THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY
Anyone who gives an ICE-esque ~vibe~ or is dressed in a way that doesn’t scream unhappy liberal may find themselves to be a target of a mob.
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Anti-ICE protesters have a new pursuit that exposes the shallowness of their opposition to immigration enforcement …
THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY
A viral video last week showed anti-ICE protesters harassing a random white man for the crime of driving a Chevy Suburban.
A group of protesters surrounded the man, who appeared to be a journalist, and demanded he prove that he is not ICE. The man opened his trunk to show his camera equipment, told the group he appreciated what they were doing, but declined to hand over his press badge when the protesters demanded to see it.
The protesters went on to tell the man that he needed to “understand” why driving a white Suburban could lead to him being mistaken for ICE. A female bystander even asserted he needed to rent a different vehicle the next time he is traveling to avoid any confusion.
“Are you going to pay for it?” the man quipped.
Tracking vehicles has become a broader strategy for the anti-ICE left. Instagram accounts of ICE watch groups tell followers to jot down license plates on unmarked SUVs and contribute them to a public database. One such post even provides photos of possible ICE vehicles next to ambulances and Terminix trucks so that protesters can tell the difference (very low-IQ behavior, by the way).
The panic over federal immigration operations has reached such a fever pitch that anti-ICE protesters have moved beyond tracking vehicles to tracking people. Anyone who gives an ICE-esque ~vibe~ or is dressed in a way that doesn’t scream unhappy liberal may find themselves to be a target of a mob.
A group of white tech workers was eating lunch in Minneapolis when anti-ICE agitators sent out a notice that plainclothes ICE agents were at the restaurant. Soon enough, the restaurant was swarmed with protesters who began screaming and blowing whistles at the young men and demanding they leave.
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us!” one woman shouted.
In a third viral video, anti-ICE protesters demanded a man take off an American flag hoodie that said “freedom.”
“Take it off and you won’t get hurt,” they told him as he hastily undressed.
These incidents are about more than the blatant stupidity of the anti-ICE crowd. They reveal how superficial their objections to ICE really are. Anti-ICE protesters complain that ICE agents are fascistic, that they are the new “Gestapo,” that they are profiling and harassing random brown people under the suspicion that they are in the country illegally.
Yet they’ve adopted their own far more absurd version of “papers, please!”
The last I checked, ICE isn’t pulling over anyone who happens to be behind the wheel of a lowrider.
The Supreme Court also made clear that ICE cannot profile people based solely on race. Rather, race can be used among a variety of other factors — like accents, location, and type of job — to justify brief investigative stops. For example, if ICE sees a “day laborer” in a flannel shirt with only the top button fastened sitting on a cooler and holding a sign in broken English outside of Home Depot, they could presumably ask them to show ID. It’s a higher bar than seeing a white guy eating a Panera You Pick Two™, assuming he must be a plainclothes government agent, and threatening to beat him up.
So what’s the deal? Are these people who don’t have any power in their own lives and are envious of those who do? Are they just angry that they’re not the ones in charge? If you are desperately searching for power and control, maybe you cosplay as the authority figures that you see most often … that is, in this case, you start checking IDs and jotting down license plate numbers because that’s what the “jackbooted thugs” are doing in your neighborhood.
Maybe they even have a big fat crush on ICE. Go check out Natalie Sandoval’s latest piece for more on that.
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