Who would have figured, trump really is a totalitarian

Politics and Social Issues
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There are not enough American to pick the jobs. Even better paid these jobs are harsh and unqualified. But you are not totally wrong.

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Is it true ? If it is fascism is really coming on, and fast.

ICE practices and doings

Oregon’s Bay Area on Facebook

There comes a point in every collapsing empire when the mask slips, the euphemisms dissolve, and the institutions meant to uphold the law start operating like the enforcers of a rogue state. That point arrived long ago for ICE, but this week it kicked into something even darker: the Department of Homeland Security has effectively rebranded itself, not in press releases, of course, but in practice as the United States Department of Human Trafficking.

What else do you call it when federal agents, wearing no identification and driving unmarked vehicles, fan out across the country to abduct people off the street without warrants, without due process, and often without cause?

This is not hyperbole. This is not some left-wing overreaction. This is documented, filmed, and witnessed. In Encinitas, California, a woman walking out of the gym tried to intervene as ICE agents bundled a man into a van. When she demanded a warrant, they told her she “wasn’t an interesting party.” When she asked to take down his phone number to call his family, they blocked her. One even tried to slap her phone away. The man vanished. His family may never know what happened.

The ICE officers were masked. They drove unmarked vehicles. They acted like cartel henchmen who went to a police surplus auction. When bystanders questioned them, they accused them of obstructing justice. Because in this America, asking questions about an abduction makes you the criminal.

In Oregon, ICE agents smashed the window of a man’s car in front of his child outside a daycare. That man, Dr. Madi Kbabazade, is a chiropractor. He is married to a U.S. citizen. He is a community pillar. None of that mattered. His baby screamed while officers dragged him out of the driver’s seat. They claimed he overstayed a visa. His wife says that’s false. But let’s entertain ICE’s version for a moment: since when does an expired visa justify a preschool smash-and-grab arrest in front of children?

In Sacramento, ICE agents tackled a U.S. citizen at Home Depot and tried to mace his wife. His brother is an active-duty Marine Corps officer. Doesn’t matter. He had brown skin, and they wanted him. When his wife screamed that he’s a citizen, the agent snapped, “Google me.” That’s the level of professionalism now required for federal law enforcement: a bruising ego and a burner phone.

These are not isolated incidents. This is the plan. ICE agents are kidnapping people in Alabama, Oregon, California, New York, and even in Manhattan’s federal immigration court plaza. People show up for their court hearings, complying with the law, and are immediately disappeared by agents lurking outside the building. The goal is fear. You can see it in the toddler who watched his father arrested at daycare. You can hear it in the voice of a woman pleading for her husband to be spared, only to be shoved back with pepper spray. You can feel it in the way ICE uses churches, schools, and courthouses as bait.

If this were happening in another country, we’d call it what it is: state-sponsored human trafficking. Disappearances. Detentions. Transport across jurisdictions. Zero transparency. Family separation. Total disregard for due process. All carried out by agents of the government with full knowledge and authorization from the Trump administration.

And let’s not forget the conditions after these abductions. Detention centers are overstuffed. One El Paso facility designed for 1,000 people is currently holding over 6,000. Showers? Rare. Clean clothes? Not likely. Congressional oversight? Blocked. ICE is also running covert detention sites in Manhattan, holding people for weeks in unsanitary conditions with no records, no legal access, no daylight. The only thing missing is a corporate sponsorship and a dystopian jingle.

It’s not just immigrants. It’s not just visa overstays. It’s not just “criminal aliens,” as Trump’s DHS so gleefully calls them. It’s your neighbor. Your patient. Your colleague. It’s a U.S. citizen whose skin tone offended a badge. It’s a doctor arrested while holding his baby’s hand. It’s a woman screaming, “That’s my husband!” while agents pepper spray her face and drag him into an unmarked vehicle.

And the response from the federal government? Silence. Or worse, deflection. They call this “interior enforcement.” They claim they’re protecting American sovereignty. But sovereignty is meaningless if you dismantle the Constitution to protect it. There is no freedom in a state where masked agents can kidnap citizens with impunity, then threaten their spouses and claim the authority to vanish the inconvenient.

So, let’s stop calling this the Department of Homeland Security. That ship sailed. What we have now is the United States Department of Human Trafficking, a government-run operation that abducts, relocates, and conceals human beings with bureaucratic flair and fascist intent. They even have their own branding strategy, masks, black SUVs, buzzwords like “interference” and “obstruction”, all designed to make state violence look like national defense.

