An Open Letter to ICE
Your day of reckoning is coming.
Dear ICE,
You murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo yesterday. You will pay for it.
I know you know it’s murder. Why else would your agents flee when they kill someone, as they did in Minnesota? Because they know they’re guilty. YOU know they’re guilty.
Why do you have boilerplate statements for deadly scenarios? Because the details don’t matter to you. Only the party line does. It’s a hell of a coincidence that ICE agents are invariable victims of people who “weaponize their vehicles,” for which the only credible method of self-defense, apparently, is discharging one’s firearm with the discretion of Yosemite Sam.
You goose-step into cities and pull up your masks and bandanas as if you were a band of outlaws suiting up for a train heist.
You cruise through neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles, snatching up people’s neighbors, and demand that citizens and noncitizens alike produce identification without returning the favor.
You drag people out of their homes, schools, and workplaces without cause or warrant, spurning due process, shitting on the rule of law, and wiping your asses with the Constitution—you know, the other bible you swear by but don’t live by.
You grab, grope, drag, beat, rape, and kill people in broad daylight. We know. There are videos.
You got away with it, so far, and that’s why you keep doing it. You do it because you can. The President of the United States is your autopen underwriter. You’ve got carte blanche. That must make you feel pretty powerful, damn near untouchable, am I right?
But all parties come to an end, and someone has to clean up the mess eventually.
I know what you’re thinking. You’ve been getting away with this shit for decades. Hell, Jenn Budd has proven this over and over and over again. Why would this time be any different?
That’s true, of course, but I think you know deep down in your heart of hearts that you crossed the line further than you ever have. The bodies pile up. The evidence of your—ahem—indiscretions mount.
There are other skeletons, worse skeletons that we’re not even yet onto, in your closet, aren’t there? What happened at those concentration camps? Alligator Alcatraz. CECOT. What happened to migrants that disappeared? We’ll find out. When this regime crumbles, those skeletons will come tumbling out.
But that’s not why a reckoning is coming, and as sure as you put on your jodhpurs one leg at a time, a reckoning is coming. It’s coming because you bet on the wrong horse—a man who would feed his children to wolves to save himself.
I think what you may have overlooked, or at the very least underestimated, is Trump’s unblemished record of fucking people over. Everyone who has ever carried water for him ended up getting screwed: former lawyers, business partners, vendors, staff, his cabinet, confidantes, and political allies. People who ended up in jail, disbarred, disgraced, and more.
After the changing of the guard, you will be added to that list. No more masks. No more anonymity. The rest of us, those of us who see you for what you truly are, the foot soldiers of a fascist regime piloting a eugenics program, a not-so-secret police force doing a wannabe tyrant’s bidding, and murderers of innocent people, we won’t forget.
State and federal prosecutors are gathering evidence, biding their time until the day that your mob boss no longer runs a protection racket for you. “I was following orders” didn’t work before, and it won’t work later.
Enjoy your unqualified impunity while you still can. It won’t last forever.
Special thanks to Lumière ✝️ for putting me onto the Migrant Insider story about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
Some other articles about ICE:
Author’s note:
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Thank you for reading.
— Pablo
“To understand the Hemisphere of Plunder, you must understand the men who refused to be plundered. For non-Latin readers, the name Sandino is often obscured by the proxy war fought in his name fifty years after his death. But the man himself — a mechanic, a mystic, a guerrilla genius, the Bolívar of the twentieth century — is a figure of such colossal moral gravity that the United States government spent six years trying to bomb him out of existence, and the next century trying to erase him from memory. They failed.”
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/the-ghost-of-the-segovias-augusto
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