The ICE raids have been called inhumane, but President Donald Trump says the current ICE raids “haven’t gone far enough.” The more ICE raids happen nationwide, and more videos are released on social media, the more people question the ethics of it all. Not only are these raids unethical, but they are dehumanizing.
The Department Of Homeland Security uses fear-mongering in ads. The DHS directly broadcasts these ads on Spanish-subtitled and multilingual news channels, going as far as even blasting them on the international channels. This is seen on Mexican television during popular soccer games and ad breaks on Latin American shows to prevent immigrants from entering. It seems like the DHS is playing a game of chicken, encouraging self deportation, or acting as predators hunting down their prey, ¨If you do not, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and deport you,” and that, “You will never return.¨
A common excuse that Trump and MAGA supporters say is that Obama’s administration has deported more people during his presidency. However, people being detained by ICE during Obama’s presidency had due-process. Now the Trump administration holds detainees with a significant decrease of due-process. Obama’s policy was meticulous, saying, “tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic.”
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration, allowing racial profiling to be used as a ¨relevant factor¨ to detain anyone of a different skin color other than white in the Central District of California. This leaves many wondering if it has ever been more than just a color on human skin.
This ruling allows ICE agents to raid or sweep in locations where people work as day jobs, including construction, landscaping, agriculture, and more, that, in their own words, ¨are attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English.¨ If you speak a different language or English with an accent, or are apparently of a different race or ethnicity, you can be stopped and questioned. The ruling also states that if the officers learn that the individual they stopped is illegally in the United States, they may arrest them and start the process for removal, ignoring due process.
We never get to see who these officers are, which removes any accountability for any of the agents’ actions when they’ve used excessive force, taken lives, or denied constitutional rights.
¨We see police and federal agents, any law enforcement not concealing their identity. The police I’ve talked to have always stated their name and badge number. ICE agents never announce who they are, [when asked] they act like children asking ‘Who are you? Who are you?´” a Norristown resident, who has seen ICE’s operations in Norristown, said.
ICE has a presence in Norristown. One of the incidents that got the most traction on local social media was the West Norriton’s farmers market ¨Super Gigante¨ incident, due to there being speculation of ICE being in Norristown, but it was all proven by their acts on that day.
Now, the store is avoided by many, due to it being targeted to the Hispanic community, not only because of the welcoming workers but by the whole aspect of the store is Latino products being sold for Hispanic dishes, even imitating a panaderia.
“[The raid] that happened at Super Gigante…they came in with a warrant for the owner, and then ICE ended up showing up and detained workers. It’s [expletive] how you’re going to claim to come in to arrest ‘bob’ and detain a whole bunch of ‘not bobs,’” the resident said.
What we can do is look out for these certain tactics that have been revealed by an anonymous source who has seen ICE be present in our community.
“What I’ve seen is ICE meeting up early in the mornings and driving around Norristown. One of the tactics I’ve seen the most is they meet up in empty parking lots, in tinted cars. Not even their own cars, they use rental cars with out-of-state plates,” they said.
Look for cars with these features driving around early in the morning, looking for people to stop. ICE learns routines before coming in as a group to detain those they lurk for, regardless if their target is a singular person or an entire group of people.
“I’ve seen that those same cars driving early in the mornings, as if they’re trying to learn schedules,” said the resident. “I saw this man who waits in the same place to get picked up for work in the morning get taken by ICE. From what I’ve seen, they usually go for the men. Probably because they’re the breadwinners of the household. There’s nothing worse than seeing a grown man’s face, it’s just full of defeat. They can’t do anything.”
The resident talks about how they record and document these incidents where ICE detains people, then tries to get in contact with the detainee’s family and tries to support them in any way they can.
They said, “There’s this one [incident] where there were two men taken that lived in the same house but during separate times, and the family felt worried about them coming back to pick up more people so, I bought them cameras to put outside their home.”
With this, we as a community can prevent those in Norristown from becoming easy targets. Norristown has a huge Latino population, making up more than 30% of the residents . This is the cause of most fear. If you or someone you know has a daily routine or a specific pick-up place, share this information to keep Norristown safe. Be careful and care for others in our community.
