Trump is desperate to detain and deport as many people as possible to meet his grandiose goal of removing the alleged millions of criminals from the US. To get the numbers up, his lackey Kristi Noem, the puppy murderer who is also secretary of Homeland Security, has created a quota for the number of people that need to be taken in by agents. This has resulted in pretty much anyone being a target, with no requirement of any criminality required.
Jacqueline Sweet writes about what happened in Long Island, NY.
A DOZEN OR more masked men, some with long guns, tried to enter a men’s homeless shelter without identifying themselves in a rural town with a long-standing immigrant community on eastern Long Island in New York. Officials from the local police department later admitted they didn’t know where the masked men came from — only adding to local residents’ concerns.
…Several hours after the men were seen at the Riverhead Fire Department, they were spotted again. Twelve to 14 of the masked men, some reportedly carrying long guns, were trying to get into a Riverhead men’s homeless shelter, according to a video shared by several immigrant advocates in the area. They would not identify themselves, a shelter employee told local news outlet RiverheadLOCAL.
A shelter resident told RiverheadLOCAL that one of the men, wearing a black U.S. Marshals vest, came to the front door seeking entry but would neither show credentials or a warrant, nor give his name. (A representative for the shelter did not respond to inquiries.)
A representative for the Riverhead Fire Department told The Intercept, “We had no idea who they were.”
So we have masked men with long guns trying to get into homeless shelters? This is supposed to be normal? How is this different from an armed criminal gang seeking to terrorize people? The answer is that there is almost no difference.
That is not all.
At the same time, 50 miles to the west, six unmarked cars with masked agents from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, parked within hundreds of feet of an elementary school in a working-class town with a large Latino population. In response, a group of residents gathered to shame the agents, accusing the agents with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, of lying in wait to snatch the parents of students when school let out.
…Last week, top ICE officials ordered officers to increase arrests and to get “creative” in their methods, including trying to nab people the officers happen to encounter in what are known as “collateral arrests.” The orders come in the wake of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller setting a quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day, along with a sharp rise in protests against the crackdown.
And again.
One Wednesday morning, Glen Cove city police, a small local force in Nassau County, responded to a call from a business owner about a possible assault, according to local media reports. When the police arrived, however, they found ICE officers holding a group of men on the ground.
Following the outburst of opposition to ICE’s presence in Nassau County, the county executive and police chief said that their forces would not be assisting ICE in operations inside schools or houses of worship.
A proposal is under consideration in California that would make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers to cover their faces.
Local, state, and federal law enforcement officers who cover their faces while conducting official business could face a misdemeanor in California under a new proposal announced Monday.
The bill would require all law enforcement officials show their faces and be identifiable by their uniform, which should carry their name or other identifier. It would not apply to the national guard or other troops and it exempts Swat teams and officers responding to natural disasters.
Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator representing San Francisco, and Jesse Arreguin, a Democratic state senator representing Berkeley and Oakland, said the proposal seeks to boost transparency and public trust in law enforcement.
“We are seeing more and more law enforcement officers, particularly at the federal level, covering their faces entirely, not identifying themselves at all and, at times, even wearing army fatigues where we can’t tell if these are law enforcement officers or a vigilante militia,” Wiener said.
“They are grabbing people off our streets and disappearing people, and it’s terrifying,” he added.
The state senators said that in recent months, federal officers have conducted raids while covering their faces, and at times their badges and names, at churches, restaurants, hardware stores and schools in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Concord, Downey and Montebello.
“Law enforcement officers are public servants and people should be able to see their faces, see who they are, know who they are. Otherwise, there is no transparency and no accountability,” Wiener said.
Some videos of raids showing masked officers using unmarked vehicles and grabbing people off the streets have circulated on social media in recent weeks.
On Wednesday, a group of masked and armed men detained a Latino man in a church parking lot in Downey, a small, largely Latino suburb near Los Angeles.
But people are now fighting back, on one occasion causing the ICE agents to flee.
Late Tuesday morning in Westbury, in western Nassau County, parents and nearby residents noticed what they immediately recognized as unmarked federal agent vehicles parked within feet of Park Avenue Elementary School, two eyewitnesses told The Intercept. One of those residents, Allan Oscar Sorto, picked up his phone and began streaming live on Facebook.
…As he streamed, a dozen or so people began congregating near the cars, two Nissan Altimas and several Ford SUVs with flashers. People can be heard explaining that they’ve seen these cars around the neighborhood in recent weeks, part of immigration raids. Now the sight of the cars parked so close to the elementary school seemed to spark heightened outrage and fear that federal immigration agents were lurking to surprise parents going to pick up their children from school.
Sorto, from nearby Hempstead, estimated that there were four cars near the school, some within 10 feet of the schoolyard fence, and two other cars on the next block. Another eyewitness, who asked not to be named out of fear of law enforcement retaliation, told The Intercept that he could see uniformed HSI agents sitting in all the cars, most masked.
…In Westbury, the HSI agents didn’t respond to the gathered crowd. After a few minutes, the agents drove away. A commotion erupted down the road, off-camera, and onlookers began rushing toward the corner.
One of the Nissans, carrying two of the HSI agents, had crashed into a black pickup truck that happened to be passing through the intersection. Three eyewitnesses told The Intercept that the agents’ car had sped away. Two of the witnesses believe the Nissan blew a stop sign, causing the crash.
…After the accident, the crowd gathered around the scene, according to the video stream. The two agents got out of the crashed car, seemingly panicked and, witnesses told The Intercept, appearing to avoid eye contact with bystanders. The agents got into another HSI vehicle.
