Trump's Praetorian Guard – ICE And The Rest Of DHS
From the very beginning of the Trump’s bid for the Presidency, he has had the unwavering support of two of America’s most abusive and rogue agencies, ICE and CBP. The union representing ICE employees made its first ever endorsement for President when it endorsed Trump in September of 2016. The union representing CBP had already beaten ICE to the punch, having endorsed Trump in May of that year, also its first presidential endorsement.
The Muslim ban was one of Trump’s first actions as President and there is credible evidence that CBP willfully ignored court orders ruling that the ban was unconstitutional. The agency refused to allow lawyers to contact their clients and began to monitor those protesting the ban at airports around the country.
While CBP was the initial assault force in Trump’s attack on our democracy, ICE has been far more aggressive and destructive. It is arresting and deporting suspected gang members on the flimsiest of evidence in what is essentially a school-to-deportation pipeline. ICE agents have used children as bait in order to detain and deport their parents. They have monitored court buildings and arrested a woman who was trying to get a protective order against an abusive boyfriend. They are separating families, deporting one parent or, worse, with some new illegal border crossers, arresting the parent and segregating the child without contact with the parent.
The other day, the head of ICE called for the arrest sanctuary city politicians. Thomas Homan, yet another acting head of a Trump agency, believes that politicians in sanctuary cities that don’t cooperate with ICE are breaking the law because they “knowingly shield and harbor an illegal alien…That is a violation of 8 USC 1324. That’s an alien-smuggling statute. I’ve asked the Department of Justice to look at this. Can we hold them accountable? Are they violating federal law? We’ve got to take these sanctuary cities on. We’ve got to take them to court and we’ve got to start charging some of these politicians with crimes.” Homan particularly targeted California, saying, “The state of California better hold on tight. More citizens are going to die because of these policies.”
ICE and CBP fall under the jurisdiction of DHS, which was run by Trump true believer John Kelly before he became White House Chief of Staff. Kelly has subsequently shown his true colors by insulting, slandering, and blatantly lying about a black Congresswoman. In addition, he has indicated a blatant disregard for civilian culture and our Constitution by claiming that members of the press who do not personally know a Gold Star family (the very same families that Trump slandered with his attacks on Khizr Khan) are not entitled to ask questions. Those are the sensibilities he brought to DHS and they are fully embraced by ICE and CBP.
Yesterday, there was celebration in liberal circles when Trump disbanded Kris Kobach’s Election Integrity Commission. But I believe that celebration was premature. Yes, Trump disbanded the commission but he transferred Kobach’s entire effort over to, you guessed it, ICE. The agency will now be responsible for matching the federal database of non-citizens with voter rolls in order to “purge” those voters. The probability of abuse in this process is enormous, with many people with similar names probably being prevented from voting or making the process far more difficult for them to vote. As Kobach openly admits, “It’s the right move. It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.” This shift arguably moves Trump’s voter suppression effort further along, rather than ending it.
Today, Jeff Sessions allowed US Attorneys to go after legal marijuana in the states where it exists. Sessions’ new guidance states that “today’s memo on federal marijuana enforcement simply directs all U.S. attorneys to use previously established prosecutorial principles that provide them all the necessary tools to disrupt criminal organizations, tackle the growing drug crisis, and thwart violent crime across our country.” One DOJ official called it a “return to the rule of law.” Currently, eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana and 28 states allow medical pot. As of January 1, California, which already legalized marijuana for medical use, also legalized it for recreational use. (As an aside, this decision is yet another example of the will of the majority of this country being subverted by a minority government.)
Considering that Trump has fired all the US Attorneys and will be able to replace them whenever he gets around it, you can be sure that the crackdown that Sessions has always desired is coming. And, following in Trump’s and the Republicans’ efforts to undermine blue states, you can be sure that California will be a target, just as Holman has promised with sanctuary cities. I think that there is also a high probability that another traditionally rogue agency, the DEA, will be ramping up its efforts. And it is also likely that ICE will also be an integral part of this effort to crack down on legal marijuana.
It should also be noted that Sessions is focusing DOJ resources on marijuana, the administration is doing virtually nothing to address the far greater public health threat of opioid addiction. There is ample evidence that opioid abuse falls when legal marijuana is available. But, as I’ve noted months ago, Kelly, while he was at DHS, and Sessions are entirely focused on marijuana, specifically because they are unwilling to stand up to the Big Pharma monopolies that are profiting from the crisis they themselves created.
ICE and the DHS in general have been and always will be Trump’s Praetorian Guard, supporting him since the beginning and willing to do his dirty work whenever needed, seemingly answerable only to him. That means taking on the job of ethnically cleansing America of so-called “immigrants”. That means ignoring court orders to prevent Muslims from entering the country. That means destroying families who have lived and worked without incident in this country for decades. And that may mean arresting politicians that oppose Trump policies and jailing people engaged in entirely legal behavior in their states.
