#icetapo

Alix Breeden at Daily Kos:

When Lorenzo Salgado Araujo arrived at a Houston hospital after being shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Tuesday, he was admitted as a John Doe.  The federal agents may not have known his name when they set out to the predominantly Latino East End neighborhood to apprehend immigrants that day, but they were extremely aware of who Salgado was as they stripped him of any form of identification and his belongings after shooting him. That move kept his family from claiming his body, according to news reports. “That is Soviet gestapo tactics when you want to hide a crime or victim,” Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said in a conversation with Daily Kos. The organization is supporting the Salgado family in their quest for answers. 

The details around this latest ICE shooting are murky at best.  When news first broke that the 52-year-old Mexican national was shot, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that ICE agents were en route to detain a different man who drove a similar vehicle as Salgado. Officials also claimed that Salgado tried to ram an officer with his vehicle, although they have offered no evidence to prove it. It’s unclear who the actual target was—or why ICE agents zeroed in on Salgado as the veteran builder drove employees to a construction site that morning.  “There are thousands of those trucks around Texas,” Proaño told us. What’s clear is that this case of mistaken identity had tragic consequences.

“There were two men—one in the driver’s seat and one in the passenger seat—that were of brown complexion and of Latin descent. This is very clearly a case of racial profiling, very clearly a case of civil rights violation and due process violations, and excessive enforcement on behalf of ICE and its agency,” Proaño said. “It’s very clear that they have not changed their tactics since [Kristi] Noem and [Greg] Bovino were in charge.” [...]

The Salgado family knew the risks of being Latin American in the U.S. under the Trump administration.  “The family had a protocol in place should there be an encounter with ICE,” Proaño told Daily Kos. Salgado, who had lived and worked in the U.S. for 35 years, was “weeks or possibly months away” from obtaining his citizenship.  As they anxiously awaited that day, Proaño said, the family—including Salgado’s three U.S.-born children—was told to “not overreact” and to call a family member and the family lawyer if they were detained by ICE. “And they knew that even if he was detained, they could always get him back. But the escalation here clearly got to a point where the families now had to suffer a terrible loss, a family that never wanted this national attention,” Proaño said. Now the Salgado family, with the help of LULAC, is reluctantly in the spotlight seeking what justice there is left to claim.  And DHS, in a similar response to the shootings of Pretti and Good, has continued to deflect responsibility.

[...] As it stands, LULAC and other community advocates are demanding an independent investigation. So far, LULAC has obtained over 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for just that. Similarly, the organization has pushed a GoFundMe to help foot the family’s legal and household bills.  “They’ve lost a husband, a father, a provider, a protector,” Proaño said. “Something that no one would ever expect on a normal, routine day for Lorenzo and for his family.” Salgado’s death prompted Mexican government officials to announce that Mexico will file criminal complaints in the United States on behalf of 14 of its citizens who have died while in custody at U.S. detention centers. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday said it’s time to “go further than diplomatic notes.”

I gave you my word as a Biden — and I kept that word.

—  President Biden@POTUS

👏 MeepsIsOn@MEEPPSison replying to @POTUS with this 💜 Undoing Trump

Jean Lee at NBC News:

A Minnesota man said he felt fear, shame and desperation a day after ICE officers broke down his door with guns drawn, handcuffed him and dragged him into the snow wearing shorts and sandals. ChongLy Thao, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen who goes by the name Scott, was returned some time later Sunday without explanation or apology, he said. “They just took me out there with no clothes on and then just covered with my grandson’s blanket. Yeah, they just took me out there, and I was like, ‘Man, this is, this is embarrassing,” Thao, a Hmong man born in Laos, said from the home Monday while neighbors were at work fixing the broken door.

Videos of the incident showing Thao barely clothed and covered in a blanket spread on social media, further fueling public outrage from some about the tactics being used in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area, where 3,000 agents have been deployed. Louansee Moua, Thao’s sister-in-law, said it was frigid and snowing when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took him from the house. “It was so heartbreaking seeing him in that image,” Moua said. “You can’t get it out of your head. He has no clothes, and it’s, like, 12 degrees and it’s snowing.” Moua said her brother-in-law went willingly with the officers without knowing why he was being detained. “He went willingly because he was afraid,” she said, adding that Thao’s demeanor is very generous and laid-back.