…During the Westbury incident, one of the HSI agents, wearing a mask, stood hidden behind several Nassau police officers as the residents appealed to them for information.
Soon, the federal agents left, leaving the smashed Nissan with the passenger side airbag deployed behind, and many in the crowd dispersed.The driver of the pickup truck involved in the accident was placed in a stretcher and left in an ambulance.
ICE seeks the assistance of local law enforcement to assist it in carrying out this Gestapo-style raids. But now pressure from local communities is causing local elected officials whi initially supported ICE to back off.
something unsaid in the homeless shelter story is how impressive it is that they were kept out by people at the shelter, refusing to cooperate with armed government thugs. amazing.
something else unsaid above is that this practice by ICE would make it incredibly easy for a lynch mob of deranged trumpists to impersonate ICE to gain access to a place like that shelter and just slaughter everyone with automatic weapons. a squad of vance boelters.
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I am told the unit used for this work is HSI, normally a unit that investigates smuggling etc. They have no experience of crowd control, immigration enforcement or other things Stephen Miller has them doing. They are just ordered to dress up with hardware as if they were storming Falluja in order to intimidate.
@ 1, I also immediately thought of that coward Boelters and how easy it would be for a masked man in an official-looking vehicle to commit mass assassination. I was also impressed by the staff at the homeless shelter fending off pseudo-official agents. It’s the everyday people rising up that are stopping these thugs.
Another thought I had: what are the options of the poor driver injured by whoever-they-were? If they blew a stop sign and hit the truck, they are responsible for his damages. But they’re anonymous and they fled.
ICE really needs the cooperation of local police forces to function.
Up until now, 70% of their arrests have been handovers from the local police.
They don’t have the money, humanpower, or facilities to arrest all that many people.
It’s also illegal in some states for the local police to assist ICE.
Oregon is one such state.
Washington is another.
Of course, in the Red states, the local police have often signed up to be enthusiastic partners of ICE. No surprise.
ICE doesn’t have a lot of the arrest powers they claim to have.
They can’t enter private areas like work places without a warrant.
Opinions differ on ICE. In a lot of places, they aren’t at all welcome.
They also hate to be photographed and video recorded.
Just a FYI if you happen to see them around. Remember to get their license plates in the photos.
Though he’s often a bit of an ass himself, Jon Stewart was on fire last night, reading Netanyahoo and Mike Lee for filth. The last half is especially good.
For your amusement, here are more details of Trump’s conduct at the G7 summit before his premature departure.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/17/keir-starmer-picked-up-papers-dropped-by-donald-trump
He dropped a sheaf of papers, leaving the British PM to pick them up, and confused the UK and the EU, gave rambling answers and … generally stayed true to his brand.
After his early departure, Sarkozy tried to cover for him saying Trump might be busy mediating between Iran and Israel, but Trump denied it and said the French president just wanted attention. Charming.
birgerjohansson @ # 6 -- How, and why, did Sarkozy get (back) into a G-n summit meeting?
Pierce R. Butler @7
I think they meant Macron
This all has some ugly implications if you remember all those heavily armed right wing militia groups.
Sure, the FBI would know they’re not legit but if they roll up in a group and snatch you or someone near you, how are you going to tell? Sewing three letters onto some clothing and saying they’re with a government agency seems to be the only identification our officially licensed thugs are providing. Frankly I’ve seen Halloween costumes that look more legit.
The only counter I can think of is to call the police to vet them and determine which brand of lawless hooligan you’re witnessing. I don’t think the police will help but at least they can be embarrassed publicly if they let someone be kidnapped by the wrong people.
What a goddamn wonderful gift this load of clowns and conmen have given our country.
It seems like USA cops have been conditioned to assume unknown cops are cops. Maybe local, county, state trooper, FBI.
A federal-sounding department you have never heard of, or an office of someone that you didn’t even know had a personal cop force? Probably cop too: play safe, assist, or defer to the mystery jurisdiction, or something.
If the mystery cops behave badly, that just reassures you that their department must be well placed.
Pierce R. Butler @7
I stand corrected! Never post when you are distracted.
It is like mistaking Keir Starmer for Tony Blair (but understandable, as his policies are a clone of Blair’s).
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An important part of a police state is the propaganda apparatus.
Pharyngula has a thread showing the bogus justifications for war with Iran, spread by the same people who lied USA into a war with Iraq in 2003.
And a war is the go-to distraction whenever a police state is facing pushback from its citizens.
Yeah… there’s a reason why, here in Toronto, it has been explicitly illegal for the local schoolboard to even ask about the immigration status of the parents of the children for decades: if the parents are worried that enrolling their children in school might get them deported, they won’t enrol their children, and having a lot of teenagers not in school but with nothing to do is just likely to make the local gang problems even worse.
People who believe there’s a path to legitimacy and who thus have something to lose are, frankly, far less likely to engage in crimes that could wreck that potential legitimacy than entitled locals who believe they’re already on the good side of society and don’t need to do anything useful. We have the statistics to back this up.
A friend of mine who used to work for ICE in the U.S., in the part that did serious investigations of human trafficking (the sort like ‘rich guy buys new wife from home country to come over here where she has no connections, doesn’t speak the language, and has no idea what her rights are, so that he can do with her whatever he wants and then abandon her once he gets bored’) went on a rant during the first Trump administration about how they had all these cases where they had concrete proof of what was going on but couldn’t actually do anything because “the jackbooted thugs ate all the budget”.
The local police forces are still in clear dereliction of their duty: if unidentified men are seizing people and taking them away, the local forces have a duty to arrest those unidentified men.