ICE Age

The quest for civil rights in America took a decisive turn in the mid-60s when national news operations showed the brutality of Jim Crow on the ground in real time. Most all of us not fully poisoned with the savage hatred racism from the crib incubates were shocked at dogs tearing into the legs of peaceful protesters. The frenzied sadism of Bull Conners and company created a tipping point, a referendum on decency. 

A collective understanding was reached that tolerating such barbarism was simply too much hypocrisy. No nation claiming to be “Land of the Free” could withstand such a blatant contradiction. But even more importantly, if you could countenance such abuse you weren’t much of a Christian; in fact, you were a pretty rotten person. And so the U.S. seemed to finally move on from the Civil War and genuinely changed for the much better. 

Now it appears we are right back where we started. Only this time it isn’t states defying the federal government; it’s the government defiling the states. This time it isn’t the dying breath of a lost cause; it’s a White House guided by the most grotesque lies southern mythology created. And this time the group being set upon came here of their own accord, lured by what now turns out to be fraudulent promises of humanity. They were not kidnapped from where they were born… they are instead now being abducted and forcibly exiled without due process to places many thanked God they had escaped from. 

To be clear, every one of us has been taught from grade school that the immigrant experience couldn’t be more American… after all, we are a “nation of immigrants.” Unlike slavery, which always stood as a violent insult to our founding principles, welcoming the “tired and hungry masses” has from the start been a primary national aspiration. None other than Ronald Reagan himself declared “anyone from anywhere can come and become an American.”  

The nightmare is showing up in Internet videos. They started as a trickle, but now flood most news platforms not consciously trying to suppress them. One vivid video account after another of masked gangs of mostly white and conspicuously overweight tormentors, armed to the teeth, descending on terrified Latino targets. Nothing seems beyond them in terms of gratuitous cruelty as they confront and seek to detain their prey. Most are clearly untrained, even absurdly unskilled, at the job of taking “suspects” into custody. So Federal agents often punch and flail as their victims scream for help, often as a crowd of bystanders yells helplessly at the thugs. 

Each episode is as shocking as the next. Yet and still, some are especially despicable, such as when ICE agents held a woman’s child hostage in her front yard to coerce her out of her home, a sanctuary they know they can’t legally enter. The child is surrounded by villains as his mother pleads with them to let him come to her. They respond by taunting her to come out to them. 

That this is actually happening here speaks to more than total civic failure; it clarifies the amorality 30 years of Fox/AM programming has produced in millions of Americans. If Jesse Waters and Greg Gutfeld can make light of it, how bad can it really be? Don’t believe your eyes, or your heart, trust them instead… Bill O’Reilly’s former personal assistant and a failed comic. 

Every day, 24/7, it is the same mantra. These illegals deserve what’s now coming to them. Promises made, promises kept. Don’t overthink things. Tough love is never easy. It takes fortitude.  At Auschwitz the Nazis proclaimed “work will set you free.” On Fox, and at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the message is “dehumanization and abject cruelty make you brave.”

While DHS refuses to respond to any press inquiries about its now constant violation of basic human rights, Director Kristi Noem “couldn’t be more proud of our ICE agents.” This, even as it’s now public knowledge the recruitment and training of new ICE personnel is so haphazard and chaotic that virtually no standards are being enforced and a majority of recruits are wholly unqualified for the job. So like most every other facet of this Keystone Cop regime, there is the certainty things will always get worse. MAGA knows no bottom. 

All of which circles back to the issue of what America is or isn’t able to stomach regarding clear and constant crimes against humanity. A shameful development of Trump’s 2nd term has been the lack of outrage from within the Democratic Congressional and Senate caucuses toward what is unfolding, even as the regime promises much more is on the way.

Of course, MAGA has flooded the zone with one outrage after another, a generalized assault on the rule of law and constructive governance. One can sympathize to a point about the difficulties triaging a list of priorities under such unprecedented circumstances. But from the start the silence has been deafening among most Democrats toward this stream of ICE atrocities. Regardless of whatever else is going on, how can stopping this madness not be priority one for any lawmaker with eyes, ears and a basic sense of decency?! 

The depressing explanation may be that in blue states thus far spared the full-scale ICE assaults that Oregon, Illinois and California have suffered, constituents still can’t get too worked up about a group they don’t fully empathize with. After all, an overwhelming majority of voters wanted undocumented immigrants deported coming into Decision 2024. Even after witnessing every day the ugliness of MAGA fascists fulfilling that campaign pledge, it’s not them and theirs being targeted. So the needle still hasn’t moved like it should to provide the sense of urgency the crisis deserves. 

That tragic disconnect assures that things will get worse before they get better. Far too few still can’t understand that if these criminals are not held to account for outrages against immigrants they define as scum, they surely won’t answer for transgressions against Black Lives Matter demonstrators they label as terrorists, or trans people they deem to be sexual deviants, or Jews they accuse of disloyalty, or liberals they just hate. It’s not a slippery slope; it is the edge of a cliff. 

Sixty years ago shocking footage from the Deep South forced Whites in the US  to realize the trials Black America was enduring mattered to the nation’s story and was worth confronting. Those of us not poisoned by MAGA hemlock better come to similar conclusions about the immigrant community and their essential connection to our country’s basic anatomy pretty damn quickly or their despair will surely soon be ours as well. BC