Episode Details

Donald Trump’s immigration agents have detained at least 506 American citizens since he took office, and the Department of Homeland Security’s official position is that none of this is happening.

ProPublica published every case it could find today, with video, because the government doesn’t keep count. Convenient, since you can’t be wrong about a number you refuse to write down.

Being a citizen is supposed to be the one thing that keeps these guys off you. So let’s check the denials against the receipts.

DHS says it is not arresting citizens by mistake. I believe them. You don’t break a 17-year-old’s car window on his lunch break by mistake. That was Oregon. On video the kid says he’s a U.S. citizen, and the agent tells him he doesn’t care.

DHS says the racial profiling claims are false. More than 100 of these Americans were held after agents questioned their citizenship, and nearly all of them were people of color. What are the odds? Pretty good, since Brett Kavanaugh wrote last year that agents can consider someone’s apparent ethnicity when deciding who to stop. So it’s profiling with a permission slip from a Supreme Court justice.

In Minnesota, agents detained two enrolled members of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. They picked up Native Americans in an immigration raid. I would love to know where that deportation flight was headed.

DHS also says, word for word, “ICE does not zip tie or restrain children.” ProPublica found at least 70 American kids and teens detained, and about 20 of them handcuffed or zip-tied. One was a 15-year-old with disabilities, cuffed outside a school in Los Angeles. Agents said they mistook the teen for a gang member. That’s the agency that swears it doesn’t arrest people by mistake, admitting to a mistake.

About a dozen American children have been deported along with their parents. So has one adult. A man in Texas told officers he was a citizen. They wouldn’t let him get his birth certificate, held him four days without a phone call, and deported him to Mexico. He had to sue to come home, and he got back in last month using that same birth certificate. Are you fecking kidding me?

And voting for Trump won’t save you. A Latino man in Charlotte, a naturalized citizen who voted for Trump twice, had Border Patrol break his truck window, yank him out and kneel on his back. His American-born daughter now carries her passport to college.

DHS says its operations are highly targeted. I agree. At least 63 citizens were detained while recording agents, which the First Amendment protects, so we know exactly what they’re targeting.

And 506 is the floor. At a raid on an Idaho horse track last fall, witnesses estimate more than 200 citizens were detained. ProPublica could only confirm 30.

More than a dozen American kids were detained at that track. One mom says her 7-year-old now warns his big sister before she goes to a race. Watch out for ICE, keep your phone ready to film, and he’ll come save her.

A 7-year-old with a phone is currently providing more oversight of ICE than Congress.

Source:https://projects.propublica.org/american-citizens-detained-dhs-civil-rights/