Of course the intifada against the ICE invasion doesn’t have that much to do with saving migrants from the raids to ethnic-cleanse the country of darker skins lacking a paper or two. Or at least not as much to do with it as even the protesters would have you believe. These are proxy protests. And they’re overdue.
As with the George Floyd uprising during the felon’s first term, as with the nuclear-freeze protests against Reagan of the early 1980s or the Vietnam-Cambodia protests against Nixon that culminated with his troops’ murder of four unarmed students at Kent State in 1970, we’re seeing expressions of deeper anxiety about an imperial presidency reducing civil society to uniform shut-up-and-bow servility.
Democratic institutions were stronger in the 1970s and 80s. Nixon and Reagan were both reelected with historic landslides. But Watergate cost Nixon his presidency and Iran-Contra nearly cost Reagan his as both lied, broke laws, defied Congress and mistook the presidency for a divine right.
Their thuggier political heir got back in with one of the closest elections in history but took it as a mandate to turn the clock back on a century of pluralism. A country we could often enough be proud of and feel safe in is metamorphosing into a vermin of its worst self. Democratic institutions today have all the credibility of a Potemkin village. States redder than Soviets have so criminalized the act of protesting that it is now an invitation to crack skulls, as our own attorney general threatens. The felon-in-chief is itching for it. Like all cowards, he’s always lived for violence–speaking it, inflicting it, instigating it, glorifying it.
The humiliation and baiting by ICE and troops is a scripted play for the cameras. It’s politically savvy entertainment as remuneration for all those who voted for the felon. They pruriently watch in their shag-carpeted living rooms far from the streets, most of them thriving on an economy those very migrants have helped save, many of them stoked on cruelty indistinguishable from the joys of a crowd watching gladiators torturing captives and slaves in Rome’s Coliseum a Caligula or two ago.
Migrants are getting deported. But so is American identity.
The deacons of law-and-order can claim that there’s not much legitimacy in protesters opposing deporting the lawless, and to some extent they’re right–if it were only the lawless: it isn’t. Regardless. Migrants are just the tripwire. A couple of million trans have been legally erased from existence. A single executive order disenfranchised millions of the right to vote, another will shorten the lives of millions. Another restored the kind of bigoted travel bans that once targeted Asians, but now targets a dozen “shithole countries.”
Orwellian ministries of truth are replacing university boards, history is whitewashed, academic freedom obliterated, major media cowed, law firms emasculated. The Confederacy and its slavery-exalting symbols are being restored. The White House has become a clearing house of corruption on a scale that would vindicate Mt. McKinley being renamed for Mobutu. The military parade our Mobutu is throwing to himself, supposedly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the army, recalls the $100 million bash the shah of Iran threw himself in 1971, supposedly to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of Cyrus the Great. He thought he was making Persia great again.
The mendacity is beyond accounting. The felon pardoned and beatified the cop killers and insurrectionists of Jan. 20, whose only aim was to overturn by force a free and fraudless election and hang a vice president and assassinate a few other senators if they got the chance. But he calls insurrectionists those opposing his now sacred ICE cops.
Undocumented, criminal migrants’ proper and legally calibrated removal is not an existential threat to American values. But the police-state manner and sweep of mass-migrant removals in the shadow of what’s turning into a military occupation is. It is emblematic of perversions of democratic norms far beyond the fate of migrants.
So of course there are protests. There must be. “I am not one of those who think that there can be a compromise, even one made with resignation, even provisional,” Camus would have said (as he did say when Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising of 1956) “with a regime of terror which has as much right to call itself [democratic] as the executioners of the Inquisition had to call themselves Christians.”
The Mexicans and Guatemalans and Venezuelans getting jack-booted out of the country are the Jews and gays and gypsies and other non-“Aryans” post-Weimar Germans allowed to be dehumanized and terrorized until it was too late. No degree of protest would have been too great, no degree of violence unjustified to stop what happened next. Ordinary Germans–“willing executioners,” in historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s phrase–preferred not to act. They let it happen. They have lived with that tin-drummed shame since.
Angelinos may not be so obliging. Let’s hope they won’t be alone. Let’s hope we’re just getting started. Otherwise we’re well on the way of being this felon’s willing executioners.
Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece aired on WNZF.
Let’s go taco says
Masked Nazis and proud boys kidnapping people without due process! Sick and pathetic! May the orange terrorist and his supporters burn in hell!
Jake from state farm says
Ah yes, finally—a calm, measured take on immigration enforcement featuring just the right amount of Holocaust comparisons, Roman gladiator metaphors, and name-checks of Camus, Caligula, Mobutu, and Nixon. Because nothing helps the public better understand the nuance of immigration policy quite like equating ICE with SS death squads and suggesting deportations are tantamount to genocide.
Truly, if only America could be saved by more literary allusions, a few more burning effigies, and the comforting moral clarity of knowing that anyone with a different viewpoint is a “willing executioner.” Forget border laws or democratic process—what we really need is a revolution led by a thesaurus and a flair for historical cosplay.
But thanks for the reminder that in today’s discourse, the choice is apparently between full-blown theocracy run by jackboots or total moral collapse. Subtlety is dead; long live the hyperbole.
I love to see the “Best Biden Ever” and the party that thought that Kamala was the best they had melt down. The same group that says it is just a bunch of people standing around watching cars burn. Pierre we all know you are upset because you are afraid of loosing your illegal immigrant help. Those illegals you need to pick your veggies and scrub your toilets at your intracoastal mansion.
Pogo says
@Intifada???
AYGKM???
SMH in utter disgust.
Dusty says
Glad to see illegals get expelled we are a country of immigrants and we welcome those who are vetted and follow our process to become citizens. Nothing wrong with ensuring our country isn’t getting criminal elements ready to take advantage of our well meaning but misinformed liberals.
Pierre Tristam says
I’m surprised. The most Jake from slam flam can muster, the most this troll so gorged on projectile vomiting on fellow-commenters (that’s gotten him disallowed and banned a few times) can muster is third-grade sarcasm? Not to mention that mysterious mansion I own on the Intracoastal (capital I, please, Mr. patriot), though I felt I had to have a chat with my rag-picking brown-skinned staff 600, all but one of them not only “illegal” but also “illegitimate,” having sired them all from different mothers from different continents (I have my kinship standards after all: ask my dear bride) but outside the church, to let them know that from now on they may only scrub toilets and pick my 40 acres along the Intracoastal (with my mule) after midnight and before dawn, in other words those hours when we know the likes of jake and his jackboots are sleeping off the Miller Lite booze they need to medicate their SS tactics and comments (his allusion, not mine). What I just don’t get is why that frigid bunch of ice hasn’t raided my estate for its rich pickings. It’s not like they don’t know where I live, though I could use a little Google Map help with those 40 acres. Or is it 400? Thank god for that mule.
Robjr says
The stable genius says…..”our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace…”
Duh???? Did he figure that out on his own? I don’t believe is confidant Herr Miller clued him in.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/12/trump-immigration-migrant-farmers-hotel-workers-deported/84166061007/
Kat says
You write beautifully, and I so wish your prose was untrue, but alas, it is not. If anyone reading this has not already read “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer The I strongly encourage you to do so as I believe we are at the same inflection point.
Local says
Above how these protests stay protests in Florida! Why do you think so many people want to move here?
don miller says
the country is losing its identity. we used to be a nation of laws including laws for proper immigration. Biden threw them away. Now we have so many immigrants that have broken out proper immigration laws, they have established a country within a country and tell us what to do concerning them. . States like California give them food stamps, free health care, disability ins, etc…. because they want their census increased. Higher census= more seats in Congress =more Dem control regardless of whether they can vote or not.
Laurel says
Pierre Tristam: On this topic, I agree with you. What you have written is truth.
The reason the Trump supporters keep calling what we are observing “hyperbole” is Trump has been grooming his following for over a decade. This grooming, the way a pedophile grooms children, is considered hyperbole when we shout out what we see is obvious. The groomer has successfully corraled the most vulnerable of our society, known as maga. The next group also see this as hyperbole, but silently, have their doubts. The third group is shaking their collective heads, wondering how anyone can be so gullible.
They can be, and they are.
Democrats have their fair share of blame as they keep, endlessly, focusing on the endless insanity, instead of acting like the adults in the room, and giving us a solid, agreed upon plan for the future.
