of legal observers and dragging them out at gunpoint. One thug claimed they were threatening them with "hand guns," which lamely turned out to be gun motions with their hands. Yelled one enraged bystander, "Put away your weapons, you douchebags." Outside the small city of St. Peter, a woman driving behind agents filmed herself - and, preternaturally calm, phoned colleagues to call 911- as they swerved in front of her, jumped out with guns drawn, dragged her out, and shoved her into their car. She was ultimately released and driven home by the police chief, a friend, after her husband notified him (see small city), but residents were horrified by the jumpy, masked, trigger-happy scene. "This is just insane," said one. "It’s only a matter of time before (they) kill another innocent person."

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The dystopian scenes repeat elsewhere. Last weekend in Portland, OR, ICE thugs launched tear gas, flash bangs, pepper balls and rubber bullets at thousands of peaceful protesters, including children in strollers. Tim Dickinson of The Contrarian wrote, "Today I saw ICE gas little white kids in the streets (with) chemical weapons. Imagine what they’re doing to brown and black kids in the detention camps." Mayor Keith Wilson raged, “To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave...To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children." Tuesday, after the ACLU filed a complaint, a District Judge banned such barbarism to preserve the U.S, "now at a crossroads,"-as "a well-functioning constitutional democratic republic.” Jack Dickinson, the Portland Chicken, thanked him: "Cruelty is not an appropriate response to dissent."

Also in Portland, another bullshit federal narrative has fallen apart after goons shot two people a day after they murdered Renee Good. DHS described the targeted stop of a vehicle with two “vicious” Venezueland gang members; they claimed a woman in the car was previously “involved” in a shooting and the driver “attempted to run over” the officers, after which they were shot - chest, arm - and detained. (Miraculously, "The agents were uninjured.) The real story that emerged: No gang evidence, no criminal record, no car "weaponization," no fearful agents, no footage, the woman was an earlier victim of rape, theft, kidnap and feds undertook "a dirtying-up of the defendants." "The federal government cannot be trusted," said a city councilor, citing "a playbook of demonizing people" and "a pattern of victim-blaming...It’s important we push back, because it’s propaganda.”

In Chicago, they rammed the car of Dayanne Figueroa, a U.S. citizen, home-care worker and member of SEIU Local 503 on her way to pay rent and buy a birthday cake for her grandson. After side-swiping her, a swarm of agents jump out with guns drawn, break her car window, drag her out barefoot, throw her to the ground and demand to see her “papers" as she screams and struggles; she has severe asthma and is terrified of tear gas. After goons cuff her, they ransack her purse, find her passport and storm off, leaving her lying in the street with a torn rotator cuff, concussion and bruised ribs. Her daughter got her to the hospital with the help of the union, who also led a protest and created a GoFundMe for car repair and medical costs. Their goal was $10K; once they got to almost $20K they shut it down and posted, "See who else needs help now!"

As a profit-seeking, Stasi-like DHS attacks and terrorizes those it's meant to protect - see "security" - and runs chilling ads like, "Want affordable housing? Help report illegal aliens in your area. Call 866-DHS-2-ICE," Trump's polls keep plummeting, even at Fox. In deep denial, he rambles about a mythical "silent majority” who loves him, raves about "Democrat CRIMINAL ACTS," and embarks on random acts of revenge like (after three tries) arresting CNN's Don Lemon for doing journalism, aka "violating the sacred right to worship freely" - though ICE did it first - in a "coordinated attack by rioters” at a right-wing Minnesota church with an ICE pastor. As the White House gloated with racist tropes - chains! - MAGA manically joined in. Noem described “Church Riots," Erika Kirk called protesters "demonic," Rep. Mike Davis praised a "fearless" Bondi: "Nobody is above the law. Especially not today's Klansmen - like Don Lemon." Who's...black.

Nobody, except rabid cultists, is buying it. Stunning new polls show voters' support for ICE has cratered from a +13-point margin to 19 points underwater, with almost 60% opposed. A majority now want both Miller and Noem removed, ICE to focus on the border, and no funding without new limits to a too-extreme putsch against immigrants - who are, per Rep. Dan Goldman, pursuing a legal pathway, rendering the vicious Noem, famously clueless on habeas corpus, the one violating the law. The rampant abuses have spurred mass resignations from Minnesota's U.S. Attorneys Office, now decimated by half; another just quit, telling a judge, "The system sucks. This job sucks." llinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who blasts "monsters" Miller and Noem for "unleashing this havoc on American cities," argues their "horrors" are now backfiring: "They're not dividing us anymore, they're uniting Americans against the tyranny."

On Wednesday, menacing cartoon villain Tom Homan announced the removal of 700 thugs from Minnesota with a dubious, mixed message, attributing the move to better coordination with county jails - though most sheriffs won't work with ICE - while threatening that targeting criminals won’t mean ”we forget about everybody else.“ So thanks, no thanks. His news landed with an even louder thud in the wake of devastating testimony the day before from his victims and their relatives at a public forum on DHS violence and abuse hosted by Democrats Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Robert Garcia. Because Republicans control Congressional hearings and refuse to hold ICE to account, the two Dems defiantly held "shadow hearings," wrote Jay Kuo in his thorough coverage, to "preserve a clear and public record of what they have done and the crimes they have committed."

