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Discussion Question: To what degree does socially sanction status mean impunity
Discussion Question: To what degree does socially sanction status mean impunity in regards to law enforcement? What actions should a citizen take, if any, when presented with actions such as those mentioned above?
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Social Movement: a situation in which a substantial number of people collectively organize in support of a common social goal, typically in response to implementation of a contested change or to resist a change from oppressive forces in positions of social power (the state, corporations, military forces, judicial systems, police, etc.)
Terrorism: the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political aims
In recent news we are seeing the arrest of students, many of which are CUNY students, being arrested in peaceful protest. In 2020 many CUNY students were arrested in Black Lives Matter Protest. In 2019, there were student arrests in protest against the ICE encampments holding immigrant children in cages. In 2011 CUNY students were arrested in Occupy Wall Street protest.
University protests has a long and rich history in the US democracy, most notably during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, where students and some faculty “occupied” administrative buildings on the University campuses.
The questions to ask is: who are the people in power and what interests are they representing?
To what degree does socially sanction status mean impunity in regards to law enforcement?
Below are three instances of US government impunitive actions on civilian people.
US Bureau of Indian Affairs school deportation mandate for Native American children
The Eastern band of Cherokee Indians lives on a federal reservation in the mountains of North Carolina and today numbers more than 8,000 people. In the fall of 1990, the North Carolina Cherokee took direct control of the school system. For almost a century, however, dating back to 1892, Cherokee schools, like schools for most other Native Americans, were operated directly by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and financed by federal taxes.
For most of the twentieth century formal education was used as a tool to wipe out Indian culture and transform Native American into “red-skinned whites” – the stated purpose of this policy was to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”
The Boarding School Policy process of acculturation expressly intended to implement cultural genocide through systemic destruction of Native cultures.
For most Native Americans, the most oppressive phase of BIA education occurred from the mid-1890s until the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; almost 100 years. Still today, there are lingering effects from this effort.
The hallmark of the BIA was the forced deportation mandate of Native American children into BIA boarding schools.
In 1920, the US government representative superintendent for the BIA on Cherokee Nation wrote about the importance of “taking the most promising young men and women away from the reservation influences” (Eastern Cherokee Agency File 1920). The “bad influence” they referred to was that the family spoke Cherokee language in the home (instead of English) and wore moccasins (instead of leather shoes).
In order to ensure distance between the students and the “bad influence” of their families, the children were transported to schools across state lines. Thus, although a US government BIA boarding school existed on the Cherokee reservation, many of the students were non-Cherokee Indians from distant Native American tribes in other states. Cherokee children, as early as age six, were shipped to US government Chilocco BIA Boarding School in Oklahoma, Haskell BIA Boarding school in Kansas, Carlisle BIA Boarding school in Pennsylvania, or Hampton BIA Boarding school in Virginia. Even if the reservation had its own schools, the US government BIA imposed mandated deportation of tribal children to out of state boarding schools.
A 1918 documented written report by the BIA superintendent assigned to deport Cherokee children commented on one small boy whose whole family “have been known to threaten him with drawn knives” (Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1918).
For many Native Americans, whether Navajo, Cheyenne, or Cherokee, the months of August and September were spent trying to hide their children from the BIA officers. Captured children were taken away to other states with no information given to the family of where they went. Years would pass before they would be allowed to return to see their parents again. It was not uncommon for a weeping six year old to be dragged away from the reservation, only to return at age 16 (the age they were legally allowed to drop out of school).
Once at the school, the children were forbidden to speak anything other than English and would be beaten if heard speaking their own native language. Those that tried to run away were chained to their beds at night. They were dressed in uniforms and taught vocational training to be farmers and domestic servants, learning how to do laundry and cook because there was a demand for them as house servants in Asheville and other large cities. Testimonies of Natives who were in the schools reported sexual, physical, and emotional abuses as a regular practice from the BIA government staff.
As of today, the US government has never issued an apology for these official sanctioned abuses.
Pacific Islanders and US military nuclear testing
Many of the organizations that the US Department of Defense labels as terrorist argue that the United States engage in terrorist-like activities as well; with the only difference being that the government agencies operate under institutionally sanctioned oppression. By calling it “national security”, the government agencies can hide or legitimized their actions with impunity – (this is also often the case with local law enforcement).
