America's Disappeared - The Wire
ICE Is Not Nice
The scenes involving the round-up of refugees and migrants have been harrowing. Consider this description:
Buses backed up to apartment buildings and were filled with screaming, crying people. Hospital beds were emptied. A cancer patient operated on the previous day was carried away. One woman gave birth while police waited to haul off mother and baby. Younger children were permitted to be left behind, and many parents desperately accepted that choice in the hope that neighbors or orphanages would take them in.
Oh, I’m sorry, I got mixed up. That’s a description of the French police rounding up 13,000 Jewish refugees in 1942 at the behest of their Nazi overseers, as reported by David Wyman in his seminal book, The Abandonment of the Jews.
Here, by comparison, are three snapshots of recent ICE actions:
In Louisiana and Florida:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl — separating them indefinitely — and three children ages 2, 4 and 7 who are U.S. citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said Saturday.
In Chicago:
Agents used unmarked trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building. NewsNation, which was invited to observe the operation, reported agents “rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters.” Agents then went door to door, woke up residents and used zip ties to restrain them. Residents and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which canvassed the area, said those who were zip tied included children and U.S. citizens.
In New York:
On the morning of September 4, dozens of masked federal agents raided a snack bar factory in the small town of Cato, New York. They claimed there was a “violent felon” in the plant, but proceeded to siphon off and hold anyone who looked Latinx. At least 69 workers were initially detained, with 57 still in custody or deported, though some say that could be an undercount. There are multiple reports of aggression — knees on necks, blows to heads — used during the raid.
America’s Disappeared - The Wire https://thewire.in/world/americas-disappeared