I.C.E. ed Out

Recently, I saw news report about Federal I.C.E. agents in Buffalo near my neighborhood looking for illegal aliens to deport back to their countries. To be honest, I don’t have a big problem with that. If they came illegally, then being deported back was the chance they took to eat from the troth of America’s abundance. But I must admit I started to rethink that after watching the tactics of some of those I.C.E agents on television arresting brown people across the country.

It occurred to me that I am a light skinned man and, I’ve been asked if I was Hispanic several times in my life by Hispanics. No Espanol. It occurred to me that I could be a mistaken for illegal alien on the streets in the eyes of some dim-witted ICE officers. How exactly do I prove I’m a US citizen? How can any of us prove we are citizens other than a passport or enhanced license, which is now being mandated to board all airplanes.

I never dreamt that Americans would have to “show their papers” to authoritarians just like in 1930’s Germany. This is all so illegal and unconstitutional on so many levels. The deployment of ICE and US Troops to American cities is a clear violation of a fundamental tenets of the Constitution. It’s called “Posse Comitatus Act,” enacted in1878, which made it illegal for the U.S. Armed forces be used to impose domestic laws unless specifically authorized by Congress or the Constitution.

Did Congress vote to send I.C.E. to round up illegals? No. This is fascism at its highest level. If Trump is not stopped in next year’s mid-terms, he will have the power to bully himself into a third term, even without consti tutional consent. I don’t know how that will look but nothing is beyond Trumps and his oligarchical puppet masters.