Boardman writes: "Created with little serious thought in the post-9/11 government panic, ICE was supposed to be a bulwark against the inflated threat of international terrorism."
ICE agents. (photo: Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/AP)
ALSO SEE: It's Not Just People in the US Illegally
- ICE Is Nabbing Lawful Permanent Residents Now
ALSO SEE: Sen. Elizabeth Warren Joins
Call to Get Rid of ICE
ICE Is a State-Sponsored Terrorist Organization - Abolish ICE
01 July 18
ICE has strayed so far from its mission. It�s supposed to be here to keep Americans safe, but what it�s turned into is, frankly, a terrorist organization of its own, that is terrorizing people who are coming to this country.� Cynthia Nixon, Democrat for Governor of New York, June 21, 2018
CE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is the largest police agency (some 20,000 employees, offices in 50 states and 48 foreign countries) in the Department of Homeland Security. Created with little serious thought in the post-9/11 government panic, ICE was supposed to be a bulwark against the inflated threat of international terrorism. Over the past fifteen years, lacking enough serious criminals to justify its $6 billion budget, ICE has reduced itself (with poisonous political pandering in support) to the horrifying monster we�re finally seeing more clearly, littering the American landscape with caged parents and children, broken families (by choice, not by law), incarcerated innocents, harmless working taxpayers, and disrupted American businesses � a full range of social mayhem chosen by the past several presidents in preference to any humane, decent policy rooted in justice. In 2002, Congress voted to make ICE a national police force with Gestapo-like powers. Corrupt law and corrupt politics have produced corrupt results. What a surprise.
How best to respond to this paramilitary police state operation that mostly produces human carnage (including widespread sexual abuse of detainees since 2010)? How best to end the chronic violation of human rights law by this brutal regime that denies asylum to the persecuted and sends them back to suffer or die? The current movement to abolish ICE began last winter with a piece in The Nation magazine, in which Sean McElwee concluded: �It�s time to rein in the greatest threat we face: an unaccountable strike force executing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.� Abolishing ICE is no panacea, but it is a necessary first step to creating immigration policy based on law, compassion, and our own better history.
The political will to reinvent American idealism may or may not emerge in the face of vicious, bipartisan opposition. On June 21, Cynthia Nixon apparently became the first high-profile politician to call ICE by its rightful terrorist name and to call for its abolition. She�s running for Governor of New York against Democratic establishment hope-crusher Andrew Cuomo, who supports ICE. But two days before Nixon spoke out, Cuomo announced his plan for New York to file a multi-agency lawsuit against the Trump administration for �violating the Constitutional rights of thousands of immigrant children and their parents who have been separated at the border.� The treatment of families at the border is only one part of ICE�s assault on human rights, as Cuomo surely knows, as indicated in his apparently ironic comment: �I think ICE should be a bonafide law enforcement organization that prudently and diligently enforces the law.� [emphasis added]
Nixon first spoke out against ICE at the St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church in New York City. The church has given sanctuary to a 32-year-old Guatemalan mother, Debora Berenice Vasquez, and her two children (both US citizens), after ICE threatened them with deportation. How do these facts square with ICE�s promise: �We vow to continue our mission to protect the United States by promoting homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws ��? What �homeland security� or �public� is served by taking 13 years to bring a case that robs a mother of her job and freedom while traumatizing her two American children? At the church�s press conference announcing the sanctuary, Nixon said:
Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for offering sanctuary to Debora and her children. And thank you for giving us all a place to gather today to stand up with one voice as New Yorkers and say, �No,� and say, �No, not in our name. Not in our name.�
This event didn�t happen in a vacuum. On June 26, New Yorkers voted in their Democratic primary and in one race rejected a member of the House leadership, who carefully supports ICE (he voted to create it) and who doesn�t live in his district, in favor of a 28-year-old Latina whose campaign targeted ICE and the party�s aging, out-of-touch leadership. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grew up in the district that covers much of the Bronx and Queens. She graduated from Boston University and came home and organized. She was the first to challenge the incumbent in more than a decade. She said of her campaign:
It�s time we acknowledge that not all democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off of foreclosure, doesn�t live here, doesn�t send his kids to our schools, doesn�t drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent us.
