As the Trump administration, led ironically by former Obama administrator, and new “border czar” Thomas Homan, prepares its Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to descend on Chicago and other sanctuary cities to carry out perhaps the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, it will need your support.
And don’t fret about those past pesky statutes. ICE has got you covered. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines.” In other words, previous standards no longer apply.
How can you participate? Well, by the usual method that autocracies employ: snitching.
You know, if you hear a foreign language spoken by roofers or the landscape guys down the block. Or perhaps someone is displaying a Mexican flag on their vehicle.
What does ICE want you to do? Call its tip line. According to USA.gov, “Immigration violations include criminal acts, visa violations, or public safety threats. ICE accepts anonymous reports by phone and online.” I will not list the phone number, but if you want to report those roofers or landscape “illegals” online, simply use “the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE Tip Form.” So easy and so opaque.
Yes, “public safety threats.” Vague enough for you? Imprecise language used to lock up dissidents or, in the U.S, example, The Others, works great in repressive countries like the Soviet Union during Stalin’s “Great Purge,” or current-day Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
In its review of, “The Whisperers: Private Life In Stalin’s Russia,” by Orlando Figes, the Daily Mail notes that during the horror of Stalin’s reign, “Every apartment block, every village, every collective, every factory had its corps of official informers who, to justify their existence and often to survive themselves, needed a steady flow of denunciations.”
In Vietnam, there is Article 331 of that nation’s Criminal Code, which “criminalizes acts deemed to abuse freedoms to harm state interests,” according to the Vietnamese Magazine newsletter. This code was used to arrest Pham Xuan Thuy and Dao Cong Hien this month for posting on Facebook, get ready for it, “concerns about local governance issues.” Wonder who turned them in and how they will be rewarded by the government?
Saudi Arabia, led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, business bro of Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, uses a handy app in its security apparatus. “Kollona Amn,” as defined at GOV.SA, is, “a tool that makes citizens and residents part of an interactive technical security system to speed up rescue operations and minimize damage and loss by sending a message, uploading pictures, video or audio recording.”
Kollona Amn, which means in Arabic, “we are all security,” is conveniently available at no cost at both the Android and Apple stores.
What happens in Saudi Arabia when a citizen plays cop and tattles on another citizen? Well, for two female Saudi college students the results are decades in prison. In 2022, Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, mother of two children, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for, “using the internet to tear the (Saudi) social fabric,” and “violating public order by using social media.” Hmm, sounds eerily like “public safety threats.”
The same year, a doctoral candidate at Britain’s Leeds University, Salma al-Shehab, was sentenced to 45 years in jail for her social media posts.
According to Context, an online media platform, “While it is not clear how Qahtani’s posts were detected, rights groups think Shehab was reported by citizens using Kollona Amn, a government app that lets citizens alert authorities to everyday incidents like road accidents or suspicious behaviour.”
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, told Reuters “The notion that they [the convicted women] would be described as political prisoners is ridiculous.” (If you believe the minister’s words, you can also believe that the Saudis had nothing whatsoever with the murder of Jamal AhmadKhashoggi.)
During the last Trump immigration debacle, under the direction of Senior Advisor, Stephen Miller, migrant children were cruelly separated from their parents at the border. Some of those children were still being breastfed by their mothers. Their children disappeared into ICE holding facilities without a way to trace their whereabouts. There is no reason to believe that this current Trump administration, again led by Miller and surrounded by sycophants, will be any less cruel.
Uncle Sam needs you to help carry out its deportation plan. Yet, you are not under any obligation to assist ICE in its “shock and awe” program (or is it pogrom?). You will not break the law if, when you are asked, “do you know of any migrants living in your neighborhood?” and you simply reply, “no,” because in this case no means, sorry, I will not do your dirty work for you. Let the consequences of their actions fall heavy on the consciences of the ICE agents. If they have one, that is.
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