To anyone who has said “We need to strengthen our borders”
To anyone who has said “We need to strengthen our borders,” this is what strengthening our borders looks like. We already had ICE, it was already murdering people, it was already separating families, it was already getting stupendous amounts of money and weapons. What you’re seeing now is that, but “strengthened.”
Those who’ve called for “strengthening our borders” unfortunately include most prominent Democrat politicians, and many of their followers. ICE was formed under Bush and has been “strengthened” by every administration since. Why take all that taxpayer money to buy them weapons and then act shocked when they get used? It’s time to put pressure on such “strengthen our borders” champions to explain exactly what they mean by that phrase, if not this.
Most Americans want the violence stopped, but unfortunately are operating at a huge disadvantage. The institutions and frameworks that would normally help organize the necessary mass actions, like a nationwide general strike, have all been pulverized in their country. By Democrats and Republicans. They have no strong third parties, their labor unions are comparatively weak. They can’t go crying to the U.N. or invoke international law, which both of their parties have methodically degraded.
The U.S. doesn’t have third parties mostly because Democratic politicians and their followers have worked so hard, for as long as any Americans can remember, to make sure that no third party ever is ever allowed to develop any strength. And now that they need it, it’s not there.
They can’t invoke the concept of crimes against humanity, because international bodies and norms were obliterated in front of everyone’s eyes by Biden/Harris and the Democrat-controlled Congress, via their Palestine policies and their violent crackdown policies. The rest of the world is not as propagandized as Americans and can easily see through the ridiculous pleas of “This is all Trump’s fault! This is not America!”
We all saw how many people showed up in Minneapolis, and that they then immediately suffered another murder the very next morning. We see that the House of Representatives has just passed another funding increase for ICE, with the help of just enough Democrat votes. Anyone else getting tired of the amazing coincidence that just enough Democrats always seem to be magically on hand whenever some particularly monstrous Republican bill is in danger of not passing?
The American population is opposed to unaccountable police state violence. That’s not a theory. But clearly panic and parades alone, no matter the size, are not going to be enough to defeat the police state or convince politicians to change any policies. Boycotts, strikes, lawsuits and civil disobedience need to be expanded. Street tactics need to be learned from those who have experienced state repression firsthand.
The left, people of color, and immigrant communities have been predicting all of this in detail. They were the first to caution Americans about the relevant lessons from history. They warned repeatedly that the lowered moral standards and new weapons technologies being tested in Gaza would end up getting deployed at home. They warned repeatedly that Democrats saying that war crimes are now OK would embolden Trump to start from Biden’s level and step it up from there.
If Americans actually want to defeat ICE and not just complain about it, it’s absolutely crucial they delegitimize Democratic politicians, by name, who are attempting to pacify them right now with witless, counterproductive, illogical policies that are making it worse. And instead empower the people and apparatuses that actually intend to abolish ICE. The U.S. has to listen to its left, and start following the lead of those targeted communities who have long resisted and survived similar violence here and in other countries.
It’s the usual cheerleaders for the Democratic party who should right now be the loudest critics of the preposterous mistakes the party has been making. Anti-democratic lawmakers like Gavin Newsom or Cory Booker are taking this historic moment, in which voters are so clearly and loudly expressing their opinions about ICE, and using it to say that we actually all owe ICE more money, to buy more training and bodycams. Such people are cementing the party’s fate as one that can never be trusted, and never win, again.
These ICE officers do not need more training. The agency needs to not exist. The assassin who killed Renee Good, and whom the government decided to let go scot-free, is an eighteen-year ICE veteran. He was actually an ICE trainer himself. He behaved exactly how the U.S. military trained him to behave, and will experience no consequences from the government that hired him.
It’s not just about putting one or two shooters in prison. It’s not even just about ICE. It’s about the entire violent, repressive, unnecessary, illogical, and ridiculously expensive systems of U.S. border control, policing, and military. Much of which exists out of sight, in countries from which Democrats and Republicans want to discourage immigration, usually ones whose economies those same politicians are deliberately destroying with sanctions. (Remember Kamala Harris's "Do Not Come" campaign.)
Democratic and Republican leaders keep “strengthening” ICE, police, prisons, detention centers, and arms deals because they are scared of revolution, and because it’s profitable. The U.S. economy has been increasingly propped up on the military industrial complex since Eisenhower warned of it in 1961.
ICE, the Pentagon, prisons, detention centers, arms manufacturers, AI weapons, and all the state systems of violence are so profitable right now that even Big Tech billionaires are starting to bet on it. The military, policing and detention industrial complex needs to be made unprofitable. That’s what boycotts, lawsuits, and a national general strike are all about. Asking nicely has only resulted in funding increases.
There is hope. It’s really kind of amazing that even in the most capitalist country ever to exist in world history, where every person is taught from birth that this relatively new economic system, with all of its violence and injustice, is the only possible system to organize human beings; where capitalist-owned media has such an intense lockdown on the showing of alternatives; that such a large percentage of Americans are now entertaining the idea of, if not not outright calling for, the dismantling of capitalism, and its replacement by something more sane and sustainable, and less violent.