Tennessee Said Yes to ICE--and Turned Into a Deportation State

[B.See]

Tennessee Said Yes to ICE—and Turned Into a Deportation State - Mother Jones How the feds worked with state troopers to terrorize Nashville’s immigrants.

By now, the scene [involving the ICE abduction of a 55-year-old Salvadoran man named Edgardo David Campos] has become familiar in communities across the country. The federal siege of Minneapolis—in which masked deportation forces from multiple agencies terrorized immigrants, clashed in the streets with community members, and killed observers Renée Good and Alex Pretti—was the latest in a series of attacks on blue states, including previous high-profile campaigns in Los Angeles and Chicago. Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ JB Pritzker have lashed out at Donald Trump and his administration, claiming that it is illegally occupying states and violating the Constitution.

But in Tennessee, where Republicans hold a supermajority in both state legislative chambers, many elected officials have welcomed ICE with open arms. GOP Gov. Bill Lee and other state leaders have touted their close working relationship with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s deportation campaign. As part of this collaboration, they have paired state police with ICE agents, deployed national guard, and green-lighted the federal occupation of Memphis under the “Memphis Safe Task Force,” which, as Mother Jones’ Samantha Michaels reported, residents compared to living in “a war zone, with helicopters circling over neighborhoods, National Guard officers patrolling downtown, and unmarked law enforcement vehicles in the streets.”

As the operation unfolded, Nashville’s Democratic city leaders, who had not been notified in advance, scrambled to understand what was happening. Anguished families searched for missing loved ones, children were left alone at home because their parents never returned, and terrified families went hungry for fear of leaving the house and being targeted. Businesses watched their sales plummet and clients disappear.

[Mother Jones] found that more than 90 percent of the drivers stopped on the first night in Nashville—the heaviest day of arrests during the operation—were either Black, Latino, or Middle Eastern. We also found that state police and ICE mainly targeted South Nashville, the most ethnically diverse area in the city, and made traffic stops based on racial profiling. State leaders and ICE also claimed that the operation was for public safety reasons, but, according to our own analysis, only one-quarter of those arrested had any type of criminal record. Additionally, troopers ignored drivers breaking traffic laws, choosing to help ICE identify people to stop instead. Our analysis also showed that ICE arrested fewer people than it claimed after the operation

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Just another facet of Trump's supremacist war on MINORITY America. (Byron must be proud.)

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

1. ICE agents and state police can be heard on multiple occasions racially profiling drivers to target for stops.

We watched more than 50 hours of Tennessee Highway Patrol dashcam and bodycam footage taken from the first night, when approximately 47 arrests were made. The footage, much of it previously unviewed, was obtained through a public information lawsuit filed by TIRRC. Much of the released footage is redacted, with the faces of the troopers and ICE agents blurred and segments of their conversations muted. Despite the redactions, which are being challenged in court by TIRRC, ICE agents and state police can be heard on multiple occasions racially profiling drivers to target for stops. In one instance, a trooper pulling over a car with four Latino men in it says to the ICE agent next to him, “This might fill us up. They’re definitely not English speakers.” On a separate occasion, a trooper runs a license before immediately handing it to an ICE agent. “Check him, he doesn’t speak any English,” he says. Yet another trooper tells an ICE agent in a different video, “Nolensville’s always gonna be good,” referring to a road that runs through an area with immigrant-owned businesses. There’s also footage of a highway trooper and ICE agent commandeering a Nashville police officer’s traffic stop after noticing that the driver is Latino. When the ICE agent asks whether Nashville police are aware of the operation, the trooper answers, “They have no idea.”

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

2. Excellent article

[B.See]

3. Indeed it is. Besides revealing

what Trump's gestapo is doing and how, in their lawless occupation of American cities, and in defiance of THOUSANDS of judicial rulings, the article stands as an example of the indispensable value of our liberal/progressive non-MSM media.

Thanks for posting more from it.