You tell me if this sounds like America

[Pototan]

Maybe Trump's America, but certainly not the America I knew.

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii denounced the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on the home of Filipino teachers in Kahului, Maui and efforts to detain them, saying the raids are clearly designed to instill fear.

“The reported interrogation and efforts to detain Filipino teachers in their home on Maui by ICE agents is outrageous. This is racial profiling and a shameful abuse of power. We are a nation of laws, but the broad ICE raids this week are clearly designed just to instill fear,” Schatz said in a statement.

At the conclusion of the search, HSI special agents left the location without any arrests made,” ICE said in a statement.

HIDOE said the teachers are employed through the Department of State’s J-1 Visa Exchange Visitor Program, which allows qualified educators from other countries to work in the US legally as part of a cultural and educational exchange.

https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/other/us-senator-slams-raid-on-pinoy-teachers-home-in-hawaii/ar-AA1F8UOv

[Celerity]

1. Terror is the point.

“In this case, with educators rousted from their beds at gunpoint, there was no public apology for the harm that was done,” Tui said.

[DFW]

2. Schatz is exactly right. It's about fear and the weilding of it as an intimidation tactic.

No positive outcome of this useless raid can be demonstrated, other than the feel-good effect for the goons participating in the raid.

In another era, they would have been designated as Secret State Police, known locally as Geheime Staatspolizei (GeStaPo for short).

[Hekate]

3. For years there have been a lot of Filipina nurses in my area of SoCal, filling a shortfall...

Is ICE going after them, too?

My gods

[Tommy Carcetti]

4. Reminds me how my grandparents were constantly pestered by Stalin's NKVD

Just that constant attempt to intimidate.

[GiqueCee]

5. As unspeakably vile...

... as Trump is, the obscene, malicious evil of the raging psychopath known as Stephen Miller eclipses that of the Orange Gargoyle by several orders of magnitude. All of the most despicable crimes committed by Trump's Gestapo were conceived in the roiling snake pit that is Miller's mind. That boy has to be dealt with. Now.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. Very much so. America was *built* on this kind of terror. People fleeing slavery, displaced Indigenous people, political

and social revolutionaries, immigrants from different countries at different times...state-sponsored terror isn't new here.

[Pototan]

7. It's new in my adult lifetime

I was born in 1952. I know we went through some pretty tough times in our history, but we also made a lot of progress.

The Trump administration is bringing us back to our darkest days.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

8. Your adult lifetime includes the government targeting civil rights leaders, cop raids on LGBTQ hangouts,

harassment of Labor leaders, the Patriot Act, the National Security Act leading to the establishment of ICE in 2003, routine low-level cop violence that is always "reformable" and never reformed, etc., etc. When people say "this isn't America," they're wrong.

[Pototan]

9. And the progress of civil rights

The Civil Rights Act, the voting rights act, legalized same sex marriage.

My adult life began in 1970 (18 years old) and most of America's progress was accomplished from 1970 until 2016.

Look, I'll admit that too many Americans are racist, but we did make progress with both political parties until Trump won in 2016.

The America I grew up in worked toward justice until 2016.

[Martin Eden]

10. MAGAts are fine with government tyranny, as long as it harms people they hate

THEY have enabled destruction of the Constitution they claim to revere.

[Solly Mack]

11. America has committed atrocities before. It has violated the rights of people. It has targeted certain groups of people.

It has arrested and detained people for no other reason than being of a certain ancestry. Racially profiling black and brown people isn't the least bit rare.

So, yes, that sounds like America.

Black people can be murdered in America simply for existing. That means living in terror every single day. Doesn't mean you stop going about your life, but it does mean you remain aware of the risks.

Trump didn't invent racism in America. Yes, he uses it and exploits it to his advantage, but the racism was already there.

Yes, he is a racist - but he ain't the only one.

Oh, it is absolutely horrible what Trump is doing.

No question about that.

But fact is a lot of people in America live in fear of other Americans and what governing authorities (like law enforcement agencies) can do to them and get away with it.