Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.
On August 16, masked Customs and Border Protection officers shot at an unidentified man’s truck containing himself and two family members in San Bernardino, California.
The shooting in San Bernardino began with masked agents ordering the driver to exit the vehicle, refusing to identify themselves and smashing out his front windows, punching him in the face when he did not exit the vehicle, and shooting at his car when he drove away. Following the incident in San Bernardino, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed that the driver had hit two officers with his truck, despite video evidence from two passengers showing no such thing.
Later that morning, according to the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, federal agents waited outside the man’s home for several hours to intimidate him to step outside. By the afternoon, a rally had formed around his house to protect him from arrest on assault charges. The man was detained but not arrested, and shortly released.
On the same day as the federal shooting in San Bernardino, masked agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tortured two immigrants in the streets of Norwalk, CT. A video posted on social media shows masked agents smashed the windshield of a pickup truck and pulling out Ricardo Chavez and his brother, tasering and beating Chávez, and detaining both of them as they demand to see a warrant. A march and rally was held in Norwalk, led by Chávez’s daughter.
Following the attack, the Norwalk Mayor, Police Chief, and Common Council issued a statement denouncing the brutality: “The tactics utilized by ICE officers do not reflect our values in the City of Norwalk and are counterintuitive to our mission of protecting our residents and treating them with the utmost care and respect,” showing deepening contradictions within the ruling class regarding ICE’s provocative tactics that give rise to mass rebellion, but not an actual opposition to ICE itself.
Image: Ricardo Chávez being tased and arrested by an ICE agent in Norwalk, Connecticut. Credit: @alwaysfilmthepolice on Instagram.
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