ICE Opportunism Expands To Passengers On Domestic Flights

from the raiding-parties-everywhere dept

Things used to be normal. We used to be doing alright here in the United States, limiting ourselves to catching people at the borders or picking up migrants with criminal charges or convictions with detainers at local jails.

Now, it’s just a constant swarm all day, every day. “Worst of the worst” has long been abandoned as a pretense. Under Trump, it’s “anyone of anyone,” so long as they fit the profile: not white from whatever countries Trump claims are “shitholes,” especially if they speak with an accent.

No more targeting. No more plugging holes in the migration dyke with border-focused deterrents. These days, its masked officers storming hardware store parking lots to grab day laborers, hanging around immigration courts to pick off people just trying to follow the naturalization process, leveraging surveillance tech and government data to find people with un-American surnames, and generally terrorizing entire neighborhoods — if not entire cities — just to satiate this administration’s bigoted bloodlust.

Now, we’re doing this, which is yet another thing we’ve never done before because there was never a reason to do it, much less the will or the desire.

The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with immigration lawyers — a tactic that opens up a vast new pool of people for deportation.

Immigration agents in plain clothes have whisked away targets at check-in counters and arrival gates, with enforcement actions in at least 15 airports in recent weeks. Some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters.

The obvious question is “why?” Why do we need to do this? Why are we ambushing people boarding or disembarking from planes over something as menial as an expired visa? Is this going to make America greater or safer? Or is it just going to cement our reputation as a nation of bigots who were just waiting for a white nationalist-leaning blowhard to finally start massaging our repressed id?

Whatever it is, it’s fucking ugly. And it doesn’t look like America. It looks like some “lets round up the Jews” action from Nazi Germany, except that Trump’s “Jews” are people who come from any country that doesn’t have a Caucasian majority.

And it’s even worse than jumping travelers at the gates. In some cases, ICE officers — greatly enabled by new TSA data sharing provisions — are attempting to board planes to arrest people.

On July 25, a Southwest agent prevented ICE from boarding a flight from Dallas to Orlando, according to documents reviewed by the journal. The gate agent reportedly wouldn’t allow officers to board without a judicial warrant signed by a judge.

Following the incident, Southwest said in a statement that it “has longstanding policies in place to ensure appropriate legal documentation is presented by law enforcement personnel before any information about customers is shared.”

The journal also reported that an unnamed airline at a southern airport recently declined to assist ICE in accessing a jet bridge so they could arrest a man traveling with his family.

The DHS has defended its actions. And by “defended,” I mean has issued yet another “we’re right and everyone else is wrong” bit of pissiness.

“This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,” a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. 

I’m sure another equally bitter statement will greet “Welcome to the Resistance… Southwest Airlines?” activity. While the federal government is free to move about airports, it is not free to board private property (the planes themselves) without the proper paperwork. Good to know Southwest staffers can tell the difference between an “administrative warrant” (which is not a “warrant” in the generally accepted definition of the term) and a real, judicially authorized warrant. When even front line employees are willing to push back, you know the administration has pushed too far.

On the other hand, this is same airline:

In one widely circulated video, Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old from Ecuador, was detained by plainclothes officers as she boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland, Calif., on July 20. She had been spending the weekend with the family for whom she had worked as an au pair, according to the family.

When Ms. Morales Rojas scanned her boarding pass, an alarm sounded and the gate agent asked her to wait. Moments later, two plainclothes agents intercepted her in the jetway.

However it all shakes out, it reeks of desperation. The administration can’t keep its arrest numbers up which means immigration agencies are becoming increasingly opportunistic. None of this has anything to do with public safety, crime reduction, or just enforcing the rules. It’s a war on migrants being waged on as many fronts as the DHS can at all times. It’s the government padding its stats while satiating the xenophobes that make up most of its party, as well as its voting base.

It all looks a whole lot like things this country swore it would never do (or never do again). It’s rounding up and caging undesirables who will also be blamed for any or all societal ills. And it’s not that far removed from pursuing escaped slaves who went north in hopes of actually partaking in the American dream.

Filed Under: bigotry, cbp, dhs, ice, markwayne mullin, mass deportation, trump administration

Companies: southwest airlines