In a stunning display of ‘how many rights and constitutional laws can we violate before breakfast,’ former President Donald J. Trump’s infamous ICE crackdowns have returned to haunt America like a ghost at a Cinco de Mayo party. Back in the golden days of executive tantrums and ‘being tough on Chinuh’, Trump’s immigration enforcement strategy was less ‘law and order’ and more ‘catch and deport whoever breathes in Spanish.’ Let’s take a moment to appreciate the artistry. Armed with more taxpayer dollars than sense or brain-cells, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) under Trump have acted with the surgical precision of a toddler with a chainsaw, and also acted like one high on brownies and soda. In a bold reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution (specifically the parts they skipped) agents have randomly shown up at homes, workplaces, Little League games, and even Naturalization Hearings like overly aggressive Girl Scouts peddling deportation and psychological abuse instead of Thin Mints.
Remember the Fourth Amendment? The one about warrants and probable cause? Yeah, Trump’s ICE didn’t. Under his presidency, immigration raids began resembling surprise parties from hell. No warrant? No problem. ICE agents have become the Jehovah’s Witnesses of federal overreach, knocking down doors and questioning anyone who had the audacity to possess an atom of melanin and a slightly non-anglicized surname. Legal scholars have been quick to note that these tactics were maybe, possibly, almost certainly unconstitutional. But that hasn’t stopped the administration from putting out statements like: “We’re just enforcing the law, you know, that law which we made up this morning.”
Let us not forget the pièce de résistance: family separations at the border. Because nothing says ‘American values’ like yanking toddlers from their parents and losing them in a bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle of Excel spreadsheets and whiteboards. When critics have pointed out that this violated both domestic and international law, the administration responded with the legal equivalent of a shrug and a golf swing. Perhaps the greatest offense isn’t even legal, it’s linguistic. Trump-era ICE seems to believe that fluency in Spanish is a felony and possessing brown skin is grounds for an impromptu citizenship quiz and a bus ride to nowhere. In one instance, a US citizen was detained for weeks because he forgot his wallet and had the misfortune of living in America while Latino. So much for the “land of the free”, that is of course, unless you’re free to prove it with three forms of ID and a notarized letter from George Washington. Or unless you’re ‘free’ to go bankrupt from a sprained ankle from the most expensive and corrupt healthcare system in the world. You know, freedom.
Trump’s ICE and immigration legacy will be remembered not as policy, but as a garbled, Gestapo-esque mess, a dance of nationalism choreographed to the sound of shredding civil liberties and the annihilation of due process, American and International humanitarian laws, and Habeas Corpus (the law allowing a report to be filed on unlawful imprisonment and sub-human treatment of the imprisoned (such as starvation and torture), which Trump is currently attempting to illegally repeal, unsuccessfully of course). ICE, once a relatively obscure agency, has become the front line in the administration’s war against brown people, borders, and the Bill of Rights. The Constitution, that pesky document of laws which are supposed to, you know, stop Presidential Overreach, has been treated less like the supreme law of the land and more like IKEA instructions: skimmed briefly, misunderstood completely, applied incorrectly and incompetently, and ultimately discarded. But hey, at least they were “protecting American values.” Just not the constitutional ones.
Disclaimer: No amendments were harmed in the writing of this article. Except maybe all of them.
