Beltway pundits set my teeth on edge when they repeat Trump Administration talking points mindlessly. Let’s take Rich Lowery at the National Review today, for example.
When I say mindlessly, I refer to repeating ICE assertions that are questionable or false.
The word should have gone out long ago: Don’t riot outside ICE facilities. Don’t ram cars into ICE vehicles… Don’t act as though the Gestapo has descended on your city and that civil disobedience, or violence, is the only answer.
Let’s take these one by one:
One. Protests are not riots; they are an exercise of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I watched a video of an ICE agent nonchalantly run up to Rev. David Black of the Presbyterian Church of Chicago, dressed in black and praying, and slam him in the face with “exploding pellets that contained some kind of chemical agent.”
The “rioting” behavior came from ICE; it’s legal to pray outside a federal facility.
“Never in modern times has the federal government undermined bedrock constitutional protections on this scale, or usurped states’ police power by directing federal agents to carry out an illegal mission against the people for the government’s own benefit,” according to a lawsuit filed Monday. For the record, today is Wednesday. The lawsuit alleges that ICE “[violated] protesters’ and journalists’ First Amendment rights.”
Two. In an altercation where ICE shot an American citizen in her car, they alleged that she had rammed their vehicle. Instead, body cam footage shows the driver of the ICE truck turning his steering wheel into her car. Moreover, her lawsuit, also filed Monday, alleges that “body-camera footage captures one of the officers saying: ‘Do something, bitch,’ before opening fire.” The ICE agents, of course, alleged that the women they shot rammed their vehicle, a claim repeated credulously in the National Review.
Three. Last week, in a PR move, ICE descended on a south Chicago apartment complex after midnight, landing a helicopter on the roof as though they were in Iraq. “Hundreds more arrived in trucks,” according to USA Today. Read that again. HUNDREDS.
Federal law enforcement agencies including DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection would not say if the Black Hawks used in the raid were from the U.S. Army, National Guard, or a non-military department.
They rammed open doors and threw flash bang grenades.
Rodrick Johnson, 67, was among the U.S. residents who were detained by federal agents during the South Shore raid, he told the Sun-Times. He told the outlet agents broke through his door, dragged him out in zip ties and left him tied up outside the building for nearly three hours before he was released.
“I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer,” he told the Sun-Times. “They never brought one.”
They marched naked, zip-tied children into the night. They marched residents — including American citizens — of the five-story building into the street and U-Haul vans. Supposedly, the ICE agents were looking for gang members. They say they found two.
Photos of the aftermath show toys and shoes littering the apartment hallways that were left in the chaos as people were pulled from their beds by the operation that included FBI and Homeland Security agents.
ICE agents left the doors to the building open. Residents returned to find their belongings … gone.
When he got home from work, [Dan] Jones said he entered his unit to find all of his electronics and furniture missing, and all of his clothes and shoes thrown on the floor. Jones said he had no idea who took his belongings and hadn’t received answers from Chicago police.
Supposedly 37 people were arrested. Only six people reportedly had criminal histories, and two were reportedly gang members. Hardly the worst of the worst in this massive spectacle. No names have been released, so who the heck knows if anyone will ultimately be charged.
If this isn’t Gestapo behavior, I don’t know what to call it.
The essay author relied on first draft information provided by ICE and nothing from the subsequent reporting showing their duplicity. Shame on the National Review and Lowery.
It’s lies by omission.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com