An imaginary line that does real damage

The shocking immigration enforcement operations in the United States continue to rattle us. It makes you want to cry or scream – or both – seeing the images flooding social and news feeds, including videos documenting multiple murders in cold blood.

Three weeks ago, we reflected on the horrific killing of Renee Good, who was shot point blank while trying to flee the harassment of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) thugs. Now we reflect on the murder of Alex Pretti, already disarmed of a gun he legally carried (having never reached for it in the first place), pinned and restrained by several officers, but then for seemingly no reason executed in the street, shot in the back over and over again.

What’s more, we know for every instance of reckless violence and abuse we can see, there are many such incidents that aren’t on tape, that aren’t being played back and analyzed ad nauseum to show that the evil Trump administration’s lies are just that.

In the dystopian novel 1984, citizens of the state are expected to accept contradictions and obvious lies and revise their beliefs in an instant – Oceania is at war with Eastasia, not Eurasia; it was always at war with Eastasia.

This kind of mass delusion might seem implausible to the reader of just a few years ago, but now it’s happening all around us.

Such is the case when just-reassigned Border Control commander Greg Bovino, i.e. the guy parading around Minneapolis in an outfit almost tailor-made to make him look like a Nazi, goes on CNN and calls the man who was killed, who had done nothing illegal, a “suspect” and the killers the “victims.”

Same thing when the Department of Homeland Security secretary tells the country, with sub-zero evidence (which is to say, all evidence points to the contrary), that Pretti was halted in the process of committing an act of domestic terrorism.

As The New York Times revealed last week, the White House even used AI to alter a photo of the arrest of lawyer Nekima Levy Armstrong, who is Black, for demonstrating against ICE’s invasion of Minnesota by interrupting a church service led by a pastor accused of being connected to the agency. The image of the arrest was virtually identical to the original in every way except one: in the fake photo, she is crying hysterically; in reality, she was calm and composed.

Meanwhile, Trump’s own penchant for manipulation is beyond well known and is on full display, as usual.

All these liars are poisoning people’s minds, to put it lightly. Meanwhile, every statement from Trump and the criminal network the operates beneath him fuels the hubris and twistedness of the agents tasked with cracking down on immigration on the streets of cities far from the border.

In other words, we are seeing racial profiling on overdrive, so it was no surprise this week when the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) announced that a First Nations person from this side of the border had experienced a run-in with ICE. While the worst was averted in this encounter, the agents reportedly seized the individual’s Certificate of Indian Status.

The seizure of a valid status card is a maddening and acute symbol of the injustice of land theft, with the most intolerant and thuggish of colonial forces confiscating evidence of who really has the right to this land, as though this right has no validity, as if it never existed.

It’s a story that is egregious and terrifying in equal measure.

The AFN and Jay Treaty Border Alliance have warned Onkwehón:we crossing into the United States to have a status card, long-form birth certificate, government issued photo ID, and blood quantum letter, and even more documentation than that if they have it.

The US government’s blood quantum requirements have been a sticking point for the Jay Treaty Alliance, who visited Washington last year to demand it be lifted, and for good reason: it’s First Nations, and not the federal government, who are qualified to determine who is one of their own.

For those members, border crossing is not a privilege but a right, and not only because it is acknowledged by the US government in the form of the Jay Treaty. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy existed long before the United States or Canada did, and it transcends that border physically, figuratively, and morally.

Meanwhile, there are documented cases of members of Indigenous communities rooted squarely in the land currently known as the United States who are also being targeted, simply because of how they look, their documentation being stolen, too.

Our hearts go out to all those who are hurt by this outburst of state-sanctioned racist violence. We demand, as everyone should demand, that all those responsible for it, including those who were “just following orders,” are soon brought to justice.

Stay safe.

TED Staff