New York is creating a team of legal observers that will don purple vests to monitor and record the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement officers as they seek to detain and deport migrants, the state’s attorney general said on Tuesday.
The announcement follows weeks of sometimes violent tumult in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed, masked agents as he tries to deport more migrants than any of his predecessors.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the state’s new legal observers would be volunteer employees from her office, trained to observe, without interfering, whether Trump’s immigration enforcement “remains within the bounds of the law”.
“I am proud to protect New Yorkers’ constitutional rights to speak freely, protest peacefully, and go about their lives without fear of unlawful federal action,” James, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability.“
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said James was putting New Yorkers in danger by not working with ICE.
Respectfully we have plenty enough observers via the different Ice Patrols and rapid response groups.
What we need from the State Government is them to actually grow a spine and send their cops and troops after the Green Shirts.
“Keeping to the constitution.” Is not going to save us because this Federal administration is using it as literal toilet paper
While I get what you’re saying, having officially anointed state observers that are sitting there and being like “the state of New York is officially watching you, and I’m it” is a change to the equation.
Sure, it’s “just a few more observers”, but any of those state appointed observers witnessing constitutional (state or federal) or state law breaches are probably going to yield immediate and aggressive state prosecution of any ICE agents involved.
And if ICEatzgruppen decides to accost or arrest any of those officially appointed observers, that’s kind of a signal to begin no-holds-barred total legal warfare.
Public observers are absolutely important. But this is important for a different reason.
Thanks, stranger. Sometimes my cynicism takes me toward dark places, but this is a splash of realistic optimism.
Hey, no worries. I get pessimistic as fuck about shit these days, especially when everyone who’s ostensibly in a position to do anything about anything is like “this is a very disturbing development 🙁” and then resigns their position in protest or votes to fund ICEatzgruppen or whatever. It absolutely fucking maddening. It damages my calm multiple times a day.
But I view this development as one of the first true signs that officialdom is laying some groundwork to be like “no. Fuck you. We are going to use the system you are trying to abuse against you. And if you end run it, we are going to make it very fucking clear that the system no longer applies to anyone, anywhere.”
Or at least, that’s where I hope this stuff goes.
I think this is a great idea, but can use one little change: they should all have body cams streaming ICE behavior publicly in real-time.
I think it will change things greatly if ICE knows they are all being watched, all the time.
They should be tagged in the videos as they are identified too
They should have heavily armed bodyguards as well.
Two of their murders were already observed and extremely well documented, yet the murderers will see no consequences for their actions.
Perhaps actively stopping the murderers before they murder is a better approach?
Catch them while on their way to work, ship them to El Salvadorian labor camps. Stonewall their families so they never know. 🤌
Edit: All ice thugs, not just the 2 that caught press.
Or you could ban businesses and local government entities from helping? Without access to unmarked police vehicles or rentals things get complicated. Ban gas stations from providing gas. Make them get gas from federal pumps.
Oh no, don’t threaten them with passivity
This might seem pretty tame when we all want bolder actions, but if things work out and we get our own Nuremberg trials, we need all the reliable documentation we can get to hunt these traitors down and bring them to justice.
Personally I’d be down with using employment records and just capping them as we find them. Kinda like what Nakam and other Nazi hunters did after the war.
The populace is doing that already. Late to the party, but still welcome.
