Donald Trump’s Homeland Security regime has been at the center of two critical stories in the past two weeks. In the first, federal agents shot and killed a man and quickly got to work justifying the use of force under the flimsiest of pretenses. In the other, it made house calls to people who said mean things to them online.
Since taking office last year, the Trump administration has been telling us that fighting the good fight of white supremacy will make you look cool and noble. The DHS under former Secretary Kristi Noem spent $220 million to help her cosplay as a cowboy railing against immigrants and call up ICE recruits as if we’re fighting a new World War, this time against our friends and neighbors. It’s all very embarassing.
The propaganda is cringeworthy. But the immigration crackdown it services has been, undoubtedly, cruel and deadly. In Texas just this Tuesday, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father of three who lived in the US for 35 years building houses and caring for his family. The agency immediately released a statement justifying lethal force on someone it alleges tried to “weaponize his vehicle.” Videos showing parts of the confrontation already suggest it’s probably another bullshit story like the ones we’ve seen from Minnesota. The feds later admitted they were looking for an entirely different person. Salgado Araujo nonetheless ended up dead.
ICE has proven it can’t handle public confrontation. That’s bad. But it also can’t even handle emails and Instagram posts. It’s demanding a total lack of accountability not only from the law, but from society itself.
Over the past year, DHS has invented its own novel version of “doxxing” — once the domain of angry gamers on the internet — wherein the public now dares to unmask and name federal agents who have been responsible for horrors like the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. The government doesn’t want us to talk about the agent accused of shooting her to death (whose name, by the way, is Jonathan Ross). Before being shot to death, Good told agents, “I’m not mad at you.” They killed her anyway, then called her a “fucking bitch.”
The government is very upset that people are criticizing it for shooting innocent mothers to death in the street. DHS stalked and intimidated a man who protested against state-sponsored killing, issuing him a “WARNING NOTICE” as flimsy as the nonjudicial “warrants” it uses now to bust into people’s homes. It’s like if Jay and Silent Bob showed up at your house because of an online comment you wrote, except with guns and the force of the federal government. It’s both deadly serious and deeply unserious. What are they afraid of? Well, we already know. Accountability in any form.
Minnesota officials had to sue the federal government for access to evidence that would aid in investigating ICE shootings because the feds won’t cooperate. It would be a weird thing for the feds managed by an allegedly pro-cop party to do, except when you consider it’s not really a pro-cop party, what with the January 6th insurrection. The current White House webpage about January 6th calls it “a date which will live in infamy” while moping about cop-killers being unfairly treated and saying Democrats did the real insurrection. Yeah, they’re lying. But also, seriously: weak crybaby stuff.
This of course all ladders up to Trump, whose project for more than a decade has been to accumulate power while eliminating the concept of shame and accountability. The man cannot tolerate a single slight without going off the rails, nor can his subordinates. This posture has trickled down to his army of fellow losers who mirror him in several ways: (1) denying any wrongdoing, (2) blaming others, and (3) intimidating anyone who crosses them. In some really bad cases, (4) obstructing justice. Then there’s also (5), looking really lame while doing it.
These people feign outrage and aggrievement at any opportunity. Almost immediately after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Noem maligned the victims by invoking the language of “domestic terrorism” — a truly malicious thing to do while bodies are still warm and evidence is being gathered. When they were shot to death, Good had just finished dropping off her 6-year-old child at school; Pretti, an ICU nurse, was helping someone prone on the street, like any good nurse would.
Federal incitement reinforces things Americans already reasonably fear about policing. As I wrote for the country’s recent birthday, state and local police are also demonstrably bad at upholding our rights (especially the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments) and routinely conduct themselves like weaklings who can’t handle the slightest criticism. Police are often witnessed struggling to maintain calm at the slightest challenge to their authority. So what happens when they get superpowered by federal intervention? Things like reporters getting allegedly intentionally assaulted by cops.
Policing in America has always been complicated, but the Trump administration has made it a runaway train of abuse fueled by billions of dollars and unapologetic racial animus. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gotten so much money and permission from Trump that it operates its dear leader’s fundamentally racist mission of mass deportation with impunity. ICE agents have kidnapped people, knocked down doors without warrants, assaulted reporters, terrorized the general public (including children and infants), and even shot dead innocent people in broad daylight. And that’s just the brief summary of events.
ICE is a menace to democracy and its murderous conduct should be soberly considered. But we should also recognize that these people are weak and sad and ought to be made fun of. Even their stupid outfits, which look ripped from a “how to be tacticool” buying guide. And Americans are ridiculing these people. What better way to protest an army of clowns than by showing up as Portland did with a human frog at the front? Cops arrested that frog. Trillions of dollars later, we’ve learned nothing about counter-insurgency, because now there’s a frog legion.
These ICE agents are so small that they wear masks in public like a bunch of cowardly Patriot Front wannabes, who probably got a similar amount of training. You’d think the average DMV worker would have been masked up for years based on the abuse they get, but then again, the average government employee is far braver than these fools.
ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. If you know anything about the actual waste, fraud, and abuse of federal funding for defense, you’ll know this is not something that guarantees quality or competence. This is just Donald Trump’s new private domestic army. I’d call them Stormtroopers except for the fact I’m pretty sure some of them are getting their uniforms and body armor from Temu.