National Guard and DHS

  Patrick G. Eddington at Cato:

The normal peacetime mission of the NG in any state or territory is to be available to help with actual emergencies that affect that state, usually of the natural disaster variety. The California NG has often played a role in helping contain the wildfires that have plagued that state for years now. Those are totally appropriate missions for state NGs to perform.

When I was a young enlisted soldier in the Missouri NG in 1983, my transportation unit was called up to provide anti-looting and commercial business security in the wake of a tornado that had swept through part of my hometown of Springfield. Our unit leadership was so concerned that there not be a shooting incident involving any member of our unit that we deployed without bolts in our M‑16s (i.e., the rifles couldn’t fire). We could still have used the weapons as de facto clubs, I guess, but the main point of our deployment was providing physical security for an area of the city that had just been hit by a major tornado. We had no lawful arrest or detention authority; that was the job of the Springfield Police Department.

Contrast that with the regime’s flip-flop on whether NG troops deployed to DC would be armed—earlier this week, it was announced they would not be armed. Then the story changed to “some might be armed.” Putting young NG personnel on DC’s streets—none of whom likely know the first thing about civilian criminal law—in a politically volatile environment is inviting a Kent State-like tragedy.

On my way into DC today, I had a roughly 15-minute chat with two young NG members. To protect their identities, I’m not going to reveal the state or unit they’re with or their genders. After I introduced myself, I asked these NG members what kind of legal training (if any) they’d received prior to their deployment to the District. They spoke in extremely general terms, and it was clear they were uncomfortable going into details about the training. What they did say was that if they were in doubt about their actions, their orders were to “lean on their leadership” and the civilian police on hand and nearby. The NG personnel I spoke with were simply standing around, providing “a presence” (their words) to “help the American people.” The latter formulation is consistent with the Trump regime’s propaganda line about the massive, multi-state NG deployment to the nation’s capital.

ICE RECRUITING VIDEO (SOUTH PARK VERSION)

Bill Lueders at The Bulwark:

In June, Border Patrol agents—not ICE, exactly, but close—apprehended Narciso Barranco, a 48-year-old man in Santa Ana, California. They chased him down, pepper-sprayed him, threw him to the ground, and punched him repeatedly in the head as he cried out in pain. Was it for raping, murdering, pedophilia, or gang activity?

None of the above. The guy is a landscaper! He was doing some work outside of an IHOP. He’s been in the United States since the 1990s and three of his sons are Marines, two of them on active duty. Although Noem’s DHS claimed Barranco “swung a weed whacker” at one of the heavily armed masked men who accosted him, it’s apparent from the video that he was not a danger to anyone.

Neither was Yeonsoo Go, a 20-year-old South Korean student at Purdue University, whose mother is a well-known and respected Episcopal priest. In late July, ICE agents arrested Go when she showed up at an immigration hearing to get her R-2 visa for the dependents of religious workers converted into a student visa, a perfectly legal thing to do. The agents claimed she had overstayed her current visa, but in fact it does not expire until December. Nonetheless, Go was thrown into detention for five days, before public outrage forced her release.

Cases like these are the norm and not the exception. Through late June, according to the Cato Institute, 65 percent of the more than 200,000 people arrested by ICE since October 2024, the start of the current fiscal year, had no criminal history, and most of those who did were for minor offenses.

 

The Perverse Consequences of Workplace Raids

 Many posts have discussed immigration.

Nigel Duara and Jeanne Kuang at CalMatters:

While one stated purpose of worksite raids is to remove illegal competition from the labor marketplace, the reality is far messier: Studies have found that immigration raids don’t do much to raise wages – and actually deflate them. Even after a raid, employers are no more likely to use federal immigration verification tools like E-Verify during hiring.

...

Every new job between 2022-2024 was not, in fact, filled by undocumented immigrants. Studies show actually deporting workers en masse from industries that rely on undocumented labor does little for U.S. workers. Giovanni Peri, a UC Davis economist who has studied the economic impacts of deportations in the 1930s and during the Obama administration, has found doing so actually reduces job opportunities for American-born workers.

That’s in part because many American workers, even those outside of immigrant-heavy industries, rely on the services generated by low-wage, undocumented labor — the costs of which would rise with mass deportations.

“Losing some of these workers and jobs that Americans are moving out of, it shrinks the local economy and there’s a reduction in jobs for Americans,” he said.

There is no evidence, Peri said, that in the face of mass deportations, immigrant-heavy industries would raise their wages to hire American workers instead.

“If there is such a world, it has not been the reality in the U.S. in a long time,” he said.

What does tend to happen, according to a study last year by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is that raids lead to more job turnover while showing little net change in the employment rate.

“Actions that target employers – audits, investigations, fines, and criminal charges – have larger effects than raids, which target workers,” the study authors wrote.

 

What ICE Can and Cannot Do

 Many posts have discussed immigration.

Russell Contreras at Axios:

ICE is tasked with enforcing the nation's immigration laws anywhere within the nation's interior (the Border Patrol's jurisdiction is 100 miles into the interior, from any land or maritime border).

• ICE agents can arrest anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally. They can arrest U.S. citizens only if they see them "breaking laws."
• To conduct raids or operations targeting suspects, ICE agents only need an "administrative warrant" — a warrant signed by a supervisor, not a judge, Rebekah Wolf, director of the American Immigration Council's Immigration Justice Campaign, tells Axios.

ICE agents can conceal their identities and refuse any request to disclose their personal information.

• This has led to conflicts between people ICE agents have encountered, as well as allegations by Trump's administration that protesters have tried to dox agents involved in raids.
• Wolf said officers in other agencies are required to identify themselves and provide badge numbers to prevent impersonators. ICE has no such requirement, and there have been reports of ICE impersonators harassing people, creating more chaos and uncertainty in some communities.

ICE doesn't have to collect evidence for cases and has few parameters around its use of force.

• Because it's such a young agency, it hasn't faced many lawsuits and court challenges to its use-of-force policies, unlike other federal agencies such as the FBI, the Forest Service or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
• That's resulted in few directives aimed at limiting ICE agents' tactics.
• ICE units can conduct pre-dawn raids, unannounced entries (with judicial or administrative warrants), and surveillance without many of the public accountability rules that serve as checks on local authorities.

ICE agents can't enter a private home unless they have a judicial warrant.

• They still must adhere to the Constitution regarding the search and seizure limits protecting U.S. citizens.
• Although ICE isn't supposed to place U.S. citizens in immigration detention, Cárdenas says its agents have been detaining U.S.-born Latinos and dismissing their proof of citizenship as fake before eventually letting them go.
• This has led to allegations of racial profiling.
• ICE did not immediately respond for comment on these episodes.

ICE also can't force a local law enforcement agency to join an operation, but police are obligated to keep order if protesters surround and ICE operation.