She was describing the media-clich� �powerful Democrat,� ten-term congressman Joseph Crowley, crony to Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and presumed easy winner of the seat to which he was surely entitled, along with his predicted rise to Speaker of the House. The race got little attention until the media and professional politicians woke up �surprised� to find that a former organizer for Bernie Sanders had won the nomination with more than 57% of the vote. Trump and the rest of the right-wing dishonest noise machine are already lying about what Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats stand for, as Trump called Democrats �now officially the party of impeachment, open borders, abolishing ICE, banning the 2nd Amendment and unbridled socialism.� What Ocasio-Cortez actually said about ICE has had nothing to do with open borders:
Abolishing ICE doesn�t mean get rid of our immigration policy, but what it does mean is to get rid of the draconian enforcement that has happened since 2003 that routinely violates our civil rights, because, frankly, it was designed with that structure in mind.
The day before the primary, June 25, a Democratic candidate for New York Attorney General published an editorial in the Guardian titled: �ICE is a tool of illegality. It must be abolished.� Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout is challenging at least three other candidates in the September 13 primary for the open office, but the filing deadline doesn�t close the race till July 12. The temporary attorney general, Barbara Underwood, is not running. She replaced AG Eric Schneiderman (also a Democrat) who resigned in May amidst sexual misconduct allegations. Teachout appears to be the only candidate calling for the abolition of ICE, writing in The Guardian:
Let�s be clear: Ice is a fairly recent development. When the George W Bush administration successfully pushed to place immigration enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it transformed decades of past practice where internal immigration policy was conducted by the justice department. The new policy sent a clear and chilling signal: immigrants should be treated as criminals and a national security threat.
The same day as Teachout�s editorial, four current Congress members � Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) � said they would support legislation to abolish ICE. Representative Pocan said he would introduce a bill this week (it was not available as of June 28). Pocan explained his motivation in a press release:
During my trip to the southern border, it was clear that ICE, and its actions of hunting down and tearing apart families, has wreaked havoc on far too many people. From conducting raids at garden centers and meatpacking plants, to breaking up families at churches and schools, ICE is tearing apart families and ripping at the moral fabric of our nation. Unfortunately, President Trump and his team of white nationalists, including Stephen Miller, have so misused ICE that the agency can no longer accomplish its goals effectively�.
I�m introducing legislation that would abolish ICE and crack down on the agency�s blanket directive to target and round up individuals and families. The heartless actions of this abused agency do not represent the values of our nation and the U.S. must develop a more humane immigration system, one that treats every person with dignity and respect.
A weeklong barricade of ICE offices in Southwest Portland, Oregon, has been broken up by police. Representative Blumenauer spoke in favor of the protestors at a rally at City Hall. He voted against the creation of ICE in 2002. In support of Pocan�s legislation, Blumenauer wrote:
We should abolish ICE and start over, focusing on our priorities to protect our families and our borders in a humane and thoughtful fashion. Now is the time for immigration reform that ensures people are treated with compassion and respect. Not only because it is the moral thing to do, but it�s better policy and will cost less.
Rational, moral, and humane as these voices are, they still represent only a small minority of Democrats, most of whom have run for cover on the issue. Media coverage tends to treat �abolish ICE� as a trivial issue or at Fox, an offense against the state. Democrats of note appear intimidated by the issue. Bernie Sanders voted against ICE, now doesn�t want to abolish it. Nancy Pelosi voted against ICE, now supports it. In all, 120 Democrats in Congress opposed ICE in 2002, but today only four are on record to abolish it. In 2002, Democratic senators overwhelmingly supported creating ICE in a 90-9 Senate vote. None of the 9 Democrats opposing ICE in 2002 remain in office.
