LA Photo: Only bad guys wear masks.
The National Guard members who appear to be wandering aimlessly along the riverfront are apparently decoys.
Only a few miles away, away from the riverfront and downtown, in numerous Memphis neighborhoods with immigrant families, there is terror, fear, and repression that come from ICE agents who can roll up on anyone at will and without warrant and throw anyone, regardless of age or frailty, to the ground.
The brutality is no surprise since many of them signed up to get the $50,000 bonus paid from our taxes and that welcomed all comers – Proud Boys, rednecks, headbangers, racists, extremists, and anyone who likes to throw their weight around.
In many Memphis neighborhoods, parents are afraid to send their children to school, devout families forego church attendance, and grocery store shopping is done by one family member to prevent an entire family from being disappeared.
Provocations to Justify Federal Force
It’s a disturbing commentary on life in Memphis as a result of the so-called Memphis Safe Task Force, and despite the soothing words of the governor, Trump’s confidante, Generalfeldmarschall Stephen Miller, said the quiet thing out loud in his inflammatory comments during a Memphis press conference.
In a city that is still struggling to recover from the murder of Tyre Nichols by police, Miller said the Trump Administration is unleashing law enforcement to be ruthless.
In other cities, the consequences of his provocations can be seen in federal forces firing pepper balls that drove a Presbyterian minister to the ground, a two-year-old zip tied and paraded in the street, the fatal shooting of a man after pulling him over after dropping his children at school, roughly detaining multiple people, and teargassing protestors exercising their First Amendment rights. That’s not even mentioning the two dozen people who have died in ICE custody in the past year.
His is the kind of big talk that we’ve come to expect from this small man. It’s the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater in a city with a history of too many police killings. It’s reckless and disgraceful, driven by his hope for resistance to ICE that he can label an insurrection for more federal forces.
Believe Your Own Eyes
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi provided her own fact-free speech in Memphis, asserting that cashless bond is a major cause of crime in Memphis and is supported by District Attorney General Steve Mulroy. Never mind that Shelby County does not have cashless bond as she continues to repeat the extreme right’s talking points about this county’s duly elected head prosecutor.
It’s likely she got her information from state senator Brent Taylor whose criminal justice policy is best summed up this way: “I’ve got my opinion. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
All of these extremists call on us not to believe that we see with our own eyes: hard-working immigrants putting on new roofs, handling renovations, landscaping yards, working in doctors’ offices, and contributing to the economy.
News media coverage in Memphis has been weak in putting a face on the people suffering the most from the saturation of federal officers. They fail to capture the personal angst in neighborhoods and the distress that permeates so many families and failing to report on the actions and the treatment of people in the local immigration court which operates as an arm of the Trump DOJ.
Don’t Remain Mute
Even if Mayor Paul Young considers the best course of action is to cooperate with state and federal officials on fighting crime, he should still speak out against Trump’s authoritarian impulses and express concern of residents in his city’s neighborhoods. Even if acquiescence with federal officials turns out to be the best option, he should express concern about implementation of the Project 2025 anti-democratic agenda.
The mayor is praised for keeping Memphis off the list of cities that Trump routinely claims are war zones. Already, Trump brags that he has brought order to Memphis and some people, mainly business types, think that when he ultimately claims that he has eliminated crime in Memphis, it will work to the city’s advantage as a positive message to the country.
The problem is that it is also a message that says Memphis and cities with Black mayors cannot govern themselves, and Memphis finds itself relying on the most petulant, unreliable collaborator it could find – the president of the United States. He can be positive today about Memphis and trash it tomorrow.
Regardless of the silence of many elected officials, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris excluded, surely they should at the least protest against the racial profiling that lies at the heart of traffic stop after traffic stop and arrest after arrest. There are between 1,500 and 2,000 federal law enforcement agents in Memphis on a daily basis as of Oct. 14, according to the director of the U.S. Marshals.
The Census Bureau says about 9% of Shelby residents, or 82,948, are Hispanic and Shelby County has 16,094 migrants with immigration cases. In following the rules and reporting in, they risk being disappeared as thousands of others have done, joining the 70% of immigrants arrested by ICE who have no charges or convictions and the 60,000 people held in ICE detention.
Show Your Papers Like 1930s Germany
They spend each day wondering if this will be the day when ICE upends their lives and lies about their threat to the country, all while immigrants have driven the growth of major cities’ economies and nationwide, they boost the economy by $9 trillion over 10 years.
We can debate whether the collaboration with state and federal agencies is the best course of action, but elected leaders should not remain mute as 1930s Germany is replicated Memphis with the “ihre papiere bitte” era. It is no longer America if people are required to show their papers to assuage ICE although it does not guarantee American citizens will not be swept up by their police state mentality.
Even if leaders have opted to be in the room where decisions are made, they should still express concerns about the drip, drip, drip of authoritarian actions that are slowly eroding this democracy. It is this gradual erosion of norms and institutions that demand all of us to speak out.
Miller believes that if he engages in vitriol, demagoguery, and insurrection claims about blue cities, we will welcome authoritarian rule. To that end, the invasion by ICE and federal agents is intended to trigger protests and outrage which can be used as justification for them being here in the first place.
To generate support, they engage in propaganda, misinformation, and lies at press conferences where the media are given incomplete information, slanted data, and misinformation, and we are not told which agency is doing what without the disaggregation of the arrests and without context.
Our Religious Mandate
Americans cannot sit out this debate about our national values and the actions of federal officials who are not acting on democratic principles. Trump’s policies, including those under way in Memphis, are dangerous threats to our way of life and a betrayal of our founding constitutional rights.
Many of Trump’s most fervent supporters cast his agenda as a holy war and define it in religious terms, including the popular notion that he has been sent by God to save America. They ignore the actual articles of faith: Hebrews 13:2 gives a direct command: “ Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it,” or Matthew 25:35, Jesus says: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
Our faith called on many of us to reach out to immigrants, but they are no longer strangers. They are now our friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
Even if city officials are emphasizing cooperation and collaboration to reduce crime, they should not be anesthetized against opposing the implementation of Project 2025 and its anti-democratic agenda.
It has been said that the permanent culture of outrage, corruption, and victimhood in the Trump Administration means we are moving toward authoritarianism. The truth is we are already there.
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