“Immigration and Customs Enforcement” used to conjure up images of hard working agents displaying pallets of intercepted drugs, while “ICE”—as in, “Put ‘em on ice, boys”—sounded like something out of a Dick Tracy comic book. But, as we have learned, neither the name nor its acronym fit the marauding band of masked thugs who snatch people off our streets. ICE has become a reckless, violent rogue agency, especially dangerous to anyone who appears Latino (whether documented or not).
ICE’s conduct in Chicago has already drawn the ire of U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis. She recently issued a TRO to curtail its abusive tactics and require use of body cameras. When evidence surfaced that the feds had violated her order, she called the parties back last week to hear testimony and order more discovery.
On Friday, Democratic House members held a “shadow hearing” in Chicago to document ICE’s brutal, outrageous conduct. The congressional session was aptly titled “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Assault on Chicago.” In vivid detail, witnesses provided testimony that ICE agents have terrorized Chicago neighborhoods, attacked the media and a member of the clergy, and lawlessly rounded up migrants who have no criminal record (not to mention the fact that they’re U.S. citizens). “Members heard from immigrant and refugee rights groups, faith leaders, and a 19-year-old named Genesis whose mother is a food vendor and was detained in Chicago,” NBC’s local station reported.
Witnesses included “a pastor, David Black with First Presbyterian Church Chicago, who was hit in the head with pepper balls while praying outside the ICE detention facility in Broadview.” Black stated that ICE “henchmen are showing mocking contempt for the rule of law.”
Testimony at the shadow hearing sounded like something out of 1930’s Italy or present day Russia. “Over the past month, federal agents in and around Chicago have shot at least two people, killing one; repeatedly tear-gassed protesters and first responders; shot rubber bullets at protesters; detained U.S. citizens, including children; handcuffed a Chicago alderperson in a hospital; smoke-bombed and tear-gassed people in Logan Square, Albany Park and East Side; fired a chemical weapon at a TV reporter and detained a journalist,” one local outlet recounted.
This surely does not sound like the conduct of a law enforcement agency. To the contrary, ICE’s egregiously violent and abusive conduct prompted Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to set up the Illinois Accountability Commission “to hold federal immigration agents accountable for aggressive tactics being used in the Chicago area during the White House’s ongoing deportation campaign,” the Chicago Sun Times reported. “The Illinois Accountability Commission will collect testimony, hold hearings and gather information from individuals, community members, subject matter experts, local officials, journalists, faith leaders and organizations — and issue a public report with findings and recommendations.”
Pritzker (whom Trump’s fascistic attack dog Stephen Miller accused of “seditious conspiracy”) is determined to create a record of ICE’s lawlessness. In a press conference announcing the formation of the commission, Pritzker delivered a searing indictment of ICE and the Trump entire regime.
“I am angry because this is not the country that I want for us. This is not the country that any of us thought that we were living in,” he declared. “And yet here it is, nine months into an administration, I wish we didn’t have to do this. Can you imagine that we have to do this in this country?” The commission will document abuses, record the impact on families and neighborhoods, and make recommendations. “It is imperative that none of the impropriety, brutality and harassment perpetrated upon our people goes unnoticed,” Pritzker said. “Every instance of abuse, of law-breaking and violations of rights needs to be documented and archived.”
The commission will no doubt find an abundance of evidence. Just last Friday, a chaotic scene played out in the Lakeview neighborhood where agents threw tear gas cannisters into the street despite Ellis’s existing TRO limiting use of tear gas and other irritants, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Compelled to combat the violent invasion, neighbors have stepped up to defend one another:
Outside the Nettelhorst Fine and Performing Arts School on Broadway in Lakeview, a neighborhood resident volunteering as a federal immigration agent-watcher kept an eye out for agents. While the neon-vest-clad volunteer stood guard, a man dropped off a set of orange whistles [used to warn of approaching ICE agents] into a Little Free Library box outside the school. He said he was 3D-printing the whistles by the hundreds.
Keep in mind this all comes from a single city. Episode like these are taking place from D.C. to Los Angeles, Sacramento and Orange County in California to New York. We should hardly be surprised that agents who are hastily recruited with appalling appeals to racism, struggle to meet minimal qualifications, get truncated training, and receive quotas behave like paramilitary street thugs.
Inarguably, “ICE” does not accurately convey the nature of the forces carrying out operations that wreak havoc on American cities, tear apart families, and trample on our deepest held values. We should do away with the name (not to mention dismantle and replace the agency itself) that puts a slick label on a heinous campaign of violence. Masked and unidentified, the people roughing up peaceful residents should more properly be called “goons,” “storm troopers,” or “street gangs” (if you’re being kind).
Frankly, they and their higher-ups represent (to borrow a phrase) the “worst of the worst” of the Trump regime; and should be roundly condemned for turning the country into a police state.
Call ICE what it is. A terrorist organization.
The saddest part is that so many Americans support Trump, ICE, and the Republican Party. America is no longer the country we thought it was.