[...] "Mr. Thao did not resist and went with agents voluntarily, despite the absence of an explanation for his detention at the time," the family said in its statement. A U.S. district Judge in Minnesota issued an injunction Friday blocking the Trump administration from some aggressive tactics that she said would “chill” an ordinary citizen from engaging in constitutionally protected protest. The Trump administration is appealing her injunction. Thao said that his parents brought him from Laos to the United States in 1974 when he was 4 and that he became a U.S. citizen in 1991. During Sunday’s ordeal, he said, he feared being sent back to Laos, where he has no relatives. He said he was singing karaoke when there was a loud noise at the door. He and his family hid in a bedroom, where the federal officers found him. Thao said he was trying to find his ID as officers escorted him out of the house. Thao was wearing only boxer shorts and Crocs on his feet when officers denied him the chance to put on more clothes, he said. He used a blanket that his 4-year-old grandson had been sleeping with on the couch to cover his torso.

ICETapo fascist goons humiliated ChongLy Thao in St. Paul, MN while he was half-naked during an ICE raid of his home.

See Also:

Nicole Charky-Chami at Raw Story:

A woman who was reportedly attempting to drive to a doctor's appointment was pulled out of her vehicle by ICE agents and taken into custody during a disturbing incident captured on video Tuesday in Minneapolis. The incident happened amid heavy clashes between masked ICE agents and protesters following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, near the area of 34th and Park streets in Minneapolis when a woman attempting to get out of the area was targeted as officers grabbed her and pulled her out of the window of her sedan.

The woman, whose name was not immediately known, yelled out "Get the f--- out of my car. I've been picked up by police before. I'm disabled, I'm trying to go to the doctor up there, that's why I didn't move." The video was captured and shared by Amanda Moore, who was at the scene where protesters and agents clashed, yelling at each other while they pulled the woman from her car onto the concrete, using a knife to cut her out of her seatbelt.

Out-of-control sociopath ICE thugs pull a disabled woman out of a car in Minneapolis. The driver in question was going to a doctor’s appointment.

See Also:

Robert Reich:

Friends, ICE and Border Patrol agents must be reined in. I’ll tell you how in a moment.

Since Renee Good’s death, clashes between ICE and the residents of Minneapolis have escalated. On Wednesday night, an ICE agent shot and wounded someone who, ICE claimed, was fleeing arrest. (Sure, just like Good supposedly was trying to run them over when she turned her car away from them and said, moments before an agent fired three bullets into her chest and head, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”) I’ve always loved Minneapolis. Its people have midwestern common sense. They also have a deep sense of fairness and justice. On Wednesday, Trump threatened that if Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota didn’t stop the protesters, whom he referred to as “insurrectionists,” he would “institute the INSURRECTION ACT … and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.”

Let’s be clear. The problem is not the protesters. It’s the armed thugs who are shooting and murdering them. (Trump seems capable of seeing a similar dynamic playing out in Iran and vows to protect the protesters there, but not in America.) A friend who knows a lot more than I do about America’s armed forces recently wrote: “There are four kinds of people who join the armed forces: those from a traditional military family, true patriots who want to serve their country, those with no other prospects who need a job, and psychotics who just want to kill people. The armed services do a pretty decent job of screening out the fourth group, but that group is now the prime recruitment pool for ICE. Racists, haters, gun nuts, and cage fighting fans who want to shoot anyone the least bit different from them. They are becoming America’s Gestapo. That is no exaggeration. We’re slipping into Nazi Germany.”

He’s exactly right. ICE is reportedly investing $100 million in what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed. It has lowered its recruitment standards to meet the deportation targets set by Stephen Miller (Trump’s deputy chief of staff for promoting bigotry and nativism), thereby increasing the numbers of untrained and dangerous agents on the streets. ICE’s recruitment is aimed at gun and military enthusiasts and people who listen to right-wing radio, have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races. It’s seeking recruits who are willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” If I had my way, ICE would be abolished and Border Patrol agents sent back to the border. But this isn’t going to happen under Trump and his Republican lapdogs in Congress. Too many Democrats are almost as spineless when it comes abolishing ICE.

But Congress can still take action to rein in ICE. At the very least, it must disarm ICE. The Trump regime is allowing ICE officers to use lethal force in self-defense. But we’ve seen how readily ICE and Border Patrol agents claim self-defense when they’re shooting our compatriots. How do we disarm ICE? Congress is now considering the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding runs out at the end of January. Please demand — call your members of Congress and tell them in no uncertain terms — that the DHS spending bill prohibit ICE and Border Patrol agents from carrying guns and that it unambiguously declare that agents do not have absolute immunity under the law if they harm civilians. Do this as soon as you can.

[...] ICE was designed to be mainly an investigative agency, not a militarized arm of the presidency. ICE agents are not adequately trained to use deadly force. In addition, ICE agents prowling our streets in unmarked cars, wearing masks, clad in body armor and carrying long guns, are a clear provocation to violence — both by them and by otherwise law-abiding residents of our towns and cities who feel they must stop their brutality. Trump, Vance, and Miller want to provoke violent confrontations so they can justify even more oppression — including invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow Trump to call in the regular military. “I’d be allowed to do that,” Trump said in October, referring to the act, “and the courts wouldn’t get involved, nobody would get involved, and I could send the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, I can send anybody I wanted.”

