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Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
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I always pictured it more as a Bleeding Kansas situation where some Border Ruffian drags my Jayhawk ass out of bed in the middle of the night and shoots me in the face. Now it might actually be the federal government itself, so it’s nice to know there are still some surprises left in life.
The last sentence in my post should have said invocation of the Insurrection Act “will probably be limited to metropolitan areas in blue/purple states since it appears the people in rural areas and red states are pretty happy with what is happening” in blue states and cities.
To my knowledge none of this is happening in rural areas and very little in small cities in states like Florida and Texas. These assholes know these tactics won’t go over well in places like that.
I’ve been wondering what I should say as well. Living here in Arkansas, we’re not exactly a hot spot for ICE activity, though they’ve been doing their thing here too, so it’s unlikely ICE will ever bother me. It doesn’t help that I look like your typical Arkansas MAGA type. But I wasn’t born in the United States proper. My father was a servicemember and I was born overseas. Even if I had my Department of Defense birth certificate on hand, if the ICEhole has a bee in his bonnet, he might decide that’s not proof enough of my citizenship status. I don’t want to talk to those jerks, at all. I certainly won’t answer them if they ask where I was born.
They are in the red states. Lots of them here in the blue city of Memphis. Haven’t you heard all about that? No, of course you haven’t. Because they are keeping things very low-key here to avoid attention. They aren’t chasing people down in the parking lots of Home Depot. They aren’t dragging people from their jobs mowing lawns and repairing roofs. I suspect this is because they know that the terror tactics will keep a bunch of undocumented people home, which is bad for business. Hurting Walz’s economy = good, hurting Tennessee’s economy = bad.
They are deporting a lot of people, though. I’d bet they are deporting more people from Memphis right now than they are from Minneapolis. They know they can do the job without extreme violence but that is exactly what they want to do in the blue states. For all the reasons people have mentioned here. It’s not really about immigration, it is about instilling terror to advance their agenda.
There is no real organized resistance here. Like I said, their operations are on the downlow. They’ll have pop-up checkpoints and cut and run when people start to show up. The biggest story last week was that a restaurant owner refused to allow ICE to enter to have a meal. Those guys called their buddies and soon there were National Guard members and Memphis Police officers in his parking lot scaring away customers. Just some routine intimidation. I’m sure things like this are happening in red states all over the country.
I’ve seen video of them looking at identification . . . and then photographing it so they can enter the identity of American citizens into an ICE/DHS database.
My pharmacy and Doctor’s office do the same thing with my license which was certified with my birth certificate as was my passport. If I’m pulled over or otherwise dealing with an officer I have to proactively announce I have a CCW license and present it.