I came across a disturbing first-hand account today from a parent whose daughter was interrogated about her heritage and ethnicity at the Albuquerque airport.
ICE almost disappeared my daughter from the ABQ airport today.
TSA let her through security when unmarked, unbadged “officers” pulled her aside put her in a small partition room and interrogated her for almost twenty minutes. They specifically asked about her heritage, and the ethnicity of me and my wife (they are part Japanese). They took her phone from her so she was not able to record. She’s smart and charismatic so she was able to talk her way out of it. TSA was at her gate, checking everyone again. If they had taken her we would never have known until she didn’t off the plane.
From now on, she will be on an active phone call with us when going through security and gate.
The NYT reported on the 12th of December that TSA has been passing passenger manifests to ICE in advance of scheduled flights. ICE is using those lists to abduct people at airports after they’ve cleared security. 19 year old student Lucia Lopez made national news when she was abducted by ICE at the airport as she attempted to fly home to visit her family for Thanksgiving. Lopez has no criminal record and has already been deported to Honduras.
Earlier in November, Marta Reiva, a single mother to four US citizen children was abducted from the Salt Lake City airport:
US Citizen Held by ICE for 3 Years
You’re not safe if you’re here legally. You’re not even safe if you’re a US citizen. In 2008 a US Citizen was held by ICE for three years because agents mixed up his name. DHS has a long documented history of making mistakes and countless innocent fully legal, fully documented people will be caught up in this draconian AI powered dragnet.
Hopeton Livingston Watson — the wrong Hopeton Watson — was not a U.S. citizen. He also lived in Connecticut instead of New York, didn’t have a son named Davino and arrived in the U.S. at a different time. But the officers apparently didn’t notice the mistakes. Based on the wrong file, they concluded that Watson was not a citizen and marked him for deportation. -NPR
The kicker to that story is the U.S. citizen was denied compensation for being falsely imprisoned for three years because the two year statue of limitations to file suit against the U.S. government ran out… while he was still incarcerated by ICE.
Completely innocent people have been getting pulled from flights because of the “no-fly-list” since 9/11. Now imagine that you’re dragged off your flight and held indefinitely in ICE detention until you can prove that you’re a U.S. citizen because your name happens to match some ICE database. That should worry you, because it’s already happened many times. Kilmar Abrejo Garcia was sent to the infamous El Salvadorian mega prison CECOT due to an “administrative error.”
Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Innocent until proven guilty is a cornerstone of the U.S. legal system which ICE has flipped on its head. ICE agents assume brown people are “illegals” until they can prove that they’re not. With the loss of due-process anyone can be abducted on the accusation that they’re “illegal.” More citizens are being wrongly detained everyday.
Here’s just a few of the documented cases where this has happened to U.S. citizens:
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, U.S. citizen, arrested and held in Florida for more than day.
Jose Hermosillo, U.S. citizen held for ten days in Tucson after an encounter with Border Patrol agents.
Julio Noriega, U.S. citizen rounded up by ICE agents outside a pizza place in Chicago
Jensy Machado, U.S. citizen handcuffed by ICE agents near his home in Virginia.
Numerous Indigenous people in the Southwest. In late January, Navajo Nation officials said that more than a dozen Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico had reported being questioned or briefly detained by federal law-enforcement officers during immigration raids after Trump took office.
A Puerto Rican U.S.-military veteran and U.S. citizen, detained during a raid on his workplace in Newark.
Watch: ICE Asking for Proof of Citizenship in Minnesota aka “Ihre Papiere, bitte”
ICE drags out U.S. citizen after smashing his window. The citizen was stopped and checked by another roving Gestapo squad minutes earlier:
Naturalized U.S. Citizen violently abducted by ICE in Minnesota:
No Way In or Out: Authoritarian Controls on the Freedom of Movement
What we allow this regime to do to immigrants will inevitably be done to citizens. ICE agents at airports, in court-rooms, check-points on roads, roving presence patrols through neighborhoods. This is the infrastructure of an authoritarian police state. This will all be turned toward citizens in order to quell dissent and squash opposition to the regime.
I will highlight for you step-by-step how this regime is following the authoritarian playbook.