I am glad people are standing up to this tyranny, but there will be more and more to stand up to. The group with the doubts need to realize that, yes, this tyranny can actually happen here, in our beloved country. They need to stop “holding their nose” and take a deep breath. They have heard the con. They have seen the con. Now, they need to acknowledge the con. Then, they need to throw out the con.
Lynne says
If you have never watched “A Day Without a Meixcan”, now is the time to watch. And if you watched it back in the early 2000’s, watch it again. Scary – prescient – who’d a guessed!
Melanie Campbell says
You lost me at “imperial presidency”. If Donald Trump was a king, people like you would already be in jail.
The American Left is gripped by a psychosis, fed to them by imagination-stunted sophist hacks such as yourself. Nobody believes in your endless pity party for These Poor, Gate-Crashing Immigrants anymore.
Cancel my subscription, if I have one. Better yet, block my IP and then whip out your thesaurus to club me over the head with some Wicked Prose in a reply that I’ll never come back to read. And you’ll Win your little tiny corner of the Internet with it. Until tomorrow, when you lose someone else with these idiot takes. Congratulations.
William Moya says
A suggestion, I wish we could answer, comment, on each of the individual post. Nonetheless this is so much fun. I’ll go with “immigrants properly vetted”. Surely you jest, if you were going for irony, it needs work. Our history started withe the English monopoly companies (Capitalists) who then proceed to bring with them anyone they could kidnap or cajole. once we got rid, moved or kill the native Americans, French, Mexicans, we brought in Africans most of them not tourists, just folks in chains, then we let in as many Asians, Europeans as we could which some of them became themselves part of vast criminal elements, but technically not that different from the others and we called them Capitalists, thanks to Adam Smith, a Scott, and you guess it, a very religious guy. So here you go just a glimpse, a snap shot, immigration history.
bob says
So Pierre. What’s the difference between Obama and Trump. Obama deported some 3 million illegals’ Is it that one is a democrat and the other is a republican?
Al says
Read this article then wonder why democrats are so disliked. They want democracy but when they get it they rebel. Trump won by more than 50% which is what a democracy calls for to rule. They aren’t happy with our representative republic so now they have what they asked for, they just didn’t plan on losing the election.
Burn taco says
Isn’t there a Florida sheriff on tv threatening to kill people if they protest! Maybe he needs to be checked first! terrorist occupy Washington currently! Yup it does line up in many ways with how Hitler took over Germany in the 20s! So where are all those deported people going please show how locations? Or you just assume they still alive?
Hand on Bible swear says
Meanwhile in Floriduh an elected sheriff threatens to murder anyone exercising their former constitutional right to protest the Nazi takeover! Murikkka! Where freedum is bought and sold for profit!
Sherry says
This from Joyce Vance:
Kristi Noem gave the game up at the press conference Thursday, the one where California Senator Alex Padilla was tackled and handcuffed, although apparently, “not arrested.” Noem said she was going to “liberate” Los Angeles “from the socialists and the burdensome leadership this governor and mayor have placed on this country and this city.” That’s not a rebellion by people on the streets in Los Angeles. It’s a takeover by the federal government.
Lawyers for the State will likely ask the court to amend the evidentiary record in the case to include Noem’s comments. They make this situation crystal clear. This is all about presidential power and its centralization into Donald Trump’s hands, the same issue we’ve been confronting since the day he took the oath of office and promptly issued a series of executive orders that violated that oath. The question is, will the Supreme Court continue to defend Donald Trump at the expense of the people?
Sherry says
MORE MAGA DISINFORMATION: At least one video of cars burning in LA was from years ago:
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.49P74KD
The dude says
Interesting… and telling who he’s made the carveout for… “farmers and hotels”.
Why not construction? Why at all?
Because orange shitler doesn’t actually build anything, he only destroys, and he needs the cheap labor for himself. (tossing farmers in there is a child’s subterfuge to distract from the main reason for his carveout)
As I type this millions of patriotic Americans are in the streets letting it be known that we are not a monarchy, nor will we become one.
The problem with all these wonderful images of those courageous Americans, out there exercising their constitutional rights, is the simple fact that for every single person in each image you see, there is an uninhabited acre of land in the west that simply has more electoral say in our system of government and laws than they do.
