A Masked Federal Police Force, Unleashed on Immigrants

If you think they'll stop with immigrants, check your history books

Banner work by Secret Agent K

After a slower-than-expected start at immigration enforcement, ICE and its human drones requisitioned from other agencies have been ramping up operations. In light of the legal and public pushbacks in other areas, this move represents a success in the quest to weaponize the federal government for purposes of the Trump administration.

After spending years making fraudulent claims about immigrants, Donald J. Trump has facilitated what amounts to a national police force. This episode of rounding up people is nothing more than a training exercise for enforcing the inequality created by a class of the wealthiest people the world has ever seen.

Masked plain clothes agents wearing body armor have been kidnapping people off the street for no reason other than their political views. Mothers are being ripped away from their children. Elected officials in New Jersey and Wisconsin have been arrested on the basis of imagined offenses.

Students are being prohibited from wearing masks on campuses stemming from crackdowns on anti-genocide/pro-Palestine protests, but ICE agents are enthusiastic about covering their faces. No doubt the prospect of a large bonus (found in the budget bill) and $10k in retention money has contributed to their motivation.

The White House is putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies across the government to meet a goal of a million deportations a year because deportation totals are roughly the same as they were during President Biden's last year in office.

Today the Supreme Court gave the administration a green light to revoke special permits issued by the Biden administration for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, making more than 530,000 humans eligible for immediate detention and deportation. Combined with an earlier ruling revoking legal status for another group of Venezuelans, 900,000 migrants have (figurative) targets on their backs.

In the short term, following a good-cop-bad–cop meeting led by Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, there’s been a demand to triple the rates of arrests from one to three thousand daily. That’s led to a surge of agents and officers across the federal government focusing their attention on arrests and deportation efforts – and in some cases straining resources.

Investigations have been halted and agents have been reassigned from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, Department of State Security, the IRS, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

At the FBI, agents once working on domestic terrorism task forces, are chasing immigrants.

At the Department of Homeland Security itself, scores of agents who specialize in child sexual exploitation have been reassigned to immigration enforcement. Last year that group led complex investigations involving more than 3,000 child victims.

Whatever resources the Department of Justice had committed to combating corporate crimes are now in new roles, particularly in light of the administration’s willingness to grant pardons to anybody capable of coming up with substantial donations to Dear Leader’s enterprises.

The number of people charged in San Diego’s federal court with felony immigration crimes more than quadrupled compared to the previous year, a Reuters examination of federal court records found.

As of last week, ICE has signed 588 “287(g) agreements” across 40 states — five times as many agreements as just four months ago. The 287(g) program authorizes DHS to give state and local police the authority to perform certain immigration enforcement functions.

The “Task Force Model” of the 287(g) program has been resurrected. It was discontinued in 2012 due to demonstrated harmful impacts on community safety. This model allows local and state police to interrogate, arrest, detain, and process immigrants for removal proceedings without direction from ICE, with only minimal training on immigration law and procedure.

Unlike prior models of the 287(g) program that focused on state and local jails, now local police can interrogate and arrest non-citizens in-communities and outside of regular police interactions. The Trump administration has initiated 285 “Task Force Model” 287(g) agreements across 29 states.

On Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced leadership changes at the department, marking the second overhaul in the first four months of the Trump administration.

The City and County of San Diego San Diego, along with Chula Vista, Santee, and Vista, appeared on a list of so-called sanctuary cities issued by Homeland Security this week, signaling that the Trump administration has deemed them noncompliant and in possible violation of federal criminal statutes.

Given the White House track record, it’s probable to expect targeted withdrawal of federal funding with little regard for the legal procedures for such actions. For now, the existence of the list is mainly for psychological purposes, another example of how applied fear can stimulate compliance with Trump policies.

Last week’s nationwide operation to arrest non-citizens appearing at their immigration court hearings included Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Washington.

