The implication is that there may be deputized groups working on a bounty system to round people up.
There was a case in the news where a Canadian woman who had been working in Hollywood had to leave when her visa expired; she flew to Mexico and applied at the US border to renew her visa, hoping that being there in person could expedite the process. When they denied he request, instead of being turned back to Mexico, they sent her to a private prison where she was basically incommunicado for 2 weeks. This was regular CBP but the implication was that some incentive or word from above was involved in decisions that increased the private prison occupancy.
The Swiss national recently held and then deported on her arrival to a Florida vacation (they accused her of planning to overstay and work) mentioned that the women she met in prison, some had been there for over a year with minimal contact with the outside world (unlike regular prisons).
The implication is it should not take so long to sort out a deportation case. Someone running private prisons is getting rich, and without evidence to the contrary, it implies that some level of collusion is occuring to keep these prisons fed. Or… it could be incompetence on a national scale. Who knows?
It’s now different because ICE no longer feels obligated to show their credentials, answer questions, or even show their faces, and this has been normalized.
Contrast this with traditional officer-impersonation scams, where you could simply sit in your car, ask for their badge and precinct, and call 911 and get some answers. If they weren’t who they said, then you’d seen a face you could ID, because masked cops were Not Normal.
However it’s now a normal situation that if a few armed guys jump out of a van with tactical gear and covered faces and ICE chestplates, you have no idea who they are and no means of challenging them. Standing your ground and asserting your rights could get you thrown incommunicado into a secret prison, possibly in El Salvador or Sudan. So our rights have been compromised, and we’re vulnerable in ways we weren’t previously.
As mentioned above, the latter is what enables the former. We used to have rules about law enforcement identification so that it was a lot harder for masked kidnappers to scoop you up under color of authority. Now that ICE is doing this, impersonating an ICE officer is trivial, and that’s why we’re starting to see reports of the same. Expect more of it.
I wonder if they plan on stopping other abuses like
Eliminating civil asset forfeiture
Eliminating qualified immunity
Officers that are fired for abuse of power cannot be an LEO in the state
Community oversight of policing
Required prosecution of officers that commit crimes on and off duty
I doubt it. This is just pandering to the non-MAGAs and is not really about holding law enforcement accountable.
Any time you have people given power over others without accountability, there will be abuse. There are allegations that ICE agents are sexually assaulting women they found up, but very little investigation.
Which has happened numerous times with police officers. My question is how is any of this different than what was going on before besides a different agency?
Well, for me what’s different is that the officers who are grabbing people off the street are not wearing any identifying markings and people are being disappeared without transparency and due process and some of these people are ending up in foreign prisons where they are being tortured, including people who were legally allowed to be in America. It sounds like you think that sort of thing was happening in America at this scale before Trump and I’m going to ask for a site for that claim.
You’ll notice, I hope, that I was replying to very specific allegations that poster are implying are new and specific to Trump’s/Noem’s ICE. You are referring to the whole DHS/ICE policy of deportation which yes, I agree with you on that part is unique to these Crazy Times.
The scale and temp is much increased under Trump and at the same time, accountability has decreased. Were masked ICE agents who wore no insignia grabbing people off the street before Trump?
The fact that there are abuses of authority is not different. The fact that people get away with things is not different.
What’s different is that historically, the powers that be were not officially instructing officers that it’s just fine to routinely obscure their identities. In fact, in some jurisdictions officers are required to provide identifying information to anyone they interact with who asks. Even in undercover operations, it’s typically not the undercover officers who actually perform the arrest, it’s uniformed or plainclothes back-up officers who perform the arrests and they are not hiding their identity.
It used to be a lot easier - if some plainclothes, mask-wearing people without any identifying jackets, shields etc were banging on my door claiming to be cops/FBI agents but wouldn’t identify themselves I could be pretty confident that I wouldn’t get into additional trouble because I called 911 to verify that they were in fact the police who almost certainly would have been informed of any such operation being conducted by any other agancy. Now, I’m not so sure about any of that. I’m not confident that ICE even notifies the local police of any raids. .
My non-FQ opinion is that ICE is not deputizing civilians. Even in the current lax court atmosphere, a government agency assumes some responsibility and liability for the actions of people if they designate them to work for the agency. And who would want to be legally liable for the actions of a bunch of half-witted maga wannabes?
That said, I feel it’s very likely that the are half-witted maga wannabes out there who are pretending to be ICE agents. For them, it’s an easy way to go out and harass people they don’t like. And if you’re pretending you have the power to arrest and deport people, it gives you the opportunity to extort them.
There are laws about impersonating law enforcement officers but I don’t expect the Trump administration is putting much effort into cracking down on this.
We’ve entered the Kristallnacht portion of America’s collapse.
[Moderating]
I think this thread has covered about all of the FQ ground it can. If you would like to cover non-FQ ground on this topic, start a new thread in the appropriate forum.