Three Branches of the Same Poisonous Family Tree: Origins of Police, Border Patrol, and ICE
Although the country’s first 250 years weren’t marked with “equality,” “bravery,” and “freedom for all,” those are still good values to strive for
[content warning - the end of this post includes disturbing photos of the slave trade]
Let’s avoid big words like “intersectionality.” In the real world, we call this “life.” Human beings are multidimensional and “issues” are not divided into “buckets” and “subcommittees” anywhere other than Washington, DC and state legislatures.
In Columbus Free Press today, Cynthia Brown wrote:
When news broke that Louisiana police arrested ICE agent Thomas Bailey for breaking into his ex-partner’s home, it was a chilling reminder of how unchecked authority metastasizes. As commentator Lynn Tramonte observed, it parallels law enforcement officers using Flock surveillance cameras to spy on women.
There is a pervasive mindset among certain agents that their badge grants them total access to our spaces, our privacy, and our minds — a dangerous entitlement fueled by impunity.
We must state this fundamental truth clearly and without reservation: THEY WORK FOR US. THEY ARE OUR EMPLOYEES. Government officials and law enforcement officers exist to serve the public, not to operate as an unchecked class above the law. WE ARE THE ARCHITECTS OF OUR DEMOCRACY, and it is up to us to enforce the boundaries of constitutional power. At the center of this systemic abuse is a legal doctrine created out of thin air: qualified immunity.
The Coalition to End Qualified Immunity Won the First Round
Brown and the coalition behind her have been working to get a measure to end qualified immunity on the ballot for years. They were up against the most powerful supporter of “get out of jail free cards” for cops, former Attorney General David Yost. Yost behaved like an “antagonistic copywriter,” in the words of one judge, rejecting it over spelling mistakes or because he didn’t like the title. Finally, the Ohio Supreme Court put an end to his tantrum, and certified the measure to move forward.
A Poisonous Family Tree: Police, Border Patrol, and ICE
In her piece and her work Brown, the founder of many criminal legal reform initiatives and a leader in Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity, connects worlds that many in Washington, DC have tried to separate: federal civil immigration enforcement and state and local criminal enforcement.
Consider what they have in common:
Their earliest versions were literally slave patrols
Their function was (is) to corral and control people according to their race and ethnicity (originally and explicitly Black, Mexican, and Chinese people)
They used the people they “arrested” as captive workers, without rights (and in the case of Mexican and Chinese people, held the threat of deportation over their heads)
The patrollers could harm, main, or even kill their targets with impunity
They told the public they did this for “our” safety
They published propaganda about the people they targeted so that we wouldn’t challenge these heinous actions
They created more formal structures; demanded bigger staffs and deadlier weapons; but never changed their fundamental goals or missions
Congress and the public gave them everything they asked for because we (and they) believed them
Read more about the history of U.S. immigration laws, ICE, and the Border Patrol in our reports, “The Worst of the Worst: 152 Sexually and Physically Abusive ICE and Border Agents” and “The System Works As Designed: Immigration Law, Courts, and Consequences.”
Defund ICE/Border Patrol; End Qualified Immunity; End Flock & Fund Public Safety for All
Which brings us to where we are today: the debates over funding/defunding ICE, the Border Patrol, and police; qualified immunity; and surveillance technology in our communities.
People are finally waking up to the excesses of ICE and the Border Patrol, because they are seeing it on U.S. streets. Yet Congress keeps writing them blank checks with our tax dollars.
Guess what? The Border Patrol has been killing immigrants and U.S. citizens — and getting away with it — for at least 100 years. In 1927 Winston Titus, a Vermont teenager, was driving 18 cases of beer south from Canada when federal immigration officers shot him in he head. The agents were charged with manslaughter, but a grand jury declined to indict them.
We just released a report about 152 (now 153) agents working for ICE and the Border Patrol in modern times who committed violent or sexual criminal histories. This isn’t an accident; it’s by design. These are the types of people who want to work at these agencies, and the types of people they want to hire.
