Murder and complacency
Congress had 23 years to rein in ICE and DHS and did nothing
We must all accept some responsibility for the gangster behavior of ICE agents on our streets and the shocking killings of Renee Good and others. Our complacency allowed it to happen. We didn’t pull the trigger, but our complacency allowed ICE agents to think they had the right to get belligerent and aggressive with someone who only annoyed them. Our complacency allowed an ICE agent to think he had the right to kill someone because he was angry.
The USA Patriot Act, which was rushed through the US House and Senate in two days and signed into law by President George Bush on October 26, 2001, gave the government new powers to search people, homes, and business; seize property; spy on citizens; and detain noncitizens indefinitely. Only one senator, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voted against the legislation. Within days, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked state and local police departments to round up Muslim immigrants for questioning. Immigration agents would then pick up people for minor immigration issues and hold them indefinitely. New regulations allowed the government to secretly listen to conversations between lawyers and their clients without a court order and to try immigrants in military courts.
The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia Advisory Committees to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission documented how Customs led other federal agencies in a massive sweep through the homes of Muslims, the schools their children attended, and the businesses they patronized in Northern Virginia in “Operation Green Quest” in March, 2002,1 in a report in June 2003. The report noted:
* Many Arab and Muslim men detained in the sweep were held on “extremely technical visa violations that would not have been prosecuted before September 11.”
* Many were deported amid complete secrecy and without access to legal counsel.
* They were treated as guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent.
The target did not remain just Arabs and Muslims, however. DHS announced a plan in 2003 to deport every “removable” immigrant by 2012.2
Outside of the Arab and Muslim communities, criticism of the act by lobbies and think tanks, such as the Free Speech Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, seemed to mostly focus around privacy issues and electronic surveillance.3 The ACLU’s testimony to Congressional committees about the creation of a Department of Homeland Security echoes concerns that now seem quaint in their narrowness: limitations on the Freedom of Information Act requests, citizen advisory committees, the rights of whistleblowers, and the investigative independence of inspector generals.4 The ACLU also warned about dangerous provisions in the bill that eased restrictions on surveillance and political spying, but few lobbyists, if any, envisioned the expansion and ramping up of the violence and repression visited on Arabs and Muslims to encompass anyone living in cities or suburbs.
The public, however, had concerns early on. Gallup began asking people in January 2002 whether the government should be allowed to violate civil rights in efforts to prevent terrorism. Never did a majority agree. As early as September 2003, two-thirds of US voters surveyed opposed any violations of civil rights, although knowledge of whether violations were taking place was less common.5
And yet, Congress did very little in the ensuing 20+ years to amend the law and prevent the events we see now.
The ACLU recognized the potential for the Department of Homeland Security to be used as an authoritarian tool in August, 2020, after DHS agents provoked violence in Portland, OR.
“DHS’s overbroad mandate and unchecked powers have turned it into a tinderbox, now ignited by a president willing to trample on the constitutional limits of presidential powers,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero wrote in 2020.6 “If there is one thing we have learned from the
authoritarianism on display in Portland, it’s that we have to remove the loaded weapon that sits
on the proverbial coffee table in the Oval Office.”
Congress did nothing. Democrats had a slim majority in both houses of Congress, but nobody was able to make DHS reform a priority. The ACLU released “A Blueprint for Civil Liberties Reform” of the Department of Homeland Security on November 22, 20227. Although the majority of recommendations focused on surveillance, electronic tools, whistleblowers, it also addressed immigration raids, the transformation of the DHS into a national police force, and human rights abuses. Again, nothing happened.
Renee Good is a victim of that complacency.
Civil Rights Concerns in the Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Area in the Aftermath of the September 11, 2001, Tragedieshttps://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/sac/dc0603/ch5.htm
https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/operation-endgame-9044078/9044078; https://mronline.org/2007/01/15/endgamethe-biggest-police-operation-in-u-s-history/; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/11/operation-endgame-purge-legal-immigrants
E.g., https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/usa-patriot-act-of-2001/, https://www.aclu.org/end-mass-surveillance-under-the-patriot-act, https://epic.org/issues/surveillance-oversight/patriot-act/
https://www.aclu.org/documents/testimony-presidents-proposal-homeland-security-department-homeland-security-act-2002
https://news.gallup.com/poll/9205/public-little-concerned-about-patriot-act.aspx#:~:text=The%20poll%2C%20conducted%20Aug.,change%20over%20the%20first%20year.
Anthony Romero, “Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security,” USA Today, August 9, 2020
https://www.aclu.org/publications/department-homeland-security-20-years-blueprint-civil-liberties-reform