Calling BS on DHS Insistence on Masked ICE and Border Patrol Agents
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Let’s just call the insistence on wearing of masks by the brutal and murderous thugs in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the misleadingly named Customs and ‘Border’ Patrol (CBP) the bullshit (BS) that it is.
This private army operating under the authority of Trump and his Constitution-savaging executive orders, with its gratuitous violence and willful blowing-off of hundreds of court orders issued by federal district and even appellate courts, has no valid or defensible justification for hiding its “agents’” identities by wearing masks, refusing to have attach numbers and name patches on their military-style uniforms. These federal goons are no different from municipal police or activated units of the US National Guard, who do not wear masks asnd are required to be identifiable (though some bad ones do try to hide names or badge numbers). Even soldiers in war are required to wear identifying numbers , names and “dog-tags.”
The right-wing argument made by Trump’s sycophants in Congress and the corrupt and Nazi-aping leadership of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is that without masking and otherwise hiding their identities, the ICE and Border Control agents could be “doxed at their homes,” putting them at risk.
Yes! They should be at risk of being identified, not in order to “dox” them but to punish them for criminal actions like running over, beating, injuring and even murdering innocent activists exercising their First Amendment right to protest, to film agents’ illegal and brutal actions like assaulting nonviolent immigrants, including those with valid visas, and breaking into alleged immigrant homes without a judicial warrant.
The reality is that the CBP has been a law unto itself for decades. We experienced this lawlessness in my family when, back in 1992 during my year as a Fulbright professor in China, we air-freighted our $40,000 harpsichord from zhong Kong to NY City for a concert in Carnegie Hall. To ease its clearance at the border, I taped a notice about the concert to the shipping crate and included the ioriginal nvoice for the instrument proving that it had been made in America and was merely being returned to the US for the performance.
When we got Manhattan to our friends’ apartment where we would be staying for the week of rehearsals before the performance, though, the instrument still hadn’t arrived. Calling the shipper (Fed-Ex) we learned there had been a delay for customs at the entry point in Anchorage, Alaska. When the professionally constructed plywood ahipping crate finally did arrive, I discovered that the lid–an 8’ X 4’ right triangle-shaped 5/8’ thick sheet of plywood–had been opened, and then left only loosely attached to the rest of the case by only a few of the original bolts, which had been only slightly tightened for the entire domestic part of its travel by air and truck.
Removing the lid, I discovered that the padded canvas inner case covering the painted keyboard instrument, had been slashed using a box cutter, instead of being untied and carefully removed. Worse yet, the instrument’s lid, which had a latch, had been opened with a crowbar (!), which had ripped the brass latch out of its recessed wooden setting. That splintering of the wood had in turn had damaged the painting of a Blue Ridge Mountains scene rendered by a gifted Chinese landscape painter on the inner lid. There was also a gouged hole in the tail end of the harpsichord where a grappling hook had been used to hoist the 140 lb. instrument out of its crate, when two men could have easily slid their hands down the sides of the valuable instrument and lifted it easily and gently out to inspect without harming it or straining themselves.
It was a shocking act of vandalism by the Border Patrol agents, who thankfully didn’t decide to next rip out the strings and the soundboard of the instrument, destroying it! As an Alaskan journalist friend on hearing this story, commented wryly, “You should have listed it as a snowmobile in the shipping invoice. Then the Customs guys would have treated it with respect.”
Fortunately, one of the instrument’s builders insisted on driving up from their shop in Virginia. She repaired the visible damage to the instrument on the concert stage the evening before the concert date. The total repair bill to restore it was $1500 plus transportation.
The interesting and relevant thing here is that when I called my congressman, the late liberal fire-brand Rep. Ted Weiss, to ask what could be done, he said, “Dave, I’m afraid the Border Patrol is a law unto themselves. They think they can do whatever they want to people and goods at the border. My word is nothing to them and you’ll never get compensation for any damage they do, even if you sue the government.”
No wonder Trump, in trying to create his own Einsatzgruppen, chose to expand the Border Patrol’s jurisdiction from the border to include the entire US, and made them the model for out-of-control behavior for their partners in crime and abuse, ICE! Only now, instead of just destroying valuable and sometimes even priceless musical instruments, they’re destroying the lives of human beings, most of them completely legal immigrants trying with valid visas or Green Cards to rebuild their lives in the United States.
It is heartening to see how many Americans, sickened at the abuses they are witnessing daily on their computers and television screens at the hands of thuggish CBP and ICE thugs, are protesting and taking serious personal risks to support and defend their immigrant neighbors. They are doing this despite this domestic “army” of sadistic goons all armed with deadly weapons of war and egged on by a deranged president and his equally deranged right-wing cabinet appointees and advisers.
If the lickspittle Republican majority on the Supreme Court cannot act to rein in ICE and the Border Patrol and hold them to the Bill of Rights in their dealings with both immigrants and protesters, Democrats in Congress should simply refuse—without backing down—any further funding and make this a top issue in all their Congressional campaigns this coming November.
The post Calling BS on DHS Insistence on Masked ICE and Border Patrol Agents appeared first on CounterPunch.org.