This is exactly why they are compelled to be out there protesting.
Concerned Citizen says
As an American Citizen. Born and raised here. And having served my country honorably. I have to maintain valid ID to Drive,Fly,Stay Employed and Vote.If you want to stay in this country. Do it legally.
Pierre Tristam says
No. One did it legally (if still heavy-handedly). The other does it like an SS.
A Concerned Observer says
Yellow Journalism at its best with “the felon’s first term”, “felon-in-chief” and dredging up “four unarmed students at Kent State in 1970” from over 50 years ago. You clearly fancy your own left leaning elitist ideals but you are nothing but an antagonist with a platform for your own single-minded inflammatory rhetoric. I am glad to see “criminals” removed from our country. It would have been far better if immigration policies were enforced in the beginning but sadly, they were not. When the trickle of illegal immigrants was allowed to stay the trickle became an unmanageable flood. Yes, illegal aliens are criminals because they broke the law. If the United States is such a horrible place that treats poor people so badly, please stay within your own borders and work to fix your own countries problems and do not import them here. I have no sympathy for an illegal alien on TV, explaining to someone with a microphone and camera how they came to this country several years ago but have not learned our language or seem to have any intent whatsoever to embrace our values and customs. I’ve worked with many immigrants who came to this country legally. They obtained a green card so they could legally work here. They learned our language and assimilated into our society. I welcomed them into our country and into my home.
The United States government is under no obligation to feed, clothe or educate criminals or to require our citizens to learn their language and embrace their customs and beliefs. Please keep in mind that our government cannot give anything to anyone without taking it away from someone else first. In the 50’s, my school taught that our country was like a melting pot where each contributed ingredient brought with it its own texture, flavor and volume to become one product to feed everyone. I understand that our schools now preach that the United States is no longer a melting pot but rather a “salad”, where each ingredient maintains its own texture, flavor and color.
Maybe it’s time to reopen Ellis Island. Not everyone that arrived here through that portal was allowed entry into the United States. Those who did were on their own, with only what they brought with them. They were not US Citizens but could become a citizen of this great United States by studying and obeying our laws, our government and passing a test that, sadly, many of our present high school graduates cannot pass today. Each of them swore an oath of allegiance to our country, forsaking their previous country. I see no such allegiance in these present law-breaking refugees. On the other side of the coin, I lived in Thailand and Germany. While there, I respected their laws. I learned their language. I lived in their community and was welcomed by the locals. What I did take with me when I left was an appreciation of their history, their customs and was glad to return to my home country. I still keep in touch with some of the friends I met there after many years.
Do I like everything President Trump is doing? No. Do I like some of the things he is doing? Yes, and some are years overdue. Do I appreciate the deplorable mud-slinging, antagonistic disrespect of this blog toward everything President Trump does? No, I do not. Sadly, we do not have a reputable newspaper. Flagler Live is not an acceptable, fair minded and unbiased substitute. At very least this literary tirade does not dispense “News” but spews single-minded hate and bile with no attempt to inform its readers and promote both sides of any subject.
Sherry says
@ concerned observer. . . you don’t appreciate “award winning” Flaglerlive? Fox and Breitbart are likely more your speed.
Regarding ICE Detentions:
Has anyone noticed the tens of thousands “peacefully” protesting against trump and his fascist actions each and every day. Oh yeah, I forgot, Fox doesn’t broadcast the “daily” protests that are happening all over the country.
I actually think we can all agree that “ALL” criminals, undocumented or not, should be given their day(s) in court and removed from society if that’s what the judge/jury decides. The question is, just “who” made (convicted felon) trump and his ICE gestapo terrorists “judge/jury”?
Arresting migrants who are kids in school/a very young girl receiving life supporting care/those who have been here for many years in the legalization process without committing any crime, etc., etc. are NOT who ICE should be sweeping up in “mass raids”! Those migrants are being treated like so much vermin by placing them in offshore prisons/detention centers with NO DUE PROCESS! The “due process” that is guaranteed by our constitution for every person in our country. . . whether they are currently an official citizen or not.
