Transcription
Hello to my pragmatic optimists. I'm Rachel Cohen. I'm going to be recording by myself today because, as you may be able to tell, I am on vacation, but have a couple of updates that I want to make sure to share with everyone. I know Tiara will be recording her own. So, make sure to like, subscribe, follow along with Legal AF on the Midas Touch Network.
State Senator Tiara Mack and I are the pragmatic optimists, and I'm going to do my best to be optimistic as I tell you about ISIS's purchase of weaponry, which is striking and terrifying and was broken by Jud Lagum over at Popular Information earlier this week that the the ICE spending on weaponry has gone up 700% since Donald Trump's inauguration and that they are buying not only kind sidearms and things that you would think that I don't I mean would you think that ICE really needed weapon? They're a civil law enforcement agency and it's very important to note that their jurisdiction is over the interior of the United States as well as the border but their focus has historically been on immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States. So, we have a civil law enforcement organization because just as a constant reminder, violations of immigration law are violations of civil laws, not criminal laws. We have a civil law enforcement agency that has a budget that makes it the 13th largest military in the entire world, just behind the state of Israel, just off of their military budget. If you stand it alone and say ISIS is its own country, it's its own army. 13th largest military budget in the entire world, just ICE. You have this organization that is currently disappearing people off the streets. Y'all know that I am a Chicago resident. The city of Chicago is under siege, as are the cities of Portland and Memphis and the District of Columbia and Los Angeles. Disappearing people off the streets. There are reports, ProPublica just put out a report that over 150 US citizens have been detained by ICE at this point, wrongfully. people being accused of not having legal status in the United States who not only have legal status but are citizens of the United States of America. This is the context 700% up on military spending and Jud Lagum went through the records with those government contracts. They're literally purchasing warheads and guided missiles as this organization that is focused on domestic immigration law enforcement.
So, I'm going to try and leave you with a little bit of optimism. What do I do in this moment? What is going on? It's really hard. It's overwhelming because I at the end of the day, who knows exactly what's happening? But it reads to me very clearly as the president of the United States building out a a military force that is loyal functionally just to him because there's been this rampant expansion of ICE hiring, ICE operations, absolutely no oversight. It's all been done despite the fact that, you know, I talk about this often, but the buildout of immigration enforcement to its current horrific state was possible because over the last several decades, there has been real xenophobia, anti-migrant sentiment that has been leaned into by not just Donald Trump, but a number of other Democratic politicians and pretty much every Republican politician to exist. So, just don't allow yourself to think that this is an aberration. This is US migration policy over pretty much the entire time that I've been able to pay attention to politics. I'm 31 years old and there's going to need to be really transformative change related to what immigration in this country looks like. Under the Obama administration, there were expedited removal structures that were built out that started to chip away at people's due process rights. Those were, of course, exploited and then some by Donald Trump in his first term. most of those kind of expansions of um or retractions of due process rights, expansion of of ignoring due process rights were not rolled back under the Biden administration. And that takes us to today. We're going to need to radically reimagine what migration policy looks like in this country.
But as a a standalone, what can you do in this exact moment? There are so many rapid response groups that are building out, particularly in cities that are currently under siege. But I guarantee they exist in a number of other cities as well. And if they don't, you should make them. In Chicago, I got here. Here's my optimism for you today. In the city of Chicago, there are so many different rapid response signal groups and people will report where ICE is and people will try to mobilize to warn people in that neighborhood to stay inside to be prepared to give people a chance to run away if ICE tries to apprehend them. And I got a text in one of those signal groups this morning that I'm in that said that there were ICE agents driving around on a street in the city of Chicago and there were a pack of six bikers following them, blowing whistles the whole way to warn people in that neighborhood that ICE was there. And you will feel so much less helpless if you go and plug in with or create similar initiatives in your own city, whether you're in Chicago or anywhere else, because it it's feeling like it might be as bad as it looks, but there's still so much that we can do together. We're going to continue to be talking about it over here on Pragmatic Optimists on Legal AF. Like, subscribe, share, follow along. Not just on Legal AF on YouTube, but we have Instagram, Substack. I also personally have Instagram, Substack, Tik Tok, as does Tiara. And we'll see you soon.
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