Do government officials have the right to use violent and oppressive means against non-violent people in order to accomplish their goals?
In the Pacifica Marshall Islands, between 1946 – 1958, the US military decided to conduct nuclear testing. US military forces were brought in to evacuate the natives from their island, Rongelap, and move them to a nearby uninhabited island of Rongerik, falsely promising them that they would eventually return to their home islands.
Rongerik was uninhabited for a reason. The island had very little fresh water, the land was not fertile, and the fish population was not edible. Consequently, many of the relocated Native people died from malnutrition.
In addition to this, the native people were showered with nuclear fallout that they described as a powder falling fro the sky. Those exposed suffered extreme skin burns, hair loss, vomiting, headaches, vision loss, numbness, and other aliments. A doctor reported on women who gave birth shortly after: “I saw three different women give birth to strange things after the bomb detonation. One was like the bark of a coconut tree, another was like a bloody watery mass of grapes, and another was a watery mass that was not humanlike at all.”
Forty years later, in 1988, the US Department of Energy officials announced that adults could return to Rongelap but that it was unsafe for children.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
aka
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)
aka
Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/11/written-testimony-kids-cages-inhumane-treatment-border
United States immigration law allows people who are fleeing violence and persecution to request asylum at or near the border. And in a shameful chapter of our recent history, the United States intentionally separated children from their parents to deter families from exercising this right.
There is an alarming increase of reports of non-targeted immigrants, what ICE calls “collateral arrests,” meaning arrests of people not pre-identified by ICE.
– On January 18, 2020, ICE agents raided a home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and when they could not find the individual they had pre-identified for arrest, they arrested three other individuals (believed to be brothers) who were in the home.
– On January 15, 2020, ICE agents came to a home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They did not identify who they were and they were dressed in blue jackets that said POLICE on them. The agents claimed they were doing a “criminal investigation.” When one of the individuals showed an IDNYC, ICE asked to see the passports of everyone who lived in the home. They arrested one individual in the home who they admitted they had come looking for and then additionally arrested his brother-in-law after seeing his passport. They told a third adult in the home who was the primary caregiver of a young child to report in person to ICE that day to receive a Notice to Appear and begin deportation proceedings against her.
– On January 16, 2020, ICE agents arrested six people in an apartment near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The agents were looking for an individual who was not there and instead arrested everyone present in the apartment. Increased reports of ICE illegally using mobile fingerprint devices. There is also an alarming increase of reports of ICE agents illegally using mobile print devices to illegally fingerprint individuals they find at home to either arrest them on the spot or illegally take down their information (including photographs of their IDs).
– On January 16, 2020, ICE agents came to a home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. A family member allowed ICE to enter the home (it is unclear what the encounter at the door looked like) and ICE agents immediately arrested someone in the home who they had pre-identified for arrest. The ICE agents then illegally asked everyone else in the home for their IDs, took photographs of the IDs and took fingerprints with a portable fingerprint device.
– On January 15, 2020, ICE agents came to a building in Mott Haven, Bronx, wearing
plain-clothes and vests that said POLICE on them. ICE knocked on the apartment door, falsely stated they were the police, and showed the individual at the door a photo of someone they said they were looking for. The individual at the door had never seen the person in the photo. ICE agents then falsely claimed legal rights to enter the home and search the apartment. The agents illegally asked for the ID of everyone in the home and then went to the apartment across the hall. They returned to the first apartment 10 minutes later and specifically asked for one of the roommates who had shown his ID. They took out a mobile fingerprint machine, fingerprinted him, and then arrested him.
ICE continuing to use “ruses” pretending to be NYPD officers.
As a disturbing trend nationally and specifically in NYC, ICE agents use deceptive methods called “ruses” when they make arrests.
They frequently go to homes or stop immigrants on the street pretending to be local NYPD officers, refusing to identify themselves.
Some of the disturbing arrest reports we received in the last two weeks include:
– On January 22, 2020, ICE agents came to a home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn early in the morning and told the residents of the home that they were the police. When asked what precinct they were from, the ICE agents did not answer and left to sit in their unmarked car parked on the street in front of the home where they remained for the entire day. The agents returned the next day (January 23, 2020) and falsely told one of the residents of the home that they had missed a criminal court case (which was not true). The resident refused to open the door for the agents and the ICE agents loitered outside until someone else in the home left for work. They followed this individual for two blocks harassing and threatening him. The individual was scared and felt like he had no choice but to take the agents to the home and let them inside. Once inside the ICE agents arrested one of the residents.