Revocation of Citizenship
Citizenship underpins freedom of movement, as well as many other fundamental freedoms.14 International law recognizes the right of every individual to a nationality and prohibits governments from making individuals stateless.15 Despite this, a number of authoritarian countries are formally depriving people of citizenship to punish them for their political activism or dissent. The tactic is most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where authorities in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates have revoked the citizenship of hundreds of political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, and others over the last decade.
Trump says he would ‘absolutely’ denaturalize some citizens if he had the power
“We have criminals that came into our country and they were naturalized maybe through [President Joe] Biden or somebody that didn’t know what they were doing,” Trump said on Sunday in answer to a reporter’s question.
He added, “If I have the power to do it -- I’m not sure that I do, but if I do -- I would denaturalize, absolutely.”
Document control
In our study, document control was the second-most used restriction on freedom of movement. At least 38 countries employ this tactic. In some cases, authorities seize passports. This happened to Freddy Superlano Salinas, a candidate in the 2023 opposition primary in Venezuela, whose passport was taken by authorities that July as he was trying to leave the country.
New Bill Would Give Marco Rubio “Thought Police” Power to Revoke U.S. Passports
Now, a bill introduced by the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is ringing alarm bells for civil liberties advocates who say it would grant Rubio the power to revoke the passports of American citizens on similar grounds.
SCOOP: Trump Admin Is Preparing to Revoke Visas of Critics of Elon Musk’s Twitter
Donald Trump’s administration is in high-level talks to revoke the visas of two European green card holders, according to documentation seen by Zeteo. Both are prominent critics of Twitter (also known as “X”), the social media site owned by on-again-off-again Trump pal, Elon Musk.
Denial of consular services
We found that at least 12 countries restrict access to consular services as a tactic of mobility control. Some governments refuse services to specific individuals whose return they are seeking. High-profile exiles from Saudi Arabia, for example, have faced obstacles to renewing their passports.
USCIS Asylum Pause: Impact for Applicants’ Immigration Decisions
The Trump administration has paused all decisions on asylum applications filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The move affects hundreds of thousands of people waiting for protection. USCIS officers have been instructed to not approve or deny affirmative asylum cases until further notice.
Exit and entry bans
Travel bans, which prevent citizens from leaving or returning to their home country, are the most common form of mobility controls identified in our research. At least 40 countries use this tactic, which is being applied not only to perceived government critics but also their families.
In some cases, travel bans follow a term of political imprisonment. For example, in Belarus, which by some estimates now has over 1,500 political prisoners,47 dissidents interviewed for this report described a government-maintained exit ban they said blocks some formerly detained individuals from leaving the country.48
You might say, “but it’s not so bad yet, U.S. citizens can still travel freely.” You’re right. But immigrants are already living under a police state. 20% of students missed class when ICE showed up in Charlotte, NC because parents were afraid they or their children would be abducted by ICE. Tens of millions of U.S. residents are living in fear right now. I came across this thread where an immigrant was debating whether he should fly to attend a work training. “Safe to travel from O’Hare to Schaumburg on Dec 12?”
This is the lived experience of immigrants today. Tomorrow, this will be the experience of any citizen who is critical of the regime. All of these same systems being used to oppress immigrants will be turned against citizens.
It is vital to continue to ring the alarm because unfortunately the majority of this country is either ignoring what’s happening or worse yet supports this authoritarian consolidation. Gathering mass support is required before any effective action can be taken to impeach and remove this authoritarian regime.
So please help by spreading the message. Show people the evidence of what's happening. Warn them of the dire consequences that will follow.
Something needs to happen soon. If 25% are supporters, because many Republicans have peeled away and are not ok with what’s going on, with 340 million people, that’s about 85 million that are ok with all this. And that number could be lower. This regime is out of control. Rubio can go fuck off back to Cuba. There’s generational damage done already by these vile people. I don’t have kids and could just sell my house and leave but I still love this country and I’m here for others who have children. Fuck these fascists.
Doesn't appear that ICE and related agencies are the real criminals. it appears that US citizens rights are being abused by the authorities with out any consequences. this is wrong. needs to be stopped.