Hey Brett Kavanaugh, This Is On You:
from the kavanaugh-stop dept
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” —Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, September 8, 2025
From that one line, which Anil Kalhan dubbed “Kavanaugh Stops,” we see story after story of just how disconnected from reality, and the Constitution, Brett Kavanaugh was in that statement.
In short: Brett Kavanaugh has some explaining to do.
Just a few quotes:
My name is George Retes. I am — I was born and raised here in Ventura, California, I’m 26 years old and I am an Iraq combat veteran…. I was going to work like normal. I show up. ICE is there. There’s kind of like a roadblock. I get out. I identify myself, that I’m a U.S. citizen, that I’m just trying to get to work…. I’m getting ready to leave and they surround my car, start banging on it, start shouting these contradictory orders…. Even though I was giving them no reason, they still felt the need to — one agent knelt my back and another agent knelt on my neck. And during that time, I’m just pleading with them that I couldn’t breathe…. I was an isolation. I was in basically this concrete cell. I was stripped naked in like a hospital gown. And they leave the lights on 24/7…. They just came out and they said that I was violent and that I assaulted agents. Why lie when it’s on video of everything that happened? Why lie?
That’s just one person’s story in that PBS piece. There are two others as well. And we already know hundreds of other US Citizens have been kicked, dragged, beaten, and detained for days. It feels like every few days we hear about more such stories. And those are only the ones that get attention. You have to assume that there are many more ones that haven’t yet reached the public.
It feels like perhaps Justice Kavanaugh owes us all an explanation. And an apology. And a new ruling that makes it much clearer that immigration enforcement officials have no right to just randomly stop and detain people without a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, and those facts need to be more than “skin color” or “they were being annoying to us.”
Filed Under: 4th amendment, brett kavanaugh, cbp, due process, george retes, ice, immigration, kavanaugh stops, us citizens
Comments on “Hey Brett Kavanaugh, This Is On You:”
Surely the signs are clear now?
Surely the signs are clear now that this administration is using fascist tactics and is testing the limits they can go to before even their supporters stop the action?
The problem is that if there is no line their supporters will draw, then they are free to do whatever they want.
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The primary mindset of fascism is that Dear Leader is always right. That will lead supporters and government underlings alike to support the leader even when the decisions that leader makes are bad. You see it in every hardcore MAGA adherent who defends ICE’s actions with the same justification as Trump and his cronies (“they’re going after the worst illegals, not moms and kids and Americans”) despite any evidence to the contrary. Fascists will never admit their wrongness until fascism has been defeated and ousted from power—and even then, they’ll try to downplay the horrid nature of fascist crimes or say they didn’t support everything Dear Leader did. (You can find MAGA adherents trying that backpedaling bullshit, too.) No atrocity is too horrible for a fascist to refuse committing or justifying. Just look at how many people referred to the Dade-Collier Concentration Camp as “Alligator Alcatraz” and openly hoped for the deaths of detainees.
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Unfortunately, the only way out might be to the bottom and through.
Provoking Trump to use the Insurrection Act won’t take much but it will also be the only way that either he gets convicted on impeachment by the current Senate or a subsequent Democratic one with 60 (likely needing 65) votes.
Short of that everyone is content to just piss, moan and wait out the clock which isn’t the appropriate action here, and street protesting has its limits.
You have an entire Overton Window to revert to pre-2016, trillions of dollars to snatch and grab from billionaires and an entire political party to crush, and no one seems to be writing a Project 2026 to do that, both a public half with the policy changes and machinery to govern and the unitary executive fiat reversions of a hundred years of conservative jurisprudence, followed by the hidden half that requires convincing the remaining regional military leadership to coup the GOP out of existence plus logistics for disasters and conflict zones that you hope never to have to need.
A Democratic Presidential Candidate is going to need a menu of options and priorities to pursue hitting the ground running on or prior to 2028 because they are going to have to use the same powers written and unwritten Trump claimed to restore democracy, it’s going to be messy, and it sure as shit won’t follow rule of law or allow 77.5 million Trump voters to walk free once voter rolls are examined for the last 3 or 4 election cycles within this plan (If the GOP wants to try to seize them then the responsibility should be to follow through and use it on them first).
