from the just-more-admin-fuckery dept
It’s not enough to simply go after anyone looking kinda Venezuelan these days. DHS components have an unquenchable thirst for arrest stats, especially now that Trump’s second Oval Office stay has removed any remaining discretion and restraint from border control actions. Installing Trump supplicant Kristi Noem to the top spot in the DHS has only made things worse, providing the administration with a pliable action figure with its own unquenchable thirst for power and all the cool shit that comes with it.
To make it easier to arrest brown people, the administration has recently declared hundreds of miles of border to be “military zones.” This serves two purposes. First, it helps shore up the administration’s shaky assertions blatant lies that we’re actually in the middle of the war, which aids and abets its resurrection of the Alien Enemies Act. Second, it gives the government a second set of charges to levy against migrants who happen to wander into these largely unmarked areas: unlawful entry of military property.
With this addition, it’s no longer just a civil offense to be undocumented. It’s now a federal charge with military add-ons. These charges would also apply to any US citizens (white people) who wander into these newly declared war zones, but of course, they’ll never be used that way. Everyone knows that, especially those involved in the erection of this military zone fantasy.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico says a total of 82 people have been charged through Thursday for unauthorized entry into the military’s new buffer zone along the border with Mexico.
A completely expected outcome. However, this has led to another development that’s not going to make Trump and his border thugs happy. As the New York Times reports, one judge is tossing these charges just as quickly as they’re being filed:
A federal judge this week dismissed charges against nearly 100 migrants detained under a Trump administration effort to arrest undocumented migrants for trespassing on a newly declared “national defense” zone along New Mexico’s border with Mexico.
The order from a federal magistrate judge, Gregory B. Wormuth, added to the confusion and legal turmoil that have gripped New Mexico in the month since President Trump declared a ribbon of land along the 180-mile length of the state’s southern border to be an Army base.
The court called bullshit on these charges, dismissing both the cases and the boilerplate the government relied on to bring these charges.
“The United States provides no facts from which one could reasonably conclude that the Defendant knew he was entering” the New Mexico National Defense Area, the newly declared military installation, Judge Wormuth ruled.
[…]
Nearly identical charges against hundreds of other migrants could also soon be thrown out, given what the judge described as the prosecution’s “cut-and-paste approach to factual allegations.”
Heartening to see, but the federal government is generating these charges at a rate only the most dedicated court could even hope to keep pace with. The new charge — one that only exists because the government has claimed new military zones suddenly exist — is a misdemeanor that could result in a year in jail. It’s unlikely to ever result in that. Instead, it will be added to migrants’ rap sheets and used against them in future deportation proceedings as evidence of their criminal behavior should they attempt to return to the United States. It will also be used to deny entry visas, asylum applications, and any of the legal routes to US citizenship.
According to the NYT, at least 400 people — all of them migrants — have been hit with these charges. There will be more and it will be up to the courts to dismiss these, since it’s clear no one patrolling the border cares how many people they lock up as long as those people simply look like they might be from another country.
And there’s another side effect of unilaterally declaring certain parts of the border to be military zones. The police state being created at the border is already starting to spread inland.
The Department of Homeland Security has asked for 20,000 National Guard troops to assist with immigration roundups across the country, and the Pentagon is reviewing the unusual request, a U.S. official confirmed to The Associated Press.
[…]
Unlike the troops deployed at the southern border, these National Guard units would come from the states and be used to assist in deportation operations in the interior of the country.
If that’s going to be the new normal, you can rest assured these “military zones” will increase in size as well, swallowing up rural communities and the roads connecting them. Once everyone gets used to soldiers doing immigration work, it won’t take much of a nudge to have them start pitching in with regular law enforcement work. There may be no grand design behind this, but you’d better believe there are enough gun-totin’, god-fearin’, good ol’ boys in the nation willing to pretend the Gadsden flag only means something when there’s a Democrat in the White House. And they’re more than willing to sacrifice everything America used to mean if it brings them just a little closer to creating the America they’ve always wanted.
Filed Under: cbp, dhs, donald trump, ice, immigration, military zone, police state