Katie Herchenroeder at Mother Jones:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a 5-year-old on his way home from school on Tuesday and used him as “bait” to knock on his front door to see if anyone was home, according to school officials in Minnesota.  Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschooler, is one of at least four children from the Columbia Heights Public Schools district in suburban Minneapolis who have been detained this month, Zena Stenvik, the superintendent for the district, said in a press conference Wednesday.  “Why detain a 5-year-old?” Stenvik asked. “You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.” Liam and his father were arriving home on Tuesday when ICE agents approached them and detained the father, according to a recounting of the incident by school officials. In situations where a parent is being detained and a child is present, the Department of Homeland Security has claimed that ICE’s policy is to see if parents want to be removed with their children or, if not, agents then place the child with someone the parent advises. According to school officials, that’s not what happened on Tuesday.  “Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child and was refused,” Stenvik told reporters. Instead, an agent “took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door, and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

According to the family’s lawyer, Liam and his father are now in DHS custody in San Antonio, Texas. Family members said they didn’t know where the boy was for around 24 hours. DHS claims that the father attempted to flee when approached before being detained. In a social media post, the ICE account wrote that Liam was “ABANDONED by their criminal illegal alien parent.”

Since federal immigration agents descended on the Twin Cities en masse over a month ago, the Columbia Heights district, where more than half the students are Latino, has seen a steep decrease in student attendance, including on one recent day when a third of students didn’t show up. Administrators say they are worried about the safety of their students to be outside during recess or to attend after-school events like basketball games, as ICE has repeatedly approached or been near campus.  And it’s not just Columbia Heights. 

[...] Liam and his father were sent to Texas likely within hours of their arrest, their lawyer said. For the preschooler, according to reporting from Sahan Journal, that meant leaving behind his things in his school cubby, where he kept a winter hat, a blanket, and a small stuffed turtle.

Scumbag ICE thugs detained 5-year-old Columbia Heights Public Schools student Liam Conejo Ramos and used him as “bait”. Liam and his father were kidnapped and sent to Texas hours later. This is more proof ICE should be abolished and every single ICE agent be arrested and prosecuted!

See Also:

Maanvi Singh and Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

Paulo Sosa Garcia and Ramona Cecilia Silva were heading to work in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, on Monday morning when federal immigration agents pulled them over and arrested them. By the next morning, they were detained in El Paso, Texas. Tomas Martinez Gregorio was driving his wife, Daisy Martinez, and their six-year-old son, Jayren, to a hospital in Brooklyn Park when federal agents pulled them over and took Gregorio. Jayren never made it to his tonsillectomy appointment. About 3,000 federal agents are either operating in Minnesota or on their way to the region – seeking to arrest immigrants in what the Trump administration said was its largest enforcement operation thus far. More than 2,400 people in Minnesota have been arrested in recent weeks – and many have been swiftly moved to detention centers out of state, or removed from the country.

Some had valid visas and a right to be in the US, according to local leaders who have been responding to constituents affected by the raids and lawyers representing immigrants. The Guardian has confirmed that several refugees with legal status have been arrested in recent days after the Trump administration said it would “re-examine thousands of refugee cases”. Many have been arrested in their neighborhoods – at home, on their way to work, at department stores and restaurants, outside schools and places of worship.

Their families are grappling with the aftermath.

“I just want for my parents to come back home,” said Cecilia Sosa, the eldest of Sosa Garcia and Silva’s three daughters. Sosa Garcia and Silva came to the US from Mexico in 1999, and had been in a years-long process to obtain legal residency, according to their daughter. Five days before they were detained, they had been told that their case had been approved to move forward. Now their daughters are instead working to raise funds for lawyers’ fees to get them released from detention – posting a video on TikTok saying they are “living their worst nightmare”, which includes footage of their parents’ car on the side of the road with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles around it.

[...] Daisy Martinez, whose husband, Tomas Martinez Gregorio, was detained on New Year’s Eve, said she has also struggled to explain to her son what happened to his stepfather. “He says every single day: ‘Can we get Tommy back?’ He tells his teacher: ‘Can you please save Tommy?’” she said. The other night, her son told her he’d dreamed that his stepfather was back – and he was sad to wake up. “It just breaks my heart to hear a six-year-old say that they don’t want to wake up,” Martinez said. Martinez and Gregorio had been married recently, in November. He is undocumented, from Mexico. Although Martinez is a US citizen, the couple had decided not to apply to adjust Gregorio’s immigration status during the Trump administration because they worried that an application would draw attention to him, and ICE would try to target him for deportation.