Those of you who incessantly regurgitate Fox talking points about how immigrants should come in “LEGALLY” have no idea that it often takes years and large sums of money for that legal immigration process to be completed. Because our immigration system is “BROKEN”! Why don’t you get that??? The republicans in congress have stopped each and every attempt to “fix” that process for many years. Meanwhile trump’s goons are arresting immigrants who are LEGALLY in that “immigration process”! ICE agents are waiting outside of “courthouses” for humans in the “legal immigration” process to appear as “legally” required and then arresting them. The courthouses across our country have now become “traps” for ICE! Great “police work”, huh?
The trouble is that there are just not enough actual “criminal” immigrants to create the “chest pounding” numbers trump wants to brag about. This is now where we are. The baby man wannabe dictator needs to make up some ridiculous story about an emergency to be able to wield the “power” his demented “strong man” ego demands.
Elect a person with that “criminal” mindset and this ends up being the warped mentality we are all subjected to each and every day! Again, as I’ve said many, many times before. . . this is precisely why “CHARACTER MATTERS”!
“NO KINGS/DICTATORS”!
Jackson says
Breaking: Trump officials reverse pause on immigration raids targeting farms and hotels owned by Republicans
Just want everyone to know what actually happened. They got behind a closed room and figured out which farms are their loyal supporters. As well as restaurants and hotels. Of course they are not going to touch any of Trumps hotels either. So now that they have the list of who not to raid they will go back to raiding all the others.
There was a video of a farmer a few months ago who said if Trump starts deporting farm workers, then the United States would be out of food within 3 weeks. That’s a very plausible outcome. Roughly 70% of farm workers are immigrants, with an estimated 42% being undocumented. What do you think will happen to the food supply if you deport 70% of the workers?
Skibum says
Wow, Jake from state farm really has a bug up his butt this time! But alas, nonsensical BS, entertaining as it might be, is still nothing more than nonsensical BS. I wonder though… all these republicans who insist just one crime committed by some random undocumented “invader”, just one death maybe that is attributed to one of them (while ignoring the millions of deaths caused by our own American citizens) is one too many for all of those who have had their heartstrings pulled by the horrific visions in their heads. So disturbing, so profoundly detrimental to our nation that it is deserving of the president and other republican elected officials saying drumph must be allowed to suspend due process and other constitutional provisions so ICE can round up all invaders, put them on planes and fly them to far away 3rd world foreign countries without any hearings or ability to defend themselves against accusations that they are here in the U.S. illegally. It is, after all, such a critical necessity that constitutional protections are, by word of the president alone, just tossed out the window forthwith… no need for congressional action or approval, cannot wait for the judicial branch to act and give their approval… the president has that power to act on his own with speed – so they argue.
But Jake, here’s a question that I’d love to have you respond to if you can try to make sense of it. Haven’t these same republicans been trying to convince the American people not for months since drumph was elected earlier this year, but for years and years now, that their hands are tied and neither the president, nor congress, can do anything at all about all of the school shootings that have continued to shock the conscience of this nation over and over and over again for many years?
While one death of a U.S. citizen caused by an immigrant is said to be one too many that warrants the suspension of constitutional protections so that drastic and immediate action can be taken to address that kind of death by the WH, please tell me why then have thousands and thousands of U.S. school chidrens’ murders over many years, through many presidential administrations, not warranted or deserved a drastic and immediate suspension of the constitutional protections of the 2nd Amendment so that common sense gun control provisions to include banning assault rifles (the weapon of choice in nearly ALL school shootings)? Why, Jake, does the maga loving republicans use the tired refrain over and over again of “thoughts and prayers” while more AMERICANS die from gun violence from fellow AMERICAN citizens and republicans simply look the other way because they believe written words protecting guns are much more important than actions that can and should be taken by our president and member of congress to protect our own American children?
If one American death at the hands of any immigrant is one too many, then isn’t one American school student’s death at the hands of an American murderer with an assault rifle one too many, Jake? Just asking for all of the grieving American moms and dads in our country who are grieving the loss of their children to needless gun violence, while still angry and confused at the total and complete indifference and callousness of the republican party that refuses to do ANYTHING to end this cycle of violence that keeps repeating itself again, and again, and again, and again, and again… just more “thoughts and prayers”… REALLY??? Jake, can you formulate any rational justification to answer this without more nonsensical BS?