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By labeling a legal observer a “domestic terrorist,” an ICE agent unwittingly revealed what the Trump administration is really up to.
The killing in Minneapolis of a mother of three, Renee Good, by an ICE agent who invited the deadly confrontation while breaking every standard police protocol by standing in front of her car while filming and then firing into her vehicle as it moved away from him was chilling.
The execution of Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, in Minneapolis by immigration agents who shot him after he went to the aid of a woman shoved to the ground by a federal agent was horrifying.
But, more chilling, more horrifying, more consequential to the lives and fortunes and futures of tens of millions of Americans is the practice of masked ICE agents taking photographs of those who object to their violent tactics and swarming entire communities in their farcical quest to make some arbitrary quota of harassing and locking up people. This is happening whether those people are criminals, and most are not, or following the rules to have their residency legalized, or happen to be US citizens, which many are.
An ICE agent in Portland, Maine revealed what’s really going on with the phony baloney Trump crackdown on illegal immigration in liberal cities like Portland when he tried to intimidate a legal observer of ICE’s roundup in that city.
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As my colleague Sabrina Shankman reported, a video widely circulated on social media shows a Maine woman who was filming ICE activities in Portland last week and noticed one agent took a picture of the license plate on her car.
“Why are you taking my information down?” she asked.
“Because we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist,” the agent responded.
Funny, domestic terrorist is how the president, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, described Good and Pretti after they were gunned down by federal agents.
If you ain’t with ‘em, you’re a domestic terrorist.
In politics, a gaffe is when someone unwittingly tells the truth.
And in telling the truth, that ICE agent gave away the whole plot, the whole shebang. What the Trump administration is up to has little to do with making communities safer and everything to do with settling scores with people who didn’t vote for Trump and oppose the most fascist government in the nation’s history.
That’s what this is all about. And no rambling speeches by Tom Homan — who, without irony, was dispatched to Minneapolis because he’s considered the rational face of an irrational administration — changes the fact that Trump’s immigration policy is part of what he has openly admitted is retribution against his enemies.
We are living in a country run by fascists, who have dispatched several thousands of ICE agents, untrained and unaccountable, to cause maximum damage to communities that rejected Trump by wide margins at the ballot box.
All this baloney about making Minneapolis and Portland safer when ICE’s heavy-handedness has demonstrably made those cities less safe and left two American citizens dead and countless others traumatized is just that, total BS.
It’s merely a manifestation of everything the toddler-in-chief does, which is lash out at anyone who doesn’t bow and kiss his ring.
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for Homeland Security, told CNN in a statement, “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”
Of course, McLaughlin is the same Trump toady who kept insisting ICE wasn’t separating families when there is ample evidence and plenty of reports of ICE has been doing exactly that.
This administration has zero credibility, on anything, but especially when it comes to immigration policy.
But just in case you’re not keeping score at home: Two weeks ago, Homan, the so-called border czar, told Fox News that “we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous.”
This is a White House that believes people exercising their First Amendment rights are interfering and impeding ICE, which is, like everything this administration does, not legally grounded. The administration believes it’s acceptable for federal agents to assault and knock cellphones out of the hands of people legally filming them. Classic fascist tactics.
Nicole Cleland, a Minnesota woman who had followed ICE agents as an observer, sued Homeland Security. She alleged an agent approached her vehicle and confronted her by name, saying they were using “facial recognition” technology and recording her with a body camera. Just days later, Cleland said, the government revoked her Global Entry status at US Customs and Border Protection.
“I am not particularly concerned with the revocation of my privileges in isolation,” Cleland, an executive at the ironically named retail chain Target, wrote in the suit. “However, given that only three days had passed from the time that I was stopped, I am concerned that the revocation was the result of me following and observing the agents. This is intimidation and retaliation.”
You bet it is. That’s what the whole immigration policy is. It’s about intimidating and physically attacking people who didn’t vote for Trump and oppose all his policies, not just immigration. It’s about retaliation against people who had the good sense not to put a bad person in the White House.
Shankman, my colleague, reported that legal observers who have confronted ICE agents say they have been threatened with retaliation and believe the Trump administration is trying to blacklist them.
Other people in Maine who have observed ICE arrests have reported getting phone calls or knocks on the door from someone claiming to be an agent. They’ve been warned they could end up on a domestic terrorist list, Zach Heiden, chief counsel of the ACLU of Maine, told Shankman.
“People are being told that their names are going on a list, that their personal information is going into a domestic terrorism database, or they’re creating a file on them, all sorts of things that smack of authoritarian regimes that we don’t typically try to emulate,” Heiden added.
It all sounds familiar.
“You’re a domestic terrorist.”
“You’re on a list.”
“Show us your papers.”
“Ve vill ask ze questions!”
If it walks like a fascist duck, and quacks like a fascist duck, it’s fascism.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at kevin.cullen@globe.com.
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