Who's that masked man? Frightened bullies fear shaming

With apologies to the Lone Ranger; yes, Donald and his ghoul Miller are inflicting the country with a made-for-TV movie of their violent fantasies. 

At the CalMatters news site, Michael Lozano has provided a useable guide to which agencies some of these masked thugs snatching up random brown people from the streets come from. This is what we are supposed to get used to.

 

 

Criminal justice journalist Radley Balko calls foul on the masking fetish.

The administration says the masks are to prevent “doxing,” and has cited a “700 percent” increase in assaults on ICE agents.

Both the defense and the statistic are nonsense.

First, unless they’re operating undercover, it is not illegal to publish or publicize the names of federal agents — nor should it be. They are state employees who have the power to arrest, detain, and kill. Of course their names and identities ought to be public information. Of course the people they stop, detain, arrest, or abuse should have names and badges to seek redress in court.

Second, the 700 percent figure is absurd. ... Don’t forget that the administration claimed that New York City comptroller Brad had Lander “assaulted” agents when video showed nothing of the kind. So there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical ...

I will not be surprised if, when ICE hires on its new army of thugs made possible by Trump's Big Ugly Bill, they don't even bother with this much identification. 

These big bullies should be ashamed of themselves. They hide their faces because whatever shred of decency they have left within them shames them as they carry out vicious, marginally legal orders.

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Where government overreaches, not surprisingly Americans fight back. Hence the ICEBlock app which enables citizen sharing of ICE movements. Shades of the opening skirmishes of the historic national colonial revolt: "The British are coming..."

At the Intercept, Natasha Leonard explains: 

ICE watch groups and rapid-response networks have proliferated as a necessary response to Trump’s supercharged deportation agenda. Such efforts are not new but sit in the honorable tradition of the sanctuary movement of the 1980s to protect and shelter refugees, as well as local Copwatch networks, which have existed for over three decades as community efforts against law enforcement violence and impunity.

The agency’s response is itself in line with a storied tradition in U.S. law enforcement and broader efforts to shore up a white supremacist order. Namely, painting the oppressor as the victim and the real victim as the dangerous threat. ...

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And now even ICE lawyers are refusing to admit their names in open court. Again from the Intercept: 

Inside a federal immigration courtroom in New York City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers. 

“We’re not really doing names publicly,” said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. ... It is unclear how many immigration judges are failing to say ICE lawyers’ names...

For shame!