<
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/men-dressed-as-ice-agents-to-assault-immigrant-women-horrifying-trend>
"In July, President Trump and Congressional Republicans rammed through a
sweeping budget bill that invests over $100 billion in ICE and border
enforcement. In recent months, ICE agents — often masked, wearing plain
clothes, and without anything to outwardly identify them as agents — have
escalated their campaign of terror on immigrant communities at the direction of
this administration, worsened after Trump rescinded policies that once
restricted immigration enforcement in locations like domestic violence
shelters, hospitals, and churches. Predictably, all of this has resulted in
chaos and devastating state-inflicted violence — and a chilling rise in
civilian violence against women.
A letter from the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) addressed to Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration
officials, which was shared with HuffPost, alleges that civilian men are
impersonating ICE agents to kidnap and sexually assault immigrant women. It
wouldn’t be difficult to do as ICE agents increasingly wear plain clothes,
conceal their faces to avoid accountability, and are not required to wear
paraphernalia to identify themselves as officers. ICE has also directed its
agents to detain undocumented people they encounter incidentally, even if the
agents don’t have an arrest warrant.
The allegations are horrifying: A North Carolina man has been accused of posing
as an ICE agent, threatening to deport an immigrant woman, then kidnapping and
raping her; police in New York are searching for a man suspected of posing as
an ICE agent, assaulting and trying to rape a woman, before robbing her and
fleeing the scene in broad daylight.
“All our lives, we are taught to fear masked men in unmarked vehicles,” the DWC
wrote in an August letter to the administration. “We learn we should run from
such men to avoid being kidnapped, sexually assaulted, or killed. Yet, ICE is
increasingly conducting raids and arrests in masks, plain clothes, without
visible identification or badges, using unmarked vehicles — tactics that cause
confusion, terror, and mistrust among the public.”
Lawmakers in the California legislature and in Congress have introduced
legislation to address horrific scenarios like these, by requiring ICE agents
to have proper identification and prohibit them from covering their faces. This
could be a step in the right direction.
But we can’t bury the deeper, driving forces behind why this is happening. This
phenomenon is only possible because of the outsized power that state agents —
ICE, police officers, prison staff — have always had to abuse and control women
and victims' bodies. Civilians are impersonating state agents to assault
vulnerable women and victims because state agents — under
every presidential
administration — have always been able to do this.
The reason civilians would even think to pose as state agents to get away with
sexual violence is that, nationwide, state power in a range of forms is
routinely wielded to perpetrate gender-based violence. Unmasking ICE agents is
important, but it’s a Band-Aid on a broader, systemic crisis."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
