The New York Times is reporting that the ICE is ramping-up its deportations just in time for Donald Trump to start bragging about it in the run up to the election. According to the “interim” director of the ICE, Tony Pham, “The aliens targeted during this operation preyed on men, women and children in our communities, committing serious crimes and, at times, repeatedly hurting their victims.”
But the Trump administration, more interested in numbers than such “niceties,” is actually rounding-up mostly immigrants guilty of minor offenses, crimes of a less-than-violent nature, and those whose only “crime” is being in the country. The Times reports that during the 2019 fiscal year, out of 143,000 ICE arrests for those who committed actual “crimes,” “The most common convictions or criminal charges pending against them were for driving under the influence (74,000), followed by drug offenses (67,000).” Huh?
According to the Times, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found that “a jump in the number of detained immigrants in 2019 was a direct result of arrests of people with no criminal records. ‘ICE makes it sound like they are snatching wanted felons off the streets when it conducts these operations,’ said Austin C. Kocher, a geographer at Syracuse University who analyzes immigration enforcement data. ‘We don’t get a full picture. They downplay the large numbers of people detained and deported who committed minor offenses, usually a long time ago, or who had no crime on record.’”
Furthermore, “Of the 50,000 people in immigrant detention facilities on the last day of April 2019, nearly two-thirds had no criminal record, up from 40 percent four years earlier, under the administration of President Barack Obama, according to TRAC. Among detainees who had committed crimes, a higher percentage had been convicted of infractions such as driving without a license or immigration violations; a lower proportion of detained immigrants had committed violent crimes than before.”
So who were the aliens “preying on men, women and children” in “our communities”--meaning any “community” that Hispanics might be “infesting”? The Times noted one such person is Alicia Flores Gonzalez, who lived in the U.S. for 27 years, has four U.S.-born children, has no criminal record, and was working in a winery in California. “Aug. 4 began like any other day. She dropped her little girl at day care and drove to work…But as she was parking her white Toyota Tacoma, she found herself surrounded by several armed men. ‘What happened? What did I do?’ Ms. Flores recalled asking them. ‘Hands up! Turn around,’ ordered one of the men, who shackled her and escorted her to a van. Six agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in three unmarked vehicles had been deployed to arrest her. Within 24 hours, the 43-year-old single mother of four U.S.-born children had been deported to Mexico.”
And people don’t think the ICE--once tasked to stop terrorism--has itself turned into a terrorist organization?
There are those, like “anchor baby” Michelle Malkin, who have made it their life’s mission to scour the Internet to discover every crime committed by a Hispanic immigrant (regardless of legal status), and use it as “evidence” that Hispanics are “preying” on helpless Americans, mainly of the paranoid, nativist white variety. According to Trumpspeak, except for maybe a few “good” ones, Hispanic immigrants are all “rapists, murderers, drug dealers and violent gang members.” Nobody wants them in their neighborhoods because they are “dirty,” or at least “look” dirty. Every one of them is “suspect” of something, especially Hispanic males; if they are not all “sex fiends,” then they are “car prowlers.”
I was watching Fox’s NFL pregame show yesterday, and I have to say I was a bit off-put as I listened to all that just a tad bit self-serving talk from millionaire football players being “socially conscious” and black folk talking about how they alone are victims of racism and treated like second-class citizens, despite being provided a vast media platform to express their grievances and make people feel “guilty.” In movies and on television, blacks are almost always “good” guys in important positions--while Hispanics are usually criminals, drug lords, “sex-obsessed," or if they are "lucky," maids, janitors and gardeners.
In the news media, the nearly 50 million Hispanics who are U.S. citizens are not even allowed the “right” to be treated as “real” Americans who have a “right” to express their grievances in their own voices about how they are spoken of or treated--and not just by racist whites, but also by some blacks who don't like the "competition," and Asians like ICE’s Pham. Would the media be more willing to “listen” to what they have to say if they went out on the streets protesting, rioting and causing property damage? Probably not. Every group has its "bad apples," and Hispanics commit their share of crimes, some violent. But the difference is that in the media there is a plenitude both white and black representatives to put things in "perspective"--see, we are not all like "those" people; but the lack of Hispanic representatives in the mainstream media allows viewers to maintain negative views because they see don't see any Hispanics who are not "criminals" for "comparison" purposes.
The question is who is really preying on who here. Hispanics, regardless of their legal status, are the ones who are being used and abused by politicians and “ordinary” people to satisfy their need to find a convenient, all-purpose scapegoat that “everyone” can join in hating, if they like. Of course you don't want them all tossed across the border, because you still need some left over to scapegoat and hate. When people use the word “Mexican,” it is almost always meant in a pejorative sense. This is the “hunter” hunting the “prey” on a national scale.