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… there is a standard formal definition of Fascism that distinguishes it from the many other forms of authoritarianism; the vague ‘mindset’ label is unhelpful to most people
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I’m well aware of that, but I’m talking about “mindset” in relation to the psychology of fascist bootlickers.
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These MAGA fascists deny reality like the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
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Conservatives have been raised with the mantry that loyalty is more important than morality. The possibility that their own side might be “the baddies” just does not compute.
Only a white dude born rich and connected could possibly have ever believed that.
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Yeah, so the guy is lying, if they’re banging on the car, it’s because they were ordering him to get out and he was refusing to comply. He just disobeyed a lawful order and is lying about it afterward to cover his ass.
But you never really care about whether your preferred narrative is true, do you?
And yeah, Kavanaugh really does know a whole lot more about the law than you, actually.
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It’s on film, jackass. He’s not lying. You are.
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He’s allergic to facts and truth, he’ll just make shit up and believe it’s true. That how weak of a mind he has.
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Oh wow, bold text! It must be true!
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Sure, disobeying a lawful order can lead to jail time (3 months top, depending of the state). But you cannot do weeks of prison time without being judged by the court (4th Amendment).
Do you have any proof George Retes had seen any judge?
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Objection – assumes facts not in evidence.
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Is that a lawful order in the cop definition of a lawful order or the actual definition.
A lawful order has to follow the constitution and the law.
A lawful order has to be clear. For example banging on a car is not a lawful order, what do they actually want to communicate?,conflicting and overlapping orders are not lawful as they are not clear.
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A lawful order also has to come from actual law enforcement, not ICE.
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“I just made up my own version of this scenario via wishful thinking and confirmation bias and now I’ll accuse you of doing what I’m currently doing! I know the truth because I just made it up!”
They're really happy they defunded PBS now
Now that PBS doesn’t receive funding from the government they are even more free to run stories like this and the government has even less say in it.
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Which means they need (and deserve) donations and support from us now more than ever.
I doubt he cares. He’s probably jacking off with some child right now.
The mere existence of some people is an assault to these idiot goons.
They need to put a breathalyzer lock on the supreme court door.
Around half of $75B from OBBBA will be spend to expand ICE’s prison, planning to have about 135k cells, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons got around 150k cells.
So yes, theses 3000 daily arrests are more than necessary to fill theses cells, and theses cells are necessary to contain the 3000k daily arrested people.
And the ICE still have around $30B of annual budget to work with, 3x the annual budget of the previous years.
So everyone is F* once they meet an ICE agent, for any reason.
And it may be almost impossible to sue ICE for anything.
SCOTUS is supposed to defend the Constitution. They’re not doing that. I can only think it’s intentional on their part.
I’m gonna tell you a little story about it, here it goes;
MAGA lie
MAGA cheat
MAGA steal
.
MAGA is MURDER
The only unitary executive is we the people.
No theory here.
Stand here and be judged.
Grounds to sue?
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”
One would wonder, when the “officers” didn’t let somebody go promptly after that somebody identified themselves as an American citizen, if that somebody has grounds to sue for infrignement of their constitutional rights.
IANAL, but that seems a rather logical conclusion.
'As a straight white male I'm treated great, I'm sure other people are too.'
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” —Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, September 8, 2025
Tell me you were born into privilege and never faced a serious consequence for your actions without telling me you were born into privilege and never faced a serious consequence for your actions.
Kavanaugh gave the go-ahead for racial profiling and arrest and that should never be allowed to fade from his forever-tainted reputation. At best his privileges blinded him to what it’s like for those less ‘blessed’, and being less generous he knew he was lying through his teeth and said it anyway because who cares about a few harassed/arrested brown people?
The REAL truth...
These stories about US citizens are great and all, but the fact of the matter is that if stopped by ICE, I should be able to say, “I am NOT a US citizen” and ICE should be legally bound to release me just as quickly because in neither situation do they have probable cause for the stop or for any detainment.
ICE should be required to provide probably cause for any action in takes to arrest or detain anyone.
Any detention of ANYONE, citizen or not, without probably cause is a civil rights violation and should be treated as such with penalties for the agency, its executives, and the agents.
The only solution for Kavanaugh...
To clear his name is to confirm that, without probable cause, there are no grounds to detain anyone, citizen or not, and that there is no qualified immunity for ANY civil rights violation.