The Confluence

 

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects  against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue , but upon probable cause."

AMENDMENT IV: UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

So the American Constitution is the  reason Americans are not required to carry identification (with exceptions) so we do not have those scenes so often seen in those movies where the Gestapo stops the hero and demands to see, "Your papers." That is always one of the creepiest scenes in any movie. 

But recently, Justice Kavanaugh of the U.S. Supreme Court threw the 4th Amendment out the window.

"Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English... Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States. Importantly, reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status. If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter."

Justice Kavanaugh, Noem v Vasquez

He was "briefly stopped" for 4 hours

And here is the way Kavanaugh's renunciation of racial profiling played out in Arizona, where  a Brown police lieutenant, Marcus Hayes,  in mufti, stopping for gas after an all night shift is approached and arrested by ICE agents, even after he identifies himself verbally as a police officer.

The agents approach him and demand, "Papers. Now! Immigration check." Just like in those old movies, the Gestapo, all powerful, unbound  by any rules obligating them to show probable cause.

He cannot show them his badge, because it is in his car, but the officers refuse to look there, or to allow him to retrieve or produce it,  and these DEA so-called "agents" refuse to call the police department and one says, after Hayes says he's a police officer, "Sure you are, everyone's got a story."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOFOGLGi3CM

What this video shows is how Kavanaugh's opinion plays out in the real  world, on the ground. It's fine for an ICE officer to stop anyone and demand proof of  citizenship, "your papers," and to arrest anyone who does not have those papers on his person, even if the document is only a  few feet away.

Personally, when I go for a walk in Hampton, I am not driving, so I bring no driver's license and in fact I have only my phone and maybe a credit card. Would that mean I should be arrested? For the crime of walking around without a government certificate of belonging?

Do I need to tattoo my driver's license number or my birth certificate number on my forehead? Would that even help?

The other thing which is apparent from this youtube post is how very inept the ICE agents are. We hear a lot of stuff around town: "ICE: stands for Imbecile Certified Error." But these guys, three of them, not to mention the ICE staff at headquarters, are beyond inept--they are clueless. Did it never cross their minds--what if this guy really is a cop?--and then, the next neuron over, and I've just arrested a cop and I'm going to be in deep doodoo.

In fact, Hayes' lawyer refused to settle the suit against ICE and insisted on a jury trial which cost the government nearly $14 million. Not that the ICE agents had to worry. Didn't cost them $14 million.  Nobody was fired. They were just doing what Kristi Noem wants them to do--terrorize, insult, bully, beat down and wreck havoc, the ICE way.

The agents could have simply called the police station while standing there, or they could have taken two steps over to the truck, but they were determined to humiliate this guy, who looks to the viewer as a pretty inoffensive human being, and remarkably controlled, considering.

It's the ICE agents who are the Orcs here. 

Why would that be? Some of have suggested we have scraped the bottom of the barrel when it comes to recruiting ICE  agents. These are losers from every walk of life, too dumb to pass police exams, too intemperate to qualify for local police forces; they are the sort of human refuse that surfaces when Trump calls out from the podium, "I love the undereducated."

What you really want to see is an analysis of who has joined up: Work histories, personal histories, school histories, military histories, criminal records, number who have had restraining orders placed on them for beating their wives or children. Guys who were fired from local police forces. The mopes nobody else wants. 

The United States military services have become high tech enough to require educable serviceman; you can't be stupid and survive long in the military now. Real city police require some knowledge  of the law, the Constitution, and they have to be able to make distinctions. Most city and state police do not want to have to explain to their superiors why they waded into a situation and made it explode, rather than defusing it. 

For most police, the main objective is to keep their beats from going up in flames, to just keep folks moving, nothing to see here.

But ICE agents? What gets them joy from their superiors is the theater, the blowing things up and breaking things. That's the whole point of ICE. Show all those  Brown people in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras it's just a  tempest up here, so don't even think of coming... 

 And Justice Kavanaugh has their back: It's enough to be in a place where there are a lot of illegal immigrants, like, for example the entire state of California.  Or, apparently,  Arizona. It's enough if they have been heard to be speaking Spanish. It's enough to be standing in a Home Depot parking lot, because, you know, that's a known spot for illegal rapists to hang out. So you must be/might be an illegal rapist immigrant. Makes sense! Just common sense, as the justice says.

(Isn't it just rich they call themselves "justices?")

And, it's pretty clear, ICE agents  don't care about the women and children thing--they are just as likely to murder a woman in cold blood, or to scoop up a 5 year old child and put him on a plane from Minneapolis to Texas as they are to take on a real man, who might actually pose them a threat of bodily harm.

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They are in states which voted against Trump to sow  terror. They are, ironically enough, the real terrorists.

And if the ICE agent gets caught doing something really heinous, like shooting a woman in the face and then in the head, well he knows everyone from the President on down will just lie about it. She ran him over! The 5 year old kid's father abandoned him in the cold!

So, if you believe that, then I got a great clip from Karoline Leavitt to play you, where she says Trump never confused Greenland with Iceland. You never heard that.

Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.