No law-abiding society can survive this. No decent person should tolerate it. And no administration that allows it to happen should be trusted with power for a single day longer.

And if you think they won’t come for you, just wait until they do.

2 Likes
65

There are plenty of Americans to do those jobs. They just need to be motivated to do them.

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Classically, labor is “motivated” to do difficult and dangerous work by being given the alternate choice of starving to death

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I’m motivated to work construction because I can make good money.

Construction isn’t that dangerous or difficult, but many people think it is and that’s why it’s one of the biggest industries for cheap labor. The fact that there is so much cheap labor available means pay for entry level construction jobs stays too low for Americans to even consider.

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Totally disagreeing:

People don’t work in construction basic jobs, because it is underpaid. If you give 100 K a year to a mason, you will get candidates, but are you ready to pay the price of the house ?

In France, garbage collectors were all migrants. the pay check has been improved, the working conditions have been improved, and more French people work as such.

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You do have it all figured out don’t you. I have over two decades as a framing carpenter, so I know a thing or two about job sites and trades. The job sites can be kept safe and jobs can be done safely, but it takes dedication and unwavering attention, because things can so south in a hurry.

Although, as for your usual gib statement such as construction not being dangerous*, I think you’ll find many who could take issue with that.

In reality, of course, the business of on-site construction is strenuous and often dangerous work. Despite accounting for only 4.7% of the workforce, 20% of all worker deaths occur in construction, and rates of work-related injuries are exceedingly high.

The Nature of Dangerous Construction Work is Radically Changing - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering

But they are just lawyers, what would they know?

  • * Oh, and as for that smugness among some workers, ‘heck this is a walk in the park’, is exactly what gets them injured sometimes killed.
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The jobs that migrants get are working in fields, picking food because it can’t be done by a machine, butchering chickens, cleaning toilets and sure construction too. The differences to native born, as a percentage of labor is not huge, it’s not like “all strawberry pickers are Mexicans".

Pressure on wages comes from people paying them.

1 Like
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I’m not surprised to hear that more French are taking garbage collector jobs after the pay was increased.

Construction is different though, because it’s not municipal work. Ultimately, pay depends on the market.

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I didn’t say construction isn’t dangerous at all, I said it isn’t that dangerous. A few jobs are more dangerous than construction.

Even taking account of that, your chances are being killed or seriously injured are not as high as the average person thinks.

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Taking account of what?

So now, we’re on about what the average person is thinking about threats?

???

But since you brought it, before believing the next random average person, you might consider this.

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Took a look at that link, you’re a funny fella. Guess it’s all relative.

Still though I loved the spice of walking tall walls, setting trusses, climbing scaffoldings, and such,

I was also always appreciative of getting back down on the ground, safe and sound.

10 Most Dangerous Jobs in America - Forbes advisor

9. Construction Trade Workers

  • Number of fatal injuries (2021): 15

  • Fatal injury rate: 23 per 100,000 full-time workers

  • Non-fatal injury rate: 2.4 per 100 full-time workers

  • Average Salary: $56,510

  • Most common fatal accident: Falls, slips, and trips

  • =======================

5. Structural Iron and Steel Workers

  • Number of fatal injuries (2021): 14

  • Fatal injury rate: 36 per 100,000 full-time workers

  • Non-fatal injury rate: 3.7 per 100 full-time workers

  • Average Salary: $64,800

  • Most common fatal accident: Falls, slips, and trips

  • =======================

3. Roofers

  • Number of fatal injuries (2021): 115

  • Fatal injury rate: 59 per 100,000 full-time workers

  • Non-fatal injury rate: 2.4 per 100 full-time workers

  • Average Salary: $51,190

  • Most common fatal accident: Falls, slips, and trips

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Yep. Like I said, a few jobs are more dangerous.

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The issues with farm labor is the steady drain physically, the working conditions, and the lack of benefits

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That’s plausible, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, but why single out farm laborers?

FWIW, construction laborers have to deal with those things as well.

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This is where this started:

The employers benefit from this lousy system and they own the politicians. Neither is going to fix it. Pitting working class people against each other is their plan. Comparing who is hurt more isn’t giving change anything.

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A very Orwellian way of retelling the facts