On Friday, I testified in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s “Illinois Accountability Commission,” the state government body he set up after the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” attack on Chicago last summer and the precursor of the even larger federal occupation of Minneapolis that we’re experiencing now. The body’s goal is to both document what happened to Chicago, with an eye on future prosecutions, understand the role of various Trump officials in this federal occupation, and offer recommendations about how to fix immigration enforcement going forward.
I was called as the commission’s expert witness on the history of problems, corruption, and training within CBP and ICE — a story I’ve covered for more than a dozen years, as regular readers of this newsletter know. To prepare, I spent the last week re-reading and re-familiarizing myself with DHS scandals and waves of corruption and mismanagement — and found myself horrified anew.
[...]
As I told the commission, “US law enforcement has never experienced a scandal as big, as far-reaching, destructive, and as far-lasting as the wave of corruption and criminality that has overtaken CBP and the Border Patrol since 2005. It’s a story that too much of the public still doesn’t know and too many policymakers still don’t understand.”
From the testimony given to the hearing:
What I hope you will take away from my testimony today is that the problems, abuses, scandals, and controversies involving CBP and ICE that have been on display over the last year in far too many American cities and social media feeds — from deadly shootings and agent brutality to the routine abuse of Constitutional and civil rights and liberties — is entirely consistent with long-identified problems in CBP and ICE that have gone ignored and uncorrected both by a generation of Congress and multiple Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
These are not aberrations — these incidents are the entirely foreseeable consequence of specific funding and management decisions and how the nation has approached immigration enforcement since 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
In particular, CBP has been likely the deadliest and certainly the most troubled federal law enforcement agency for the better part of two decades now. Since 9/11, the culture of ICE and CBP has meant that the agencies have been what you might call a fascist-secret-police-in-waiting, troubled agencies simply waiting for an ambitious would-be authoritarian.
Video of the statement can also be seen here:
Talking to the fascists like the 5 yo they're acting like, may have a positive effect. Who knows? Hopefully they'll yank shit back before the necessary steps to halt the nazi invasion are taken. But right now, lines have been crossed - and the civic lesson being given again, better find some fucking open republican-now-known-as-nazi ears.