21 Arrests, Anti-Immigration Theater & The Universal Sense of Justice

ICE agents outside a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles early on
Wednesday morning [Photo Chris Carlson - AP]

After ICE agents conducted raids on 98 different 7-Eleven stores across 17 states and Washington, D.C. early Wednesday morning, it's hard to fathom what career professionals within the ranks of the Department of Justice and Homeland Security are feeling about the agencies they work for.

Considering that thousands of businesses across the U.S. employ undocumented migrant workers, the 21 people arrested in the predawn sweeps is a drop in a swimming pool.

As a professional who works in the residential (apartment) leasing industry, I can tell you that a lot of the vendors hired to do different types of work on the various properties the company I work for owns wouldn't be able to function without undocumented workers.

Companies that handle everything from large tree removal, to interior painting, roofing, paving, or carpet installation all have at least some undocumented migrants on their payrolls.

If you consider businesses like restaurants, car washes, landscapers, farms, office cleaning companies, meatpacking companies or nail salons (and I could go on), all hire large numbers of undocumented migrants - and we all know it.

Citizens, police, politicians, clergy, tax professionals, medical professionals, journalists - we all know that undocumented workers are an essential component of the U.S. economy.

Is there anyone who honestly thinks that only legal U.S. citizens were out there across the midwest and northeast over the past couple weeks removing the hundreds of thousands of tons of snow that blanketed the country?

So to me, there's something disingenuous about American taxpayer money going towards hundreds of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement planning, staffing and executing predawn raids on 98 different convenience stores across the country targeting undocumented workers and coming up with 21 arrests.

Heavily-armed neo-Nazi Taylor Michael Wilson tried
to commit a terrorist act on an Amtrak train in Oct.

Remember, the people working those early morning graveyard shifts at 7-Elevens weren't terrorists.

These were people working long hours for low pay selling snacks, coffee, gas, cigarettes and lotto tickets to customers.

Consider the very real threats posed by rampant gun violence and domestic right-wing terrorists - who are responsible for far more deaths to Americans than terrorists motivated by a warped interpretation of Islam.

Why aren't we seeing Homeland Security agents fanning out in nationwide predawn roundups of these right-wing neo-Nazi assholes like Taylor Michael Wilson?

As NPR and other outlets reported last week, this violent racist douchebag (pictured above) was subdued by Amtrak personnel in the early morning hours last October in Furnas County, Nebraska after he was found in a restricted area of the passenger train trying to apply the emergency brakes.

In what's become an all-too familiar refrain that's pretty much the only thing never mentioned in the nearly-constant stream of idiotic tweets sent out by America's Very Stable Genius, Wilson was arrested with a loaded handgun, three loaded clips, another box of ammo, a knife, a hammer, tin snips, scissors, a respirator mask and a tape measure.

He also had business cards on him for the National Socialist Movement in Detroit, Michigan - and one for the white-identity Covenant Nation Church in Oneonta, Alabama - and yes, he was at the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia too.

A huge cache of rifles, ammo and white supremacist literature (if you can call it that) were also found in his apartment in a secret compartment behind the fridge - the weapons included AK-47's and American mass-murderer's weapon of choice, AR-15's.

Anti-government Rancher Cliven Bundy

Now if a radicalized Islamic terrorist so much as farts in a country thousands of miles away, Very Stable Genius is tweeting about it.

But when right-wing white domestic terrorists commit acts of violence here in the U.S. - nothing but radio silence from 45's otherwise active Twitter feed.

So in the same week that federal agents swooped down on 7-Elevens, Federal District Judge Gloria Navarro stunned observers by dismissing the case against rancher Cliven Bundy.

Yup, same guy who bilked the federal government out of over a million dollars in taxes and grazing fees and famously led a tense a standoff with supporters who pointed loaded weapons at federal agents, had the case against him dismissed.

As Robert Gehrke observed in an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, in justifying her dismissal of the case, Judge Navarro said:

"The court finds that the universal sense of justice has been violated." 

It's interesting to ponder the "universal sense of justice" in an an America where a federal court dismisses a case against Cliven Bundy for repeatedly breaking federal laws and inspiring anti-government zealot supporters to threaten federal agents with loaded guns, while hordes of ICE agents descend on convenience stores to attack the "threat" of employees working the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven.

From my standpoint those ICE raids Wednesday morning were little more than contrived anti-immigration theater meant to fire up the 33 - 36% of Americans who still support Trump at a time when he's being besieged on all sides because of his own incompetence and corruption.

Senator Diane Feinstein

The publication of Michael Wolff's book "Fire and Fury" only confirmed what many already knew about the unmitigated chaos of the Trump White House.

And sparked a desperate 45 to televise a meeting with lawmakers in which he contradicted his own position on immigration and didn't appear to understand the basic definition of a "clean DACA bill".



Meanwhile Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein releasing the 300-page transcript of the testimony of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee has only raised more questions about the ever-growing list of disturbing ties between Russian government operatives and members of the Trump campaign - including Trump himself and members of his family. 