Continued presence of ICE agents around New York City Criminal Courts IDP has continued to receive reports of ICE agents and unmarked ICE vehicles around New
York City Courthouses. There have been continued reports of arrests outside of New York City courts and outside of Kings County Criminal Court and outside of Bronx
Criminal Court.
– Additionally there is a report of an ICE agent stopping an individual on the street and asking their name without identifying that they were ICE. The agent was dressed in plain-clothes with a visible ICE badge, which the individual
saw.
Reports of ICE pretending they were local police or that they were conducting an investigation include:
-On January 31, 2020, an unmarked ICE vehicle pulled over a car in Sunset Park,
Brooklyn at 9am. The driver of the car was stopped at a red light when plain-clothes ICE agents approached the car with their guns drawn. They told the driver they were “narcotics police” and that they needed to search his car. The driver complied with their request and the ICE agents searched his car, and then asked for his ID. When he showed his ID, the agents arrested him, only then revealing that they were ICE agents. The driver happened to see someone on the street that he recognized and so was able to leave his car with her.
-On February 2, 2020, plain-clothes ICE agents went to a home in the Bronx in the early morning. They were looking for an individual who was not at home. The agents told his wife that they were looking for her husband about a warrant. When she asked what the warrant was about, the agents told her it had to do with her car and someone else driving it. She told her husband the police wanted to speak with him about a warrant. When her husband called them, the ICE agent told him that he needed to come to the precinct to speak with them about the warrant. Believing that this was an NYPD officer, on February 7, the individual went to 44th police precinct in the Bronx with a letter invoking his rights that he had received from a criminal defense attorney as he believed there was an NYPD warrant for him. When he was standing outside the 44th precinct, he called the agent as the agent had told him to do. Within a minute or two, four vehicles pulled up and the individual was arrested by ICE. This was the first time he realized that it was ICE agents who had come looking for him and not NYPD officers.
-On February 11, 2020, at least three ICE agents wearing jackets with the words
“POLICE” and “ICE” visible gained entry to an apartment in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
They then knocked on an apartment door, and a woman opened the door. She was eight months pregnant. The agents asked her for help identifying a person in a photo. She looked at the photo and told them she did not recognize the person in the photo. They then asked her about her partner (who was not in the photo) and she said he was not in the apartment and had not been there since the weekend. The agents thanked her and left.The ICE agents then traveled to her partner’s workplace, a bodega in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Seven ICE and Border Patrol agents questioned him and then arrested him.
ICE Continues Enforcement Actions at and around Courthouses
• On March 16, an ICE agent entered the Suffolk County District Court in Central Islip and observed an individual appear on his court case. As the man left the courthouse, he was followed by the agent and arrested after he left the building.
• On March 9, an individual was arrested entering New York County Criminal Court by ICE agents. Prior to arresting him, the ICE agents entered the courthouse and informed court agents that they intended to arrest this individual.
• On March 9, ICE agents were spotted in Queens County Criminal Court and informed court officers that they had an administrative arrest warrant but did not show it. ICE agents were also spotted in Queens County Criminal Court the following day, March 10.
ICE Police Ruses Continue
• On Sunday March 8, four plain-clothes ICE agents with jackets that said POLICE came to a man’s home in Staten Island. They knocked on the door and the individual’s girlfriend opened it, thinking the agents were NYPD agents. The agents arrested the individual and took him to ICE detention.
• On March 9, ICE agents arrested a man on the street in Manhattan. ICE agents had
previously come to his home pretending to be police looking for someone else. The
individual did not know he was arrested by ICE until after the arrest.
ICE Agents Spotted in a New York City Family Shelter
• On March 10 at around 6pm, 5 plain-clothes ICE agents were spotted in a New York City family shelter. Although they were dressed in plain-clothes, they had visible guns and a badge that said ICE, which was only visible up close. to a NYC family shelter that is on a few floors of a hotel. The agents were walking with a building guard.
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