At 1am on the morning of August 30th ICE raided a local Memphis bar, El Corralón and abducted more than 100 humans, reported by vecindarios901, a community rapid response group local to Memphis. We don’t know yet how many of the 100 were US citizens, because ICE routinely takes citizens who can’t immediately prove their citizenship, or they just claim that their IDs are fake.
ICE was assisted by the White House’s “Memphis Safe Task Force” which has deployed 350 US Army National Guard soldiers along with hundreds of other federal law enforcement to the streets of the predominantly black city. A soldier of this same taskforce shot 20 year old Tyrin Johnson in the back, murdering him as Johnson ran away from them on July 4th. “The bullet had a slightly upward trajectory through Johnson’s body, the autopsy report said. That would be consistent with him running away from the shooter, said Dr. Steven White, a certified forensic pathologist.” No video has been released of Johnson’s murder, despite multiple MPD officers being on scene and over 1,000 flock cameras deployed in the city.
With the raid getting media attention now MSTF and MPD deny involvement, MPD said they were only there to assist with traffic and crowd control!
A spokesperson with the Memphis Safe Task Force said the raid was not a MSTF operation.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young said in an Aug. 30 statement the Memphis Police Department was not involved in planning or carrying out the operation. Officers responded after they were requested to assist with traffic and crowd control when people began gathering in the area and MPD did not arrest or detain anyone, according to the statement.
But in a similar raid on August 8th the federal task-force locked down Club Legend in Memphis and demanded to check IDs and searched the patrons present. In the videos from the scene you can clearly see National Guard soldiers blocking the door and unlawfully detaining the nearly 300 patrons of the club.
And what did the federal task force find with these Gestapo tactics? Marijuana, firearms, and a scale in the manager’s office. Two security guards were arrested for providing armed security without the proper license. And one person was arrested on drug charges with 1.5lbs of marijuana after attempting to flee.
300 people, mostly US citizens, had their 4th amendment rights violated with this warrantless search and seizure performed by federal agents and US Army soldiers. Clearly there was no cause for all of these people to be detained and searched if these were the only charges that stemmed from the show of force.
And that’s what this is. This is a show of force by the police state to intimidate the population.
I’ll leave you with this photo of the Eldorado Club, a central hangout for Berlin’s gay and transgender communities. The club was closed shortly after the Nazi party came to power in 1933. The Nazis turned the Eldorado into a Sturmabteilung, or brownshirt headquarters.
