ICE Admits Gang Operations Are Designed to Lock Up Immigrants
Julianne Hing for The Nation reports on the implication of ICE’s announcement last week of Operation Raging Bull. As the initiative’s name suggests, the operation was clearly intended as a way of showing tough-on-crime follow-through on the Trump administration’s threats. And the arrests are significant. The Trump administration has clearly focused its law-enforcement resources on cracking down on MS-13. Hing claims that the gang database used by ICE is a weapon that allows ICE officers to indiscriminately round up immigrants of color.
For ICE, the database is the weapon. Labeling immigrants gang members—whether or not they’ve been suspected or charged (let alone convicted)—of any crime is what will keep them from ever being free in the United States again. The stated aim of the operation is supposedly public safety, but upon closer inspection the execution looks a lot like indiscriminate roundups of immigrants of color.
KJ