Pete Hegseth is full of both shit and jargon. One of his favorite phrases is maximum lethality. It seems to be ICE’s unofficial motto.
There’s so much going on that ICE was out of the headlines for a while. Border Kaiser Tom Homan prefers low profile oppression to performative oppression. ICE is back in the news with lethal shootings by masked goons in Texas and Maine:
On Monday morning, 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in Maine. Durán Guerrero was killed less than a week after Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot by an ICE officer in Houston, Texas, while he was on his way to work.”
Maine and Texas, of course, are two states where Republican senate candidates are in trouble. In Texas, Ken Paxton has never met a state sanctioned killing that he didn’t like, so who cares what he thinks? In Maine, the eternally concerned Runaround Sue Collins claimed credit for a freeze on ICE traffic stops.
Would DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin lie? Only when his lips are moving. He’s Cosplay Kristi with a beard in lieu of makeup. It’s the male MAGA face sported by JD Vance, Mullin, and Don Junior.
The Insult Comedian immediately denounced the freeze on non-urgent vehicle stops:
“We must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”
Like Renee Good and Alex Pretti, neither Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero nor Lorenzo Salgado Araujo were criminals. They were murdered by ICE goons because they were Latinos; something Hispanic voters should remember as they vote in November. Many Latino men voted for Trump in 2024 because they wouldn’t vote for a woman. It’s time for them to reassess their bigotry, which has been devastating for their community.
Immigration stops are NOT supposed to be lethal. ICE agents act as if the streets of Biddeford and Houston are like the streets of Baghdad in 2004. Maximum lethality has no place on the streets of American cities. Neither does ICE.
As federal agencies go, ICE is a fairly new one. It was founded in 2003 in misguided response to 9/11. ICE agents have long been poorly trained and led. The normal rules of law enforcement seem not to apply to them. ICE agents are goons with guns. It’s time to melt those guns and abolish ICE.
The last word goes to XTC:
Yesterday at Todd Blanche’s interview to be the next Attorney General, Tom Homan’s name came up in connection with the $50,000 he received from undercover FBI agents. The investigation into that imbroglio was terminated early in the felon’s last term, and one Senator (sorry, don’t remember who) was curious to know what ever became of that cash bribe. Blanche, invoking the standard pattern for Republicans who don’t want to engage on a topic, denied knowing anything about that.
The latest candidate to be the nation’s highest law enforcement officer.