Metropolis: The Gestapo, the Thought Police and Us

OK, kiddies, here’s today’s test: Read the following paragraph, and then answer the multiple-choice question.

“The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with iron-shod boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands.... ‘The house is surrounded.’”

Question: When and where did this scene take place, and who is the speaker?

A. 1941, Nazi Germany. The speaker is a swaggering Gestapo commander who clicks his heels, adjusts his monocle and sneers at a family of the hated minority, “Alle Juden raus!”

B. 1984, Airstrip One, Oceania. The speaker is a swaggering Thought Police officer who sneers at his hated victims, “You are the dead.”

C. September 2006, the tiny South Georgia town of Stillmore. The speaker is a swaggering agent of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who sneers at a family of the hated minority, “Todos los Mexicanos hacia fuera!”

The answer is ... “B.” The scene is from George Orwell’s 1984.

But the more important questions are: Is there any essential difference between the Thought Police, the Gestapo and what our federal agents are doing in Georgia? And, why do Americans tolerate police-state tactics on our soil?

Those who shrug off what’s happening here should recall with grave uneasiness the famous warning of the anti-Nazi German Martin Niemoller — “When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out” — and listen to the story of Justeen Mancha.

When they came for Justeen — a wisp of a 15-year-old high school girl — they didn’t bother to knock, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Atlanta last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) against the U.S. government. Instead, immigration cops simply muscled their way into Justeen’s Tattnall County home.

“They were screaming, ‘Illegals!, Illegals!’” the girl told me. One of the agents, according to the lawsuit, “had his hand on his gun.” Justeen, who maybe weighs 90 pounds, clearly menaced the squad of bulked-up, heavily armed ICE agents.

The problem is that Justeen isn’t “illegal.” She’s a U.S. citizen, and so is her mom, Maria Christina Martinez. Another problem, according to SPLC lawyer Mary Bauer, is that the federales didn’t bother to show anyone a search warrant, as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a document government agents are supposedly sworn to defend.

The lawsuit was filed by five plaintiffs — all United States citizens — and targets 30 “John Doe” immigration agents and top officials in Homeland Security.

These are dark days for American democracy. Laws and the Constitution mean little to the Bush administration. The Republican-dominated Congress blithely passes legislation that is clearly unconstitutional, as with the recent Military Commissions Act. That thoroughly anti-American law makes possible the indefinite detention and torture of anyone, including U.S. citizens, based solely on the fiat of George Bush.

And, of course, Bush shrugs off laws and constitutional restraints he doesn’t like. The Boston Globe — one of the few newspapers that will stand up to the administration — has compiled a list of 750 laws Bush has broken or claimed he can ignore in the name of keeping our country “safe from terrorists.”

So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Washington, D.C., spokesman for ICE, Marc Raimondi, responded to my inquiry about the no-warrant invasion of Justeen’s home by asserting, “Everything we did was in accordance with the law.” George Bush’s “law” is what I assume he meant.

Despite repeated questions, Raimondi steadfastly refused to say whether the agents had the constitutionally mandated search warrant.

What was going on in Stillmore and neighboring communities was likely more politics than law enforcement. No doubt, America has a problem with 12 million undocumented aliens. But the only action that will slow the flood is massive arrests — of employers who hire the immigrants. Rounding up corporate execs (oh, sure, there are a few token arrests) isn’t in the cards, however. It’s so much easier, and politically popular, to send the bullyboys out to terrorize children such as Justeen.

“They were doing it for votes a few weeks before the elections,” says David Robinson, a plaintiff who owns two trailer parks that were broken into by the ICE agents without warrants.

The Labor Day weekend raids in three South Georgia counties were prompted by an investigation into document fraud at a poultry processing plant. According to the lawsuit, federal agents “entered and searched private homes without any lawful authority to do so, detained and interrogated people merely because the looked ‘Mexican.’” The raids “trampled on the constitutional rights of every person of Hispanic descent unfortunate enough to get in the way.”

ICE’s Raimondi says 125 undocumented workers were collared. He wouldn’t say whether those arrests were worth agents wiping their feet on the Constitution.

But, as is the style with the Bushies, he did try to ratchet up the fear factor, asserting that immigrants who fraudulently obtain documents might use those papers to board and hijack planes. “It’s a very real threat,” he says.

Raimondi also claims the mainstream media won’t pay much attention to the Georgia raids. “It’s a one-day story at most,” he says — and he’s probably right. The AJC, which tries hard not to rile nativist and racist readers, barely noticed the SPLC lawsuit.

The no-warrant searches “are just what a lawsuit claims,” Raimondi contends. “That doesn’t mean it’s a fact.”

True, but the Montgomery, Ala.-based SPLC is an organization with exceptional credibility. Its litigation has successfully hammered at the remnants of Jim Crow laws and institutional racism.

Morris Dees, the legendary SPLC founder, calls the ICE crackdown “vigilante raids. There’s no place in our nation for this kind of official conduct.”

Not according to the Bush administration.