Maybe this is changing, maybe Ocasio-Cortez�s strong victory will be a shock to the all but dead party of Democrats. On June 28 on CNN, New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand was caught in a high-pitched defense of her failure to respect Ocasio-Cortez as a candidate. The interviewer read a tweet from Ocasio-Cortez, calling out Gillibrand�s lockstep party orthodoxy. Then, on the defensive, Gillibrand suddenly expressed support for abolishing ICE, almost as if she meant it. Now how hard was that? November is coming and Democrats continue to cling to old notions detached from current reality (the Crowley Democrats). Under pressure, Gillibrand took the right position for the moment. For November to be worth celebrating, the party will have to do much better than that. It will have to find a heart and a soul and a brain and apply them all to the criminal atrocities our government commits daily at home and abroad.
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N.
"We" ARE listening! It's the ones in Washington that are running around with their fingers jammed firmly in their ears, screaming, "I can't hear you"!
So, what do we do about it?
I went ahead and taped a paper on my bathroom mirror in large letters FEAR
Underneath it is written
1. A meaningless world engenders fear
2. I am determined to see
3. I am determined to see things
differently
4. Above all I am determined to peacefully and diligently create a meaningful world despite interferrence.
This may sound goofy and simple but looking at it daily affects the unconscious and enables one to get over
the fear we are intentionally pounded and indoctrinated with everyday. As each individual changes, mass consciousness slowly changes and recovers. Thoughts and the actions behind them(with intent) are things. Similiar to the Hundreth Monkey, a short and interesting read. http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
target practice for the moment a hoodie or a woman you don't like appears? agh what a subtle distinction. i feel much safer knowing that.
If you have a point, please sharpen it, taking into account that the murder rate is higher now than in 1963, and that in every other year of the war one is claiming, until 2011, the murder rate was even higher, sometimes radically.
Note also that murder and mayhem are the least common uses of nuclear weapons (two occasions); they've mostly been used for demonstration, product improvement, range practice and intimidation. Want one?
You haven't said where your statistics come from, and neither have I. But I'll tell if you will.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf (scroll down to page 2)
Perhaps you will quibble with the first two, but surely you will accept the findings of the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics?
While I'm throwing fact out, here is another interesting one. Every year more people are murdered by "personal weapons" (hands and feet) than by long guns (shotguns,rifle s including so-called assault rifles. Ck the FBI UCR for that one.
And, the point is...if you are going to have a debate, you should first know the facts and not rely on someone's fevered imagination.
? 332,014 people DIED from guns between 2000 and 2010. That number is greater than the populations of U.S. cities such as St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. iii
? 31,328 people died from gun violence in 2010, or roughly 1 every 17 minutes. iv
? A gun in the home makes homicide three times more likely, suicide up to five times as likely, and accidental death four times higher than in non-gun owning homes.
? Access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than 5 times than in instances where there are no weapons, according to a recent study. In addition, abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners.vi
Gun Violence & Women
? 94% of female murder victims killed by men are killed by a man they knew. In other words,
females are 16 times as likely to be killed by a male acquaintance than by a male stranger. In 2010, 1,017 women, almost three a day, were killed by their intimate partners. viii
? Of females killed by men with a firearm, more than two-thirds were killed by their intimate
partners.ix
? In 2010, 52 percent of female homicide victims killed by men were shot and killed with a gun.
Female intimate partners are more likely to be murdered with a firearm than all other means
combined.x
? Women suffering from domestic violence are eight times more likely to be killed if there are firearms in the home.xi Souurce: www.futureswithoutviolence.org
IN A SHELL
Big fat-asses, greedy and ignorant with
compassion only to themselves.
How can intelligent people live in
and raise their children in such a
stupid country.