Hispanics were the targets in the Orlando and El Paso shootings, the latter massacre, of course, inspired by the racist political rhetoric of Trump, Republicans and the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs. Border agents and ICE “police” like chasing around unarmed people, especially women and children, because it makes them feel “big” and “tough.” But “ordinary” people also have “preyed” on Hispanics because they are “easy” targets. Past examples that occurred during the 2006-2010 efforts by bottom-feeding Republican politicians and media attempting to “frighten” the public and inspire hatred:
The Hamilton Ave. Massacre in Indianapolis. On June 1, 2006 Indianapolis police, responding to a call from a hysterical woman, walked into a home where they found seven people—three of them children—murdered in gruesome fashion. An adult male victim was shot five times, with the fatal shot later determined to be fired from a gun pressed against his head. An adult female victim was also shot five times at close range, while she was kneeling and then while lying on her stomach. A second adult male victim was shot four times in the eyeball. A second adult female was shot four times, at close range in the face. A third male victim, a child of 11, was shot three times while lying face down on a bed; the top his head had been blown off. A fourth male victim, age 8, was also face down on the same bed—except this time he received more bullet wounds than the other victims, eight in total. He apparently had put up a struggle before he was killed, judging from the multiple areas of his body where the wounds were located. A fifth male victim, age 5, was also on the bed, the top of his head blown off.
The victims were all Mexican-American; the perpetrators were two black men, Desmond Turner and James Stewart, armed with an AK-47 and handguns. They were reportedly looking for money and drugs, because they assumed that if “Mexicans” lived in a “nice” house, they must be drug dealers. They didn’t find either, and neither did they find the teenage boy they had also come to the home to “settle” a “score” with. Another disturbing feature of this massacre was that a neighbor had been told that something was "going down," but did not take the threat seriously, and did not warn the family.
Also in 2006: A Mexican-American teenager in Spring, Texas named David Ritcheson was attacked at a party by two racist skinheads, David Tuck and Keith Turner, who were “under the influence” of illegal drugs. Ritcheson supposedly tried to kiss a white girl at the party, which enraged Tuck, whose punched and broke Ritcheson’s cheekbone and rendered him unconscious. Tuck and Turner pulled Ritcheson outside, took off his clothes, burned him with cigarettes and used a knife to carve a swastika into his chest. Tuck repeatedly kicked him with his steel-toed boots. While yelling racial slurs they then rammed a patio umbrella pole into his rectum and then tried to pour bleach (probably using the pole) into his body to “hide” the evidence of the assault. Ritcheson was left for dead, and nobody noticed him for another 10 hours. Ritcheson’s injuries included a perforated bladder, lung failure and high levels of toxins in his internal organs due to the bleach. Although Ritcheson “recovered” after 30 surgeries, less than a year later he committed suicide by jumping off a cruise ship.
In 2011, Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak were convicted on a federal hate crimes statute for the brutal beating and murder of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 2008, after they were initially acquitted of misdemeanor assault by an all-white jury. According to a CBS News report, “Justice Department prosecutor Myesha Braden said Piekarsky and Donchak may not have intended to kill Ramirez, but thought him ‘somehow worthy of being beaten like a dog in the streets.’” Witnesses heard them say ‘This is Shenandoah. This is America. Go back to Mexico.’ They shouted these obscenities at Ramirez as they beat him up with a piece of metal called a ‘fist pack,’ and threw punches and kicks to his head. Ramirez died two days later from his injuries.”
CBS reporters in Shenandoah were stunned by the racism against Hispanics they heard:
“If that happened to a white person, every church in this goddamn fucking town wouldn’t do a goddamn thing about it,” said one kid while pounding his fist to cheers from a surrounding group. “Just because they’re fucking border-jumpers and came over here.” “I can’t say it without sounding racist,” said another teenager. “I can’t say, you know, the Mexicans came here and now there’s problems.” “But is that how you feel?” asked Doane (a reporter). “Yeah … Obviously I’ve been here my whole life and I’ve never had a problem. Now there’s problems,” he responded.
Ramirez’s fiance and father of two of her children said "People in this town are very racist toward Hispanic people. They think right away if you're Mexican, you're illegal, and you're no good." As if to underline the point, local resident JaeLynn Mackalonis claimed that "It wasn't a racial crime. If he wasn't here illegally, I think it wouldn't have happened,” ignoring the fact that when Ramirez was beaten to death, the perpetrators didn’t know his legal status; he was just another “Mexican.”
In 2009, Raul Flores and his nine-year-old daughter Brisenia were murdered in their home in Arizona by Shawna Forde and two confederates. Forde was the leader of a racist vigilante group called the Minutemen American Defense. Forde, of course, assumed that because they were “Mexicans” they must have had drugs and money in their house, which Forde intended to steal to finance her group’s activities. Flores’ wife was shot three times, but feigned death and reported the shooting after the shooters left after finding neither money nor drugs. Forde was later charged and convicted of murder, and currently sits on death row.
These are all examples of the ugliest kind of “preying”--when people who in this society are virtually defenseless against the atmosphere of hate perpetrated by politicians and right-wing media, and everyone who is a “real American” thinks they are “fair game.”
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