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Sunday, October 20, 2019

The ICE police state makes everyone less free

It's quite a police state we're building for ourselves. We're always trying to hire more cops. The jail is never big enough. We can never point enough cameras at one another.  Why do we accept this?  We are so over-policed and paranoid now that Wildlife and Fisheries rangers will just walk up and ask to see your papers.
A Border Patrol spokeswoman said that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents had summoned officers to arrest Ramirez after spotting him fishing without a license. When pressed for identification, the Border Patrol spokeswoman said, Ramirez had only "foreign citizenship documentation."

A game warden can have someone deported.  Why do we accept that? Just that is bad enough but there is other context, besides. Ramirez was among the workers injured during the collapse of the Hard Rock hotel construction site. 
Besides seeking to compensate Ramirez for his injuries, Gray said, he and his colleagues will oppose his deportation, which he said was set in motion by an arrest that occurred within 24 hours of his "making a statement about the tragic events” at the collapse site to a Spanish-language news network.

Gray said Ramirez’s case illustrates why he believes some workers who know what was happening at the construction site ahead of the collapse are afraid to come forward.

They “fear … being deported or some other retribution by their employers,” Gray said at a news conference in the lobby of Civil District Court. “Just like all Americans, however, they do have the rights that are afforded to us within this courthouse.”
The main contractor on the Hard Rock site was Citadel Builders. According to Open Secrets, Its founder Derek Clark is a serial max donor to Republican federal office holders including Donald Trump and Senator John Kennedy who has been a vocal supporter of Trump's brutal immigration policies.

Can we think of any reason a company like Citadel would support the kind of police environment that keeps their workers in perpetual fear of speaking out about safety issues?  Does that police environment make us all more or less free?  Why do we accept it?

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