ICE’s Reality Show: Bad as They Wanna Be
We are seeing the brutalization of our security forces here in the Borderlands, a natural consequence of providing military equipment and little accountability for their exercises in the detention and deportation of quiet, hardworking fathers and mothers. Many seem to be enjoying, at last, the kind of rough treatment and use of fearful weapons they had dreamed about, unfettered by respect for the fundamental rights and dignity of the human beings they hunt down, stalk, push around and tackle to the ground. Add to this excitement the presence of cameras, preparing an “episode” for some training film or reality program.
The four traumatized children of a man arrested last Wednesday afternoon, here in El Paso, described in detail the cinematic, violent takedown of their father in broad daylight by a force of over 20 heavily armed police in black gear--a “SWAT team”, they said—who entered from the back of the house where he lived without warrant or permission. They wore bulletproof vests and carried large weapons, acting as if El Chapo himself was holed up in the house. The whole event was filmed, which caused the older children to tearfully ask why the cameraperson was just recording everything. He replied, “This is for an episode we’re preparing.”
The man being detained had a criminal history, his wife admitted as she spoke to me the next day, but nothing that justified this kind of excessive force: two counts of theft without violence 27 years ago, for which he was previously deported.
Originally, three men identifying themselves as ICE agents knocked on the front door early that same Wednesday morning, employing the tactic of asking for someone else—hoping to put the man at ease by making him and his relatives think they were looking for someone else, and inviting him to step outside his home. There they could grab him and arrest him.
“Let me see the order,” the man said to the agents from inside the house. “Pass it under the door,” he told them through the screened entrance. They refused, and the standoff lasted several hours, with the agents pounding on the door intermittently, but not being allowed in, and not allowing the man to inspect their document.
The larger force arrived at about 5 p.m., and divided into two groups. They warned the man’s children, who came running from another part of the neighborhood, to stay away from the house while pointing their large machineguns at them. At the same time, one of the groups began pouring in through the back yard and bursting into the house, forcing the man to exit through the front door, where he was thrown to the ground and arrested in sight of his four children, ranging in age from 12 to 17 years old.
This morning the man’s wife called me to tell me her husband was denied medication for his high blood pressure at the detention camp in El Paso, so I’m waiting to hear back from the chaplain’s office about his case. I’d expect him to linger at the camp for months, waiting to see a judge about his need to provide for his children, all U.S. citizens, knowing that his wife and eldest daughter do not make enough money to pay the rent on their home. With his previous convictions and deportations, and the present campaign to hunt down and expel anyone undocumented, in the most spectacular and frightening manner possible, his deportation seems to be only a matter of time.
The manner of his detention raises serious and troubling questions about the kind of police state we are becoming, when such situations are treated as training opportunities, as practice of the weapons and military gear made available to ICE since the present administration took office, creating a climate of fear and intense distrust while encouraging a confrontational chasm between security forces and the civilian community, looking on aghast at Gestapo tactics and exaggerated repressive measures more typical of dictatorships than democracies. In a further parallel to totalitarian regimes, it was all visually recorded, for propaganda and recruitment purposes.
--Rev. Robert E. Mosher, DMSC Member