Reports indicate that government attorneys were told to request dismissals of cases from immigration judges. Once a person’s case was dismissed, ICE agents arrested the non-citizen. Given the dismissal of the immigration court proceedings, ICE’s goal is to place them into “expedited removal,” a fast-track process where low-level immigration officers, not immigration judges, can order a person removed.

As these round ups have been seemingly scattered, resistance has been uneven. In some areas, local police have been enlisted for breakups of human chains aimed at blocking vehicles transporting arrested immigrants to detention centers.

In Los Angeles, ICE attempts at “welfare checks” on elementary school students have been thwarted by administrators and teachers. In Tennessee, state troopers were relegated to random traffic stops. Raids on construction sites in Florida have halted construction of state funded projects.

In San Diego, observers were recruited to be positioned at locations around the federal courthouse to witness and document ice operations.

Via the UCSD Guardian:

• The UCSD Guardian arrived at the courthouse at around 2 p.m., joining approximately 20 attorneys, activists, journalists, and community members in monitoring and observing the ICE operation. The Guardian witnessed the detentions of two men attending civil immigration court. Both men had received continuances on their cases.

• A DHS agent informed the crowd at around 2:10 p.m. that agents would be detaining, citing, and removing crowd members — including press — from the building if they filmed any of the ICE operations. After several minutes of discussion, the DHS agent conceded that media would be allowed to film, but no one else. Every member of the crowd identified themselves as “members of the press.”

• One unidentified community member was detained at around 2:20 p.m. for allegedly “interfering with an ICE operation.” The community member was walking down the hallway when a man exited the courtroom; as ICE agents moved to grab the man, the community member was caught in the surge of bodies. The Guardian witnessed the ICE agents becoming aggressive with the community member, pushing and shoving him, before three DHS agents cuffed and took him into custody.

The Fair Information Reform Movement has prepared a community raid preparation checklist for activists.

The San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium (A project of Alliance San Diego) involves more than 50 community, faith, labor, and legal organizations who have come together to pursue four common goals: support comprehensive immigration reform; stop the spread of local policies and practices that target and violate the civil and human rights of immigrants; educate immigrants, and educate the public about the important contributions of immigrants

OPM ‘merit’ hiring plan includes bipartisan reforms, politicized new test by Erich Wagner at Government Executive

• “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role?” asks one of four essay questions that job seekers must answer if they are seeking any federal position GS-5 or above. “Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”

• The federal government’s dedicated HR agency published the plan via a joint memo from Vince Haley, director of President Trump’s Domestic Policy Council and acting OPM Director Charles Ezell. The document is a hodgepodge of bipartisan reforms developed under both Trump and former President Biden to accelerate and improve the hiring process, alongside plans to eradicate longstanding efforts to make the federal workforce more reflective of the American populace.

• “The American people deserve a federal workforce dedicated to American values and efficient service,” they wrote. “Yet, federal hiring criteria long ago abandoned any serious need for technical skills and adherence to the Constitution. Instead, the overly complex federal hiring system overemphasized discriminatory ‘equity’ quotas and too often resulted in the hiring of unfit, unskilled, bureaucrats.”

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The Billionaire Hoarders: How the Wealthy Became Our Biggest Threat by Thom Hartmann at The New Republic

• In the 42 years since the start of the Reagan revolution, bought-off politicians have so altered our tax code that fully $51 trillion has moved from the homes and savings of working-class Americans into the money bins of the morbidly rich money hoarders.

• As a result, America today is the most unequal developed nation in the world and the situation gets worse every day: Many of our billionaires are richer than any pharaoh or king in the history of the world, while a family lifestyle that could be comfortably supported by a single income in 1980 takes two people working full-time to maintain today.

• In the years since the Supreme Court first began down this road in 1976, the GOP has come to be entirely captured by this handful of mentally ill billionaires and the industries that made them rich.

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On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey at The New York Times

• As Elon Musk became one of Donald J. Trump’s closest allies last year, leading raucous rallies and donating about $275 million to help him win the presidency, he was also using drugs far more intensely than previously known, according to people familiar with his activities.

• Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.

• It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview.