One issue we've discussed again and again during the Trump years is the purported belief as a form of performative aggression. It's something essential to the Trumpian/MAGA world. You believe things that are, in factual terms, obviously absurd. But they're also convenient. They create permission structures for all sorts of things they already want to do. To an important decree the absurdity of the professed belief is part of the attraction, especially since aggression is so deeply embedded in the professed belief. This issue comes up in a less extreme, though still similar, way in the various ways Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration try to justify ICE's behavior.
Let's start with masking.
We know their basic argument. There are legions of anti-ICE activists. If ICE agents don't obscure their faces, they risk being "doxxed." Set aside whether this is a justification for masking. This doesn't seem crazy on its face. Demanding legal accountability for ICE agents is near the top of all anti-ICE activism. And the more radical activists can be quite aggressive in their tactics. So could this have happened? Of course. But what journalist Philip Bump was able to determine is that "doxxing", the notional rationale for ICE masking has in fact never happened. Not once. It's important to note what definition we're using here. As Bump puts it, "At no point in time has an officer been seen conducting his work, identified and subsequently attacked. While there have been threats issued against agents and incidents of off-duty harassment, there are no known incidents in which an officer was assaulted while off-duty because he was identified as a federal agent."
In other words, someone may have posted someone's address on X or some website. But nothing happened. I think it's always important to remember that the publication of personal data can create a penumbra of fears whether any violence or harassment happens. So we shouldn't think these things have no effect, don't leave anyone looking over their shoulder. But we're not talking about subjective, individual experience. We're talking about the putative rationale for a policy that is essentially unknown in all of American history. The notional justification is simply fake. There's no other way to put it.
This is a pretty big data point that deserves a lot more attention in the public conversation. "Zero" is a notable data point. And frankly, it's not that surprising. Who is stupid enough, given ICE's record, of showing up at an ICE agent's home to harass the agent or their family? Set aside the morality. That seems like a good way to have the state come down very, very hard on you or maybe even to get killed. How often are municipal police "doxxed'? Not very often.
There's an additional factor I want to add to this equation. It's out there in the news but it hasn't gotten quite enough play in the ICE masking conversation. We've seen numerous examples of ICE agents videoing people with their iPhones. Sometimes this may be to populate the DHS' social media feeds. But in many or most cases they're using a facial recognition app that allows agents to identify people in the field. That seems like what Jonathan Ross was doing with one hand when he shot Renee Good in her car. 404 Media reported on this as far back as last summer. This isn't just being done to identify people subject to deportation. It's a key part of ICE's ongoing war with anti-ICE protestors. ICE often has whole dossiers on the people who are protesting against them, even if they've never had any legal justification for even asking their name.
These technologies are notoriously unreliable. But for the moment let's set that aside and assume that they worked perfectly. What you can see is that ICE and the whole dominationist infrastructure and political movement that backs it are working to create a totally stacked information terrain. You can't know who the ICE agents are. But they can absolutely know who you are, even if you're not a known person at all. It really is exactly the "secret police" framework most assume. All the informational power is in the hands of the ICE agents. This isn't immigration enforcement. It's a form of information warfare practiced against activists who are almost always US citizens, again using the specific 4th Amendment free zone they have at U.S. border crossings and taking it national.
No comments:
Post a Comment