The panel of Democratic lawmakers heard harrowing accounts of victims' and families' trauma, grief and loss. Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen and Montessori teacher in Chicago, was shot five times by Border Patrol after she followed an agent’s car to warn her neighbors. DHS claimed she tried to run them over, forcing them to "fire defensively," and she was charged with felony assault. The case was quickly dismissed in court, because in truth the agents rammed her car, and the shooter later bragged in a text, "I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book, boys." Despite what she'd gone through, Martinez movingly used part of her time to speak for slain victims who could not tell their own stories: "I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Silverio Villegas González. I am Keith Porter. They should all be here. All of us should hear the truth."

In equally eloquent, wrenching testimony, Minneapolis resident Aliya Rahman, a U.S. citizen from Bangladesh with autism and a traumatic brain injury, described driving to a doctor's visit when agents smashed her window, dragged her out, and detained her without medical care until she blacked out. She, too, spoke of others: “I am here today with a duty to the people who have not had the privilege of coming home...These practices must end. Now.” Luke and Brent Ganger, brothers of Renee Good, mourned a sister who "carried peace, patience and love for others wherever she went," an "unapologetically hopeful” woman and mother who "looked for the light." Rep. Greg Casar held a 3-minute and 26-second moment of silence for Good, the time feds let her bleed out. Garcia held up photos of Trump, Vance, Noem, Miller, Homan, Bovino: “Every single one of them has to be held accountable for the crimes, the terror, the murders." Not one elected Republican showed up for the event.

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Alongside "the bravery of your average 70-year-old Lutheran lady following ICE around Minneapolis in her Subaru Crosstrek," judges are standing up for an America then-Commander-in-Chief George Washington described in 1783 as "open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions." In a truly scathing ruling, D.C. Federal District Court Judge Ana Reyes blocked Kristi Noem from stripping almost 350,000 Haitians living and working in the U.S. of their Temporary Protected Status just hours before it was set to expire. In a blistering, painstaking, 83-page order, Reyes obliterates Noem’s arguments for terminating the Haitians' TPS as "implausible and contrary to the evidence." With neither the facts nor the law on her side, she charges, Noem is likely motivated by "racial animus" that "spits in the face, in letter and spirit," of Washington's noble sentiment.

Issuing a temporary stay, Reyes said it was “substantially likely” Noem "preordained" her TPS decision based on "hostility to nonwhite immigrants." As proof, she quotes Noem's X post in December urging a travel ban "on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies," adding, “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE." The five plaintiffs in the case "are not, it emerges, ‘killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies,'" Reyes notes. They are Fritz Miot, a PH.D candidate in neuroscience who works in California researching Alzheimer’s disease therapies; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer for a national bank in New York City who supports five relatives, one with Down syndrome, in Haiti; Marlene Noble, a toxicology lab assistant with spinal tuberculosis who hopes to work as a post-mortem forensic toxicologist; Marica Laguerre, a college economics major at Hunter College who simultaneously earned a prep school and associate degree in biology at New York's CUNY; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a doctor in Haiti who now works as a registered nurse at Springfield Regional Medical Center.

Over 83 carefully wrought pages - it's worth reading, or at least skimming - Reyes decimates Noem's lapses, errors, lies, willful omissions, and sloppy reasoning as she bypasses multiple legally mandated steps to do her master's racist bidding. She doesn't conduct the requisite analysis, doesn't consult Congress and other appropriate agencies, makes "gross generalizations without supporting data," ignores economic factors like the $1.3 billion Haitians pay annually in taxes, ignores key, grim country conditions - people "caught in a perfect storm of suffering" and its "staggering" humanitarian toll from earthquakes, hurricanes, gangs, human rights abuses, collapsing government, rampant rape, violence, child abductions and our own State Dept. warning: “Do not travel to Haiti for any reason” - which, Reyes notes, "does not exactly scream, as Noem concluded, Suitable For Return."

Noem has also terminated every TPS designation - 12 to date - that comes before her, blithely stripping protections from hundreds of thousands of people, most of color, from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Honduras, Nicaragua, Syria, South Sudan and other suffering countries. In each, Reyes writes, she made the same argument; in each, "A court has rejected the Government’s rather expansive view that the Secretary’s decision-making is immune from judicial review. This Court joins the chorus." Reyes concludes, "Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by the Constitution and (Federal) law to apply faithfully the facts to the law. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that...Termination shall be null, void, and of no legal effect."

Reyes' fierce rebuttal echoes the righteous wrath of last week's ruling from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who ordered the release of bunny-hatted Liam Ramos and his father Adrian Arias from detention in Texas; their legal asylum case will now proceed through the courts. In his brief, livid decision, Biery quoted Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence - "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People" -.decried the government's "apparent ignorance" of that document, and blasted "the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas (even) if it requires traumatizing children.” He went on, "Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned." He quoted Benjamin Franklin - "A republic if we can keep it" - before ending, "With a judicial finger in the Constitutional dike, it is so ORDERED." May Minnesota's Singing Resistance see us through.

Sign at recent anti-ICE protestPhoto from BlueSky