Reap What They Sew
The national emergency we’ve been facing, we were told, had to do with monstrous, criminal, gang-affliliated immigrants who were in the country illegally and posed a serious threat to our safety. So how did the LA protests end up getting triggered when ICE agents wearing camouflage and bulletproof vests showed up to arrest people at a Home Depot and a clothing manufacturer called Ambience Apparel. According to the brother of one of the arrested workers, “The only crime he committed was trying to live a better life and trying to get ahead and work. Because of that dream, I had to witness him being chained up like he was some dangerous animal.” One can obviously make the point that the government has the right to detain those who have entered the country illegally. But that isn’t the point we’ve been sold by the Trump administration. The story doesn’t add up because the numbers didn’t. “Even with the high-profile arrests of suspects by masked immigration agents and the plane loads of migrants swiftly ferried out of the U.S., President Trump was falling short of the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year. So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.” So the target changed from the “worst of the worst” to anyone who could be rounded up in a hurry. “In Coral Springs, Fla., at least eight agents in tactical gear, shields and rifles surrounded a home with guns raised to arrest a father with no criminal history. In Irvine, Calif., ICE agents drove a phalanx of military vehicles in the Orange County suburb to arrest a person, though not for illegal immigration. They were seeking a resident’s son who had allegedly posted fliers alerting neighbors to the presence of ICE agents.” The WSJ (Gift Article): The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown. We were promised safer communities and we got arrested workers and the military in our streets. As could soon be the case for the customers of Ambience Apparel, the emperor has no clothes.
+ I wonder if ICE will show up at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has been using undocumented workers for years. Here’s an overview of his hypocrisy on this issue from his first term.
+ The emergency was fake. The justification for calling in the National Guard was fake. And, unsurprisingly, much of the imagery we’re seeing on social media is fake. NYT (Gift Article): Fake Images and Conspiracy Theories Swirl Around L.A. Protests. “James Woods, the actor who has become known for spreading conspiracy theories, used his account on X to rail against the state’s elected officials, especially Mr. Newsom, a Democrat. He also reposted a fabricated quote, attributed to former President Barack Obama, discussing a secret plot to impose socialism on the country, as well as a video of burning police cars that was from 2020.” (A misleading image paired with a nonsensical conspiracy theory…how is this guy not in the cabinet?)
+ “If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived. The question, now, is whether Americans who hate tyranny can be roused to respond.” Michelle Goldberg in the NYT (Gift Article): This Is What Autocracy Looks Like.