I'm hoping to find help with my sailboat, getting it out of here. I'm going to Mexico first.
Anyone want to join me?
sonomacountyiskillingme.org if you are interested...
Also, the thought of leaving behind loved ones and friends seems pretty chicken. Who will stand with them?
I often consider what it must have been like in Germany when the 3rd Reich gained power. The fascist ranks swelled so quickly it became difficult to get out. To think that Germany and Austria were pretty much the center of the intellectual universe, yet were taken over by armed thugs who then tried to conquer the world, and all in less than two decades. Let's see now...how long has it been since these nutjob NRA extremists took over congress? You can see how quickly this happens, and why we need to be active and vigilant now.
First, my family abandoned me long before social workers and society did; and I lost all of my friends for the same reasons...
And those reasons are the second point: why stand with those who will not stand up for themselves and others? Why do you think it's reasonable to stand to protect those who do not act to protect themselves and who do not even consider for a moment the possibility that everything they understand, because it comes from someone else, might just be wrong?
Do you really want to stand and fight for people who will not stand and fight for themselves?
Would a better option not be to inspire your loved ones to follow you to freedom?
I can't leave alone, a mistake I should have foreseen. But then again, I can't survive alone, so my fate is tied to the hope that someone out there will wake up enough to see what is coming and that my ship is a damn find option for escaping it.
And I know just what to do.
I sell guns to the Arabs
and dynamite to the Jews."
I actually know the tune to that ditty and it was in my mind the whole time I was reading the article.
True...so do not vote for them! Get them OUT!
http://shop.jpfo.org/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=24
While it is certainly true that the top fraction of a per cent wealthy in America encourage the rest of us to fight one another, in order to prevent us from attacking them out of the feeling that our relative poverty is unfair, and while it is certainly true that the police are a) becoming militarized and b) in too many cases behaving as if they can kill and injure as they wish (see
http://www.copblock.org/
for details)
This is not the time to stop fighting.
We might, however, want to rethink who we should fight with, and how, and for or against what.
This article is a masterpiece. The argument is impeccable, the writing absolutely fluid and and eloquent.
So perfectly done is this one, and the argument *SO* vitally important for every breathing human to *understand* that this could become the very manifesto that proponents of rational gun control could be pasting up on every cork board, telephone pole, op-ed page and serious website in the country.
Primo, Sir, absolutely Primo.
Americans don't want to take responsibility. And in failing to take responsibility, they accept the consequences.
What's the next stage after this collective weariness? We haven't really tried to do anything different. I mean really different like developing a huge wave of action and stop paying the banks.
Shame on American loss of moral values proselytism to kill Islamists to promote just 8 of his 10 commandments. Forgetting "Vengeance is mine: he said Drone yourself and frack the rest yankees.
That was one of the best articles I've read in a hell of a long time.
You are absolutely right. And guess what? I've had war declared on me by Sonoma County, California; the same county that declared war on a 13 year old latino child with a toy gun - sold by another industry that profits from guns, even if indirectly.
It isn't just the crazy people who have guns, who use them to kill.
I blame my situation (sonomacountyis killingme.org) squarely on President Obama. He is our leader, he is THEIR leader too. And they, our governments, including county governments, look to our president for how to behave. And when Obama wants someone dead, he orders a Seal Team into action, or a drone flown by a CIA-led gamer in the desert of America somewhere.
Our president has skipped the whole due process thing; so why shouldn't the county do the same thing.
Why is this happening? You hit the nail on the head - because it is more profitable for us to be sick, mentally ill, shooting each other, afraid, stupid, ignorant, and wanting to be popular.
Television IS the cause; but not as people imagine (or rather, not as people were told by the television.)
Television is a cultural normalizer. If you don't watch television, you aren't "normal."
I say let's all have a truce, say, on July 10th. I think its appropriate to ask for this,, considering I was born a few days after Bobby died in the kitchen, and a couple months after King bled off that balcony.