With more than 30 Republican congressmen already having announced their retirement ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections and things looking grim for the GOP, it's not surprising that someone from the White House made a call to ICE to make some high-profile mojo happen to rally a clearly-rattled Republican base.

But make no mistake, like airline passengers being made to remove shoes and belts while going through TSA flight security in the wake of 9-11, the ICE raids were nothing more than anti-immigration theater.

Data from the Pew Research Center estimates that about 17.1% of the U.S. workforce ( 27.6 million people ) were immigrants in 2014.

Of those, about 8 million workers were here illegally, and that's probably a conservative number.

Those ICE raids on the 7-Eleven stores Wednesday morning yielded 21 arrests, so you do the math.

ICE agents take a man into custody in Massachusetts

If there was any "universal sense of justice" those raids would never have happened in the first place.

And the Republicans who've controlled Congress since 2010 would have long since gotten off their obstructionist asses and passed immigration reform legislation instead of vilifying the millions of undocumented immigrants that have been here for years.

Yup, they've controlled the legislative branch of the federal government for seven years. The result? Nada.

But alas, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and their Very Stable Genius lackey in the White House seem content with some occasional anti-immigration theater to titillate their base of support.

Meaningless red-meat for the far-right.

Bread and circuses to try and distract working class white Republican voters who got royally screwed by their own party's billionaire-friendly tax bill from realizing that the prancing orange-maned horse they so enthusiastically backed in 2016 is nothing more than an empty broken down nag.

One who's more interested in whining about immigration than actually coming up with meaningful, realistic, long-term policies to address it - and the wall doesn't count.

Even "Mr. Art of the Deal" basically admitted on Tuesday during his shaky televised meeting on immigration that his plan to wall off the entire southern border of the United States is delusional and unlikely to be passed by Congress - he sheepishly walked back his bedrock campaign promise to a much more modest "wall for a fairly good portion." 

Don't hold your breath waiting for Mexicans to pay for that either.

The Court of Chris Christie: Day Two At the RNC

Christie plays prosecutor & judge Tuesday night 

I know it's traditional to come up with clever creative ways to energize enthusiastic crowds at political conventions, but it was pretty remarkable to see New Jersey Governor Chris Christie conduct a "mock trial" of Hillary Clinton at last night's RNC event in Cleveland.

As the New York Times reported earlier today, Christie's claims were rife with wild exaggerations, factual inaccuracies and plain old falsehoods.

Was it meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek? Sure.

But there was something disturbingly misogynistic about the whole episode that served to reinforce the image of the Republican party as hostile to women in general; particularly when you couple that with nationwide Republican legislative pushes for oppressively restrictive anti-abortion measures and their unprecedented smear campaign against groups like Planned Parenthood that provide critical healthcare services to millions of women.

Recently-concluded lengthy investigations by multiple Congressional committees and the F.B.I. determined that no crimes, intentional or otherwise, were committed because of Clinton's decision to use a private email server.

Yet Christie encouraged the hostile crowd to repeatedly chant "Guilty!" - as if by the mere expression of their hostility towards Clinton they had uncovered some kind of evidence that Congressional staff and federal investigators had somehow missed.

But on another level, it also seemed to not so subtly tap into the undercurrent of irrational anti-government rancor that flows through the Republican party like toxic sludge.

Anti-government zealot Cliven Bundy

The fringe wingnuts who align themselves with the sovereign citizens movement, "patriot" organizations, or groups associated with guys like rancher Cliven Bundy and his son Ammon Bundy who occupy federal lands in defiance of government authority, are drawn to the disturbing "Lock her up!" chants that echoed through the convention hall last night.

Was Christie was intentionally using his "mock trial" to try to tap into the mindset of groups who want to take the law into their own hands, establish their own shadow courts and operate outside the legal system?

Individuals using the cloak of anti-government fervor can come with horrific consequences as in the case of sovereign citizen sympathizer Ryon Lenelle Travis of Detroit.

Christie may have once been a federal prosecutor, but he sunk to a new career low with his episode last night in Cleveland; it's remarkable to see someone who once had such promise as a moderate conservative now reduced to schilling for the Republican party to whip up hostility, fear and anger and cultivate a dangerous mob mindset.

Fear-meister Rudy Giuliani handed the baton to Christie and he ran with it.

Frankly Christie has got some real cojones standing up and putting anyone on "trial" considering that Federal Judge Susan Wigenton recently ruled that Bridgegate trials will be staring this fall and he's already put New Jersey tax payers on the hook for more than $10 million in legal fees related to his role in the scandal - fees paid to a law firm with whom the Governor has deep personal ties.

The hypocrisy of Christie criticizing Hillary Clinton for using a private email server as Secretary of State is funny considering the flagrantly deceptive efforts he and his lawyers went through to hide the cell phone he was using as governor when the Bridgegate scandal was unfolding.

It's hard to decide which speaker on the stage of day two of the RNC convention seemed more detached from reality last night, Dr. Ben Carson telling the crowd that Hillary Clinton is an admirer of Satan, or the court of Chris Christie?

The jury is still out on that one.