House Democrats who joined Republicans in voting to continue ICE funding. Image: Facebook, Washington State Memes
The Democratic Party is useful only to the oligarch class, who give them orders. Doing anything that serves the people is never on the agenda. They will not address the ICE violations of law and human and civil rights.
The Trump administration focuses relentlessly on immigration enforcement as a political tool. That focus isn’t surprising considering that an important goal of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is to Make America White Again, or rather more white than it is now. Trump is so fixated on deporting immigrants from the Global South that he even takes this rhetorical show on the road, using part of his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to get his fellow white nations to also act against what he has referred to as an “invasion.”
“The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we're taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed … it's not a nation, got no government, got no police, got no mili… got no nothing. … We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the West from the depths of the Dark Ages to the pinnacle of human achievement.”
Trump was actually preaching to the choir, as Canada and European states have also enacted laws to decrease immigration and to criminalize immigrant populations. His fellow white leaders are very much on his side. The president who sent National Guard and federal law enforcement to police cities in the U.S. and who warned about a domestic “enemy within” which he said must be dealt with militaril,y is quite serious about achieving his goal of ejecting Black and brown immigrants and reserving what he referred to as “Black jobs” for Black Americans.
The end result of Trump’s obsession is that two white, U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, were recently shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. The killing of first Renee Good and more recently, of Alex Pretti elicited outrage, and the pattern of denial and character assassination of the murdered people became too much for wide swaths of white America to tolerate. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who intended to assassinate ICE officers, even though the plethora of video footage shows nothing of the sort. Pretti, a military veteran and nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital, was beaten and then shot 10 times by ICE officers.
Ironically, the usually gun-loving administration ran afoul of MAGA gun rights supporters after numerous officials used Pretti’s legal gun possession as a justification for killing him. But Minnesota is an open carry state and not only was Pretti acting within the laws of that jurisdiction, but he was doing what republicans usually praise.
Thousands of people had already gathered in protest in Minneapolis and to participate in a general strike on January 23. Pretti was killed the following day. Republicans began to back away from expressing support for the administration’s ICE policy and Trump himself climbed down a bit and said there would be an investigation. Corporate CEOs also began to offer comments and Jamie Dimon of Chase opined, “I don’t like what I’m seeing,” when asked about immigration enforcement.
While republicans began to demur and ruling class chieftains expressed opposition, the so-called leadership of the Democratic Party was largely silent. They claimed to be outraged by the ICE onslaught, but when it was time to show opposition, seven of them joined republicans to maintain ICE funding. Just two days before Pretti was killed, seven House democrats voted with republicans to continue ICE funding. House leader Hakeem Jeffries recommended a vote against but there was no whip operation to guarantee that none of his members would vote yes for Trump and for ICE. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Laura Gillen of New York, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Tom Suozzi of New York and Congressional Black Caucus member Don Davis of North Carolina were the seven who voted against the will of most Democratic Party voters.
Jeffries’ protestations were all for show. The democrats had no intention of opposing Trump and they didn’t until after Pretti was killed and public opinion moved firmly against the ICE operation in Minnesota. Senate democrats now say they will vote against ICE funding in a vote scheduled to take place on January 30. Should they actually show such a degree of resolve, there will be another government shutdown, which is why no one should trust their word.
Let us recall how democrats had Trump on the ropes and chose to let him escape when they engineered a rescue. The 43-day federal government shutdown was working in their favor. Furloughed federal workers, low-income Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients and 24 million Obamacare enrollees whose health insurance premiums doubled and tripled wanted democrats to come to their rescue. Trump and Republicans were on the back foot until eight Democratic Party senators gave in for nothing.
Democrats had done well in the election results in November, winning two governor races and local elections around the country. California voters passed a referendum allowing gerrymandering that would increase the number of democratic seats in that state. All the stars were aligned for a win against Trump.
At that time this columnist pointed out a longstanding tradition of duopoly collusion. The two parties have roles to play and sometimes that means the democrats will go through a pretend opposition. In this case Jeffries said he will vote no and recommended that others do as well while doing nothing to ensure that members vote for what democrats say they want. The willing traitors step up and voila. Democratic Party voters get something other than what they want.
The reality is that their party is now completely irrelevant. Republicans have the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress. Trump is deeply committed to his agenda, while democrats act like human weather vanes, changing directions along with the political winds. Although that analogy is only somewhat true. They go through the motions to give an impression of taking action when they have already decided to do little or nothing..
Even now, they are talking compromise about ICE body cameras, which they already wear as they shoot people and rules that already exist that ICE doesn’t follow. A federal judge in Minnesota ordered the ICE Acting Director to show up in court because so many of his orders have been violated already. “The court’s patience is at an end,” is an indication of how useless any compromises will be.
ICE must be abolished. The federal immigration enforcement agency must be torn up and reconfigured anew. Minnesotans have reached that conclusion and so have millions of other people around the country. Trump has gotten away with detaining citizens and others who are legally in the country, using children as bait to lure their parents, and enriching private contractors to hold people who should be free.
Barack Obama, as president, the “deporter in chief,” wrote a tome displaying vintage bothsidesism, declaring that federal law enforcement has a tough job but that the public wants accountability from ICE. The fact that he finally spoke up is an indication that public anger gave him protection, but it is a warning to be careful of the Democratic Party's modus operandi of branding themselves as the people’s party while doing little except giving lip service.
Billionaire donors are calling the shots, establishing think tanks like Searchlight Institute, which tell democrats to be right wing and advise them that voters really do support ICE and don’t want it to be abolished. The control of oligarchs has made the Democratic Party meaningless, an irrelevance that voters must reject once and for all.
The people of Minnesota are still showing the way, despite two deaths. They do what they can to obstruct ICE operations and whether they realize it or not, they are providing the leadership that millions of people so desperately want. They are showing that electoral politics will not save us, that popular action is the only route to change. The danger now is cooptation from Obama and company singing siren songs that are pleasing to the ear but that will send the people to destruction, just as the sirens did in ancient mythology.
Obama and his heirs have nothing to offer. The Democratic Party’s only purpose is to obstruct any progressive change, to convince people that they are on their side when they are actually committed to preventing even the most token reformism, especially in a moment of crisis. The billionaire funders are in charge of that party and the sooner the rank and file realize that the more quickly they can effect the changes they want on their own.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.
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