The difference we're seeing here is how it's done. I suppose maybe it's a matter of reporting, but given the penchant of conservatives for reporting the worst when Democrats are in power that seems dubious. I do not recall hearing stories of hordes of masked, armed, armored ICE gunmen invading cities and arresting citizens during Obama's tenure.
This says it better than I did. Before Pres. Trump's second term, ICE wasn't the brutal, heavily-armed, paramilitary stormtroopers you see today. It was a small, relatively benign, ununiformed, mostly unarmed service that people vaguely knew existed but rarely if ever saw. They were still quite effective at their mission as such, because they were actually focused on their mission. Nobody protested ICE because ICE didn't do anything worth protesting. Their tactics were reasonable and effective.
The right doesn't want to concede what we can all see: that the mission of ICE has quite evidently shifted to focus on harassing Donald Trump's political enemies. They are the road crew in Trump's Revenge Tour. The right is still trying to equivocate between brutal, indiscriminate tactics that are plainly in evidence and the long-forgotten mission of efficiently removing undocumented immigrants with removal orders obtained via due process. The problem with this equivocation is that the Trump officials keep saying the quiet part loud. They can't help themselves. They pounced immediately on the narrative focusing on observers and protesters as the lawless, well-organized enemy within.
If the actual goal is to get rid of the most, most dangerous, illegal immigrants, it should not matter what their politics or the politics of their cities are. ICE should go to the places where the most can be found. Those places are not Minnesota. Once again, as usual, the only reasonable excuse for their action, if political recrimination and racism are denied, is incompetence.
You're in a tough position here, I think, when the main alternatives are evil and stupidity, and even those are not mutually exclusive. Ice is incompetent and inefficient, because it is not doing ICE's job. It's doing Trump's and Trump is an enemy of the people.
ICE can be both evil and incompetent. The present ICE hiring process fails to catch either. If you just want to brutalize people with impunity, the process won't weed you out as it ordinarily should. It might even invite you. Want to relive the glory days of being a soldier? Want to strut around in body armor with a machine gun, but couldn't make the cut in a regular armed service? ICE has your back. No background checks, no meaningful training, and a generous signing bonus.
The patent incompetence and dubious motives of the modern ICE army is supposed to be brushed aside according to the right's rhetoric that they're doing a Very Important and Dangerous Job that can suffer no criticism or impediment. But a peaceful civilian population has every right to object to the sudden appearance of window-smashing, mom-shooting thugs. The objection is not because they want violent undocumented immigrants to roam free. The objection is that violent gangs of lawless armed thugs are so much worse.
A federal judge agrees, but of course the Trump regime just ignores it. What's remarkable about the judge's decision is that it's predicated on a veritable glut of reliable evidence of ICE's atrocities in Minneapolis. ICE observers did their proper jobs. They collected evidence and brought it to court, where it was tried and acted upon.
That's the rule of law—or at least the tattered remnants of it under Donald Trump and his minions. All ICE could say to the judge in response was an unsworn, contemptuous, "Nuh-
uhh!" Not that I think this battle will be won in court. The right's idea of the rule of law seems to be whatever the armed thugs operating under color of law tell you they want. Pres. Trump is already mobilizing the regular military to descend upon Minnesota and overwhelm its lawfully elected and sworn officers with sheer numbers.
www.bbc.co.uk
