Don’t Kid Yourselves, Folks. Trump Is Just As Willing To Deport/Jail Actual US Citizens.

Legal Issues

from the speedrunning-the-fascism-curve dept

The narrative during Trump’s first term is that he was going after the “worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants. But ICE and other DHS components ran out of actual dangerous criminals pretty quickly, largely because immigrants tend to be more law-abiding than regular US citizens.

Trump’s return to office came coupled with promises to deport more people than this nation ever has in its history, something aided and abetted by the president’s decision to revive the Alien Enemies Act — something best known for caging hundreds of thousands of immigrants (most of them Japanese) during the Second World War.

Towards the end of March, US citizen Julio Noriega was arrested and held overnight in an ICE detention facility just because he looked like an immigrant. Noriega wasn’t an anomaly, but at least he got to go home after just one night. ICE and far too many helpful local cops have been kidnapping people off the street, telling them their visas have been revoked. Some of these people appear to have been removed solely because they’ve engaged in protected speech this administration doesn’t like.

The still-ongoing horror of that is what’s happening to Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia makes it clear this administration isn’t even willing to fix the mistakes it has admitted it has made. Though it changed its story later, the DOJ first stated Abrego Garcia had been arrested, deported, and caged in an El Salvadoran maximum security prison accidentally.

The new narrative is that Abrego Garcia is actually an MS-13 gang member, despite the DOJ’s previous admissions in court. And the US government still refuses to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US, preferring to extend his ordeal simply because it can.

With every ICE agent and cooperative police force (federal or local) being ordered to continue this mass assault on due process, more US citizens are being treated like illegal immigrants just because no one with any powers gives a single fuck what happens to innocent people that happen to be a bit browner than the blond, blue-eyed folks they seem to prefer.

Here’s one recent event that shows the administration just wants to rid this nation of foreign-looking people, rather than expel actual threats to public safety or national security (two of the listed excuses for resurrecting the Alien Enemies Act).

19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who is visiting Tucson from Albuquerque, says he was lost and walking near the Border Patrol headquarters when an agent arrested him for illegally entering the country. Hermosillo was not carrying identification.

Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.

Hermosillo and his girlfriend, who have a 9-month-old child together, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are visiting family in Tucson. He says he has never been to Nogales.

Now, there are going to be people rolling into the comments with their bad faith arguments about “who doesn’t carry their ID on them at all times.” Fuck that. This isn’t a “papers, please” nation. At least, it’s not supposed to be. We’re supposed to be able to freely move about without having to prove our nationality if we’re not, you know, actually crossing a border.

As for the Border Patrol statement, it’s obviously a lie the agent never thought he’d be caught making. It’s unlikely Hermosillo “admitted” to being in the country illegally. If any such “admission” was made, it was under duress. Furthermore, Hermosillo is a US citizen, which means he couldn’t have produced “proper immigration documents” no matter how many times this officer demanded to see them. If he’d had the documentation with him, he could have shown he was a US citizen, but a state ID or driver’s license is not an “immigration document.” It’s proof of citizenship.

He was immediately released after his family provided the judge with his identifying info. But if his relatives hadn’t acted as quickly as they did to locate him, chances are he’d already be on a bus on the way to plane that would fly him to some foreign country he’d never lived in, much less visited.

This isn’t an anomaly. Here’s another incident that involves someone being treated as an illegal immigrant despite being a US citizen and never once crossing a US border.

A U.S.-born American citizen was being detained at the request of immigration authorities Thursday despite an advocate showing his U.S. birth certificate in court and a county judge finding no reason for him to be considered an “illegal alien” who illegally entered Florida.

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, was arrested Thursday evening by Florida Highway Patrol and charged under a state immigration law that has been temporarily blocked since early this month. Details of Gomez-Lopez’s arrest and detention were first reported by the Florida Phoenix news site.

Lopez-Gomez never “illegally entered” Florida. There’s a new state law in Florida that allows the state to add state criminal charges for “illegal entry” into the state, but this US citizen was in a car driving from Georgia that managed to run into a bunch of badge-wearing thugs who used the new law to turn him over to ICE.

This move allowed the local cops to prevent a US citizen from being released from an ICE detention center, despite showing proof of citizenship to a county judge. The judge said the paperwork was legit, but it was out of her hands because Lopez-Garcia was now in federal custody. ICE held him for two days before releasing him, and likely only did so because people were advocating on his behalf.

Speaking of advocates… the DHS claims this is just a clerical error, but I have my doubts. It seems more like deliberate intimidation under a thin veneer of plausible deniability:

When Massachusetts resident Nicole Micheroni received an email on Friday from the federal government telling her to leave the country, she was baffled.

“At first I thought it was for a client, but I looked really closely and the only name on the email was mine,” said Micheroni. “So it said my parole status had been terminated and I should leave the country within seven days.”

But the 40-year-old is a U.S. citizen, born in Newton and raised in Sharon.

“Probably, hopefully, sent to me in error,” she said. “But it’s a little concerning these are going out to U.S. citizens.”

Nichole Micheroni is an immigration attorney. The letter sent to her told her that her permission to remain in the country had been revoked and strongly suggested she “self-deport.” When confronted about this threatening email, the DHS said CBP (Customs and Border Protection) used “known email addresses of the alien” to send out these self-deportation orders. If the target of the email had listed their attorney’s email address as a contact, then the CBP sent the threat to an “unintended recipient.”

Even if it’s only an error, it’s far from harmless. First, there’s real reason to believe the DHS and its components are willing to do whatever it takes to limit opposition to their mass deportation programs, even if it means “mistakenly” ordering immigration lawyers to self-deport.

Second, if it is only an error, it’s inexcusable. When you’re in the business of depriving people of rights and liberty (even with lawful actions), it’s of extreme importance to get all of your facts straight before taking action. Sooner or later, these threats become shows of force, and there’s little reason to believe any ICE/CBP officer armed with little more than a warrant full of boilerplate and an email address would think twice before arresting, jailing, and — if things move fast enough — expelling US citizens. After all, they don’t care about the facts. And they can always ask for forgiveness later — something they’re sure to earn from federal courts because it’s all but impossible to win a civil rights lawsuit against a federal officer.

With all of this going for them, the enforcers of immigration law aren’t going to care much who gets caught in the crossfire. Neither will the bigots backing this president, both on Capitol Hill and inside voting booths. But being on the fence about this won’t get you any comfort here. This is nothing but evil wrapping itself in the sanctimonious rhetoric of “national security.” Giving this a pass because you think residing in a country illegally is worse for the nation than eliminating due process, trampling on constitutional rights, ignoring federal court rulings, and excising whatever’s left of your conscience just means you’re no better than the people currently in power.

Filed Under: dhs, donald trump, due process, ice, immigration, mass deportations