ICE refused to produce a warrant, so this wasn’t an arrest, it was an abduction. The folks who were charged for trying to stop it were acting in defense of others and ought to be acquitted.
Next time the public should brutalize the agents
Depends.
If an overwhelming crowd can come together fast - arrest can be blocked and persons de-arrested. But it has to be overwhelming, so that no cop would think of aiming a gun.
Throughout the history of resisting repression - this arrangement is hard to spontaneously produce.
As a minimum, people would have to organize with the clear goal of interrupting ICE raids. They’d likely establish a means of communcation (most likely a phone app backed up by mesh networking) and dedicate resources to offering each other legal assistance later. Possibly, everyone who goes to jail for the hypothetical anti-ICE movement should be celebrated like a rock star (with their permission) and their families should be helped through hardship, to encourage people to undertake risky actions.
The other option - working underground - would be exhausting either ICE or a local police force by persistent sabotage against them. Neutralizing the ICE would have the aim of them organizing less raids, neutralizing police might have the aim of them not backing ICE raids. While more straightforward to accomplish, this approach would bring about high risk (e.g. accusations of terrorism) to people carrying out sabotage. To avoid this, sabotage would have to be carefully considered and low-key. Perhaps, for example, it would aim to upset the agency’s ability to process data - to know whom it actually wants to deport.
Of course, with local police, one should consider the potential outcomes of successfully neutralizing police: both their negative and positive functions would be neutralized, and people might start complaining about crime.
A curious tactical perspective becomes evident when thinking about this: police resources could be diverted in peaceful ways, with false reports.
When I think of how one might decrease police responsiveness to an ICE backup request, I can’t avoid thinking of nice movie scenarios: e.g. while some people are busy obstructing an ICE raid, some other reliably anonymous people divert police resources by calling 911 and reporting various violent situations elsewhere. Others create a traffic jam, effectively isolating the street involved from motor vehicle traffic. Backup will have to arrive on foot, after they’re done chasing the hostage-taking bank robbers who did not exist. :)
“whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
-Preamble to the Declaration of Independence (of the United States of America)
“When peaceful revolution becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable.”
-John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
Yeah? Why not name out the times a significant change happened without violence, and we’ll compare it to the number of times it took violence. Special hint: One of these is MUCH larger than the other. Hell, like 100 people were killed over a few days just to get the US down to a 40 hour work week.
In a normal world where you have a court of law to count on with a fair trial, yes… violence is not the answer.
But in a world where the powers that be have decided you have no rights, there is no peaceful due process anymore… if you let them take you, you are as good as dead.
They do not want to give their prisoners a day in court. The president himself believes the most absurdly obvious Photoshopped “tattoos” justify brutalizing the presumably innocent targets :
No one is going to save us. They will never willingly release the prisoners from El Salvador.
For now, you can legally own firearms.
I would also point out randomly that many years ago, the Black Panthers started patrolling local neighborhoods in large organized groups - ALL of them legally carrying firearms and they “observed” the local police during stops to prevent them from otherwise brutalizing innocent people whom the police didn’t believe had rights.
We are at the point where if you wish to uphold the actual tenets of the Constitution… if you want the Bill of Rights to be followed instead of ignored as they currently are, I would suggest taking inspiration from relevant history, finding like-minded individuals with similar ideals and convictions to begin doing what they can to help inspire a change in heart from those currently engaged in gleeful cruelty as if there will be no consequence for engaging in such actions.
Hypothetically, perhaps if agents of cruelty and apathy were to see real potential responses with impact as a direct consequence, they might think twice before engaging in such actions.
What’s with the masks. Who are these fuckers?
This is exactly why people don’t trust the system. No warrant shown, no explanation given, a terrified child cuffed and dragged away for reacting like any human being would. Local police claim they don’t assist ICE, but when it counts, they show up to protect federal agents instead of their own community. This wasn’t law enforcement, it was a disappearance in broad daylight, and everyone there knew it.
Reading the article makes it clear that the police support ICE completely. Also that — like ICE —the police are completely lawless.