Qualified immunity is the most obvious example of how the slave patrol era lives on. Why shouldn’t a police, ICE, or Border Patrol officer be held accountable if they kill someone? The “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality is simply unacceptable in modern policing. How many unarmed people need to die before we get it? How many videos do we need to see of police firing at someone before they even exit their vehicle and attempt a de-escalation tactic? How can you call it “de-escalation training” if the training is about having “a plan to kill”?
Nobody wants to die, including police. And police are not equipped to respond to every sort of emergency. But they don’t have the right to shoot us, just because they feel scared. Let’s do something different, for everyone’s well-being. Public safety requires tackling poverty and education equity; and improving public transportation, housing affordability, and access to mental and physical healthcare. It doesn’t start and end with law enforcement.
A mental health crisis needs a mental health specialist, not a cop with a gun. We don’t end domestic violence by sending a cop into a dangerous domestic violence scene. If ending qualified immunity will finally force governments to create alternative solutions, like specialized response teams to treat specialized problems, and force us to tackle systemic issues like family violence through cultural approaches, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, those would be good things for everyone.
Many of us don’t want Flock in our communities because we know it isn’t there to protect us. As women, we know police are using it to stalk us. Black people know it is there to falsely accuse them. It’s certainly not there to protect them.
If law enforcement wants to prove otherwise, they would use it to investigate the disturbing number of Black peopledisappearing and hanging from trees. The authorities immediately declare the hanging deaths to be suicides. The public says “Black people don’t hang themselves from trees.” If Flock worked as a universal safety tool, the police could use it to find out what really happened. Surveillance technology is, once again, an extension of the police state that was created to protect the business interests of white men.
What Real Solutions Look Like
In a new op-ed for Matter News, Lynn Tramonte wrote:
Police cannot solve all of society’s problems, and they, alone, cannot prevent crime. Investing in public transportation, education, and healthcare; raising the minimum wage; creating alternative response teams for mental health, sexual assault, and other specialized needs; and building alternatives to incarceration — those are actual solutions that require investment.
Let’s put the money we save by cancelling Flock contracts toward these priorities.
In addition to a fundamental realignment of what public safety means and what the systems look like — which absolutely includes ending qualified immunity — the Ohio Immigrant Alliance has changes that Congress must make immediately at ICE and the Border Patrol. They include:
Freezing ICE and Border Patrol hiring and budgets
Implementing real vetting and accountability, and ongoing rescreening of the entire workforce for domestic and sexual violence, extremist ideology, and mental-health histories
Mandatory reporting of arrests and charges, automatic termination on conviction, and an end to quiet resignations with full pensions.
Public misconduct databases and independent watchdog bodies with subpoena power the Executive Branch cannot undermine
Removing and prosecute bad agents
Independent investigations into fatal incidents
Public reporting on agents’ employment status after any serious incident
Create an immigration system that operates civilly; civil immigration enforcement should function like any other area of civil law — no guns, disguises, or street arrests — and offer mechanisms for people to come into compliance, rather than defaulting to an extreme punishment like deportation
No civil immigration jail
In OIA’s “Worst of the Worst” report, OIA also issued a call to action for all law enforcement — federal, state, and local — to treat domestic violence, misogyny, and racism by officers as disqualifying red flags rather than private matters; to make discriminatory conduct and violence a fireable offense; and to recognize that cooperating with ICE, as it currently functions, erodes community trust and makes local police indistinguishable from it.
The first 250 years of this country weren’t marked with bravery, equality, freedom, and all of the other lies we were taught in our history books. But as aspirational values, these are still worth striving for — if they include everyone.
Kurá Hulanda Museum
Following are photos from the Kurá Hulanda Museum in Curaçao depicting aspects of Black Americans’ fight for human rights. Many people will find these photos disturbing and may not wish to view them.
