It seems pretty clear the dreaded police state they warned you would result from silly things like being mandated to wear a mask during a pandemic, has finally arrived, but in a much more straightforward way: By the agressive, unchecked, thuggish use of actual police. Or, whatever ICE classifies as.

If you find yourself in one of these Minnesotan ‘warzones’, all bets are off, whether you are innocently caught up in the action, or are there protesting ICE’s actions. People are being targeted pretty indisciminately. Actually a citizen and not an illegal? Too bad, guilty until proven innocent.

They are arresting folks for having an accent, or ‘looking’ like an immigrant. They smash car windows and drag citizens from their car without proper cause, even if they’re maybe just caught up in the traffic and were trying to get to a doctor’s appointment.

Tear gas and flash bangs were deployed in the vicinity of a car that contained children, leading to a 6 month old baby having to be rushed to the hospital after it stopped breathing. To make matters worse DHS lying about what happened, blaming the victims, then deleting that post because the facts were not on their side. Did I mention these people were not involved in any protest at the scene but were living there?

They grabbed a Target worker who provoked them and dragged him in their van, but instead of a proper arrest or due process, they beat the kid up bloodied, then threw him out of the van 8 kilometers away when they figured he was a legal citizen, where people found him crying and bloodied. Nothing he did remotely justified what happened.

They were filmed repeatedly kneeing a man in the face who was subdues and laying on the ground, posing zero risk. Earlier video shows ICE agents dragging another man from his car (again with no visible justification) and dragging him into their van, apparently unconscious, at a gas station.

Homes are being raided without proper warrants, and in many cases for no justified reason, and in some cases bust down the wrong appartment.

Weapons are being used on U.S. citizens indiscriminately and with alarming ease. If you’re “lucky”, it’s just a pepper ball to the face. If your less lucky, a bullet to the leg or worse, to the face, in the case of Renée Good.

Look, actions have consequences, but our entire system is built on the premise that these consequences are executed lawfully, proportionally and with due process. Even in the cases where officers were provoked or people protested, the escalatory or even provocative way of dealing with these situations by ICE is beyond acceptable. You can disagree with the protesters, and still be apalled by how law-enforcement is responding.

Likewise, if these were just isolated incidents, there might be some grounds to disagree with the protests, but it is becoming pretty clear they are more than that, instead forming a pattern of unlawful provocation and disproportionate reaction. The list above is by no means exhaustive.

The protesters’ fault?

To those saying “well yeah you shouldn’t interfere with law-enforcement“, “play stupid games…” or any other variant there of: What did you expect would happen? If officers raid neighbourhoods and treat people and the law in the ways described above, do you think the people will, or even should, remain passive? Of course not. The resistance is not radical, it is predictable. And conversely, do you think we would see these levels of protest and resistance, if ICE:

– Worked by the book giving suspects due process.
– Operated focused and targeted on rounding up actual illegal/criminals, instead of the current scattershot approach.
– Behaved in non-combative manners towards the public, applying de-escalation tactics.

Again, of course not! These are self-inflicted wounds. And the fear is that it is not JUST incompetence, a lack of training, but that it is by design. Many people speculate the situation is not just a perfect distraction from things like the economy and the Epstein files, but will also be used as a pretext to possible invoking of the Insurrection Act, a measure that could even interfere with things like the mid-term elections later this year.

It’s incredibly sad to see the establishement, the right-wingers, half the country, the government, paralyzed or complicit in the face of these shameful proceedings, but not surprising in light of Trump. The difference in reaction compared to for example the january 6th storming of the capital and the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, is also a perfect example of failing the hypocrisy test of switching positions.

It is mildly reassuring to see the citizens rise up to this tyranny, now let’s hope for everyone’s sake things do not escalate.