Black Shirted Thugs of ICE

• First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Communist.
  Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Socialist.
  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a trade unionist.
  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Jew. 
• Then they came for me,
  And there was no one left to speak out for me.  
• – Confession of Martin Niemoller – 1946

No Guardrails

Yesterday, they came for Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey and candidate for Governor of the state.   They came for him because they could.  All of the “curbs” that control Federal government behavior are set aside.  They came for a man standing outside their gate, demanding justice, a clear exercise of free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  But they came anyway, because he dared to oppose the Department of Homeland Security.  They came because he called out the Black Shirted Thugs of ICE.

The guardrails are intentionally gone.  We can talk about all of the incidentals:  Baraka is a Black man who is outspoken in his opposition to ICE actions in his city.  The Acting US Attorney for Northern New Jersey is Alina Habba, the losing attorney for Trump in the E Jean Carroll civil trial where the former President was fined $83 million.  She has something to prove to her “boss”.  Baraka was a great target.  

Lying Eyes

And if you’re “from the other side” (“…I can see by your ‘hat’, my friend, you’re from the other side…” If you know, you know – thanks, Stephen Stills) your sources of information say that Baraka and two US Congressmen “stormed” the door of a newly opened private prison in Newark.  You need to believe you own eyes and watch the videos.  Baraka was standing on the sidewalk, in “free, public” space, when twenty or more Black Shirted Thugs of ICE (and the more mysterious HIS) surrounded him, physically shoved the Congressmen aside, and took the Mayor into custody.  They manhandled him into handcuffs and an unmarked car, and whisked him off to another location.  It doesn’t get any more “thuggish” than that. 

“Godwin’s Law” states that in an argument, the more heated the discussion, the more likely one side will compare the other to Hitler.  The corollary to the law is that the side that mentions Hitler first is the “loser”, as using Nazi comparisons are beyond inflammatory, similar to calling the other side profanities.  But it’s difficult to avoid referencing the dreaded Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, when referring to the current actions of the United States government.  There’s another old saying (not a “law”).  “If it walks likes a duck, and quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck – it’s a duck.”  

Terror is the Point

Sure, Baraka was only held in custody for a few hours. But keeping him an imprisoned martyr wasn’t the reason for the arrest anyway.  The exercise in brute force, the terror and intimidation, that was the point.  It’s the same “point” that ICE has been making since Trump took office. They burst into Columbia University housing without a warrant to imprison Mahmoud Khalil in a Louisiana detention facility. And they arrested a sitting Wisconsin state judge in her courtroom.  It’s not the “legal” outcome; it’s the action itself that tells Americans:  don’t oppose us.  We will find you and take you away.

Tom Hohman, the brutish “Czar of Immigration” is boldly clear about the subject.  “If you stand in ‘our’ way, we will arrest you”.  And Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, (boy, the Godwin’s Law reference fits him to a tee) goes even farther. He suggests “they” might suspend the writ of habeas corpus. That’s the Constitutionally enshrined right to know why the government is holding you.  

Our America?

It’s the same terror tactic that was used to send “gang members” to a hell-hole prison in El Salvador.  Even if they were gang members, (and we don’t know, because that was never adjudicated in Court, that Habeas Corpus thing) we should be talking about cruel and unusual punishments, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.   But for a fortunate Court order, another set of migrants were to go to a Libyan jail last week.  Homan’s been “prospecting” for prisons in the worst situations in the world, from Sudan to Uganda to Rwanda.  It’s all about fear.  Ain’t that America? 

It’s not.  Instead, it’s an image of America that relishes the historic mistakes in our past.  The “Red Scare” of the early 1920’s, when “Palmer Raids”, named after the then US Attorney General, rounded up supposed Communists and deported them.  Or “McCarthyism” of the 1950’s, when a politician’s lies of rumor and innuendo were used to “blacklist” thousands from government and private industry.  Or, the worst, the internment camps of World War II, where born American citizens, among others, were placed in confinement because they were of Japanese ancestry.  

They came for a judge last week.  They came from the Mayor of a US city yesterday.  

If we don’t speak out…