ICE: An Unwanted Alien Instrument of State Terror
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
The FBI is America’s Gestapo – a sinister enemy of the public, not its protector.
ICE operates the same way against unwanted aliens – mainly Latinos and other people of color, along with Muslims from the wrong countries.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) was established under the repressive 2002 Homeland Security Act – along with the USA Patriot Act and other police state laws, a declaration of war on freedom in America.
ICE operations have nothing to do with protecting the nation from terrorist and other criminal threats as claimed – everything to do with serving privileged interests at the expense of fundamental freedoms, fast eroding in America, heading toward disappearing altogether.
ICE agents nationwide illegally terrorize targeted communities, workplaces, and residences, illegally detaining, searching, harassing and arresting individuals US ruling authorities want imprisoned or deported – violating their Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and 14th Amendment rights, along with international law.
In police state America, international constitutional rights don’t matter. Innocence is no defense, authorities undeterred from doing whatever they want, courts largely stacked with right-wing extremists going along most often, especially the Supremes.
Justice Kennedy’s retirement at end of July assures greater hard-right harshness on most everything just societies cherish – a dismal prospect once he’s replaced.
Societies are best judged by how they treat prisoners, children, their sick and most disadvantaged. America fails on on counts.
Symbol of oppressive ruthlessness, ICE threatens fundamental freedoms and should be abolished straightaway.
Trump wholeheartedly supports a national abomination, disgracefully calling ICE “one of the smartest, toughest and most spirited law enforcement groups of men and women that I have ever seen.”
Gangsterism at its worst describes its thuggishness. An earlier National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) report titled “Guilty by Immigration Status” discussed major ICE constitutional law breaches.
On July 6, the organization called ICE an “an instrument (enforcing) cruel and inhumane policies forged under successive administrations and by Congress…heavily funded to do the dirty work of implementing policy based on the (unjustifiable) criminalization of” unwanted aliens.
Persecuting them in America began long before ICE’s establishment with bipartisan support.
During Obama’s tenure, an NNIRR report titled “Injustice for All: The Rise of the US Policing Regime” called the agency “a marriage of racist, punitive, inhumane laws, and a comprehensive infrastructure,” adding:
“The continued criminalization of immigration, arrests, detentions and deportations – including of asylum seekers – is purposeful and is an extension of this monstrous system. Clearly, babies and children are not exempt from this cruelty.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is an instrument of state repression, an enemy of due process and equal protection under law, notions not in its vocabulary.
Decriminalizing immigration is an idea whose time has come. It’s long overdue. It goes far beyond growing calls to abolish ICE.
Obama regime DHS secretary Jeh Johnson weighed in on the issue, supporting the repressive agency he oversaw, saying abolishing it “is not a serious policy proposal” – falsely claiming its elimination “would compromise public safety.”
He turned truth on its head calling it “a law enforcement agency.” It’s a repressive instrument of state terror, along with the DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA and other federal agencies – exclusively serving privileged interests at the expense of beneficial social change.
Indefinite detention of anyone denied due process and equal protection under law constitutes a flagrant breach of international and constitutional law on multiple counts.
US regimes stand guilty, Trump exceeding the worst of his predecessors.
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