First we had feds in civilian clothing and face masks with no IDs but with badges. Which was bad enough, because I keep reading stories about people buying badges off the internet and pretending to be ICE officers to commit crimes against people. But now they’re not even bothering with the badges. People would be absolutely justified in responding to these acts with violence in self-defense. The feds are counting on people believing the claims and being cowed enough that they can work with secrecy, but at some point they’re going to run into someone who doesn’t accept them at their word - or who does, and realizes that it’s still an extra-judicial kidnapping with dire consequences and reacts appropriately.
And here we have an account of a disturbing escalation:
Two men were outside Jackson’s door, dressed in slacks and polos. They were not wearing badges.
“I first thought they were going to try to sell me something. But as soon as I opened the door they said, ‘Are you Clayton Jackson?’ I think I shook my head or said ‘yeah,’ and then I heard, ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’”
Jackson says alarms went off in his head. “My first instinct was to want to know what this was about. That it must be a misunderstanding. So I started to tell them about how I’ve been involved in some pro bono work. Then this voice in my head kicked in and just said, you need to shut the fuck up — don’t say anything .”
The officers never identified themselves. They did ask if they could come inside.
“I said absolutely not,” Jackson says. “I asked for their names and badge numbers. They said they didn’t have to provide that information at this time. So I told them I’d be calling my lawyer and I shut the door behind me.”
Jackson says his mind started racing. “I needed to know who they were, what agency they were with. Then I remembered that I have the Ring camera. Maybe I could watch the video of the incident and figure out who they were from that.”
There was no video. “That’s when I learned why my VPN had gone down. It wasn’t the VPN. Someone had shut off my Wifi.”
The CBP and Homeland security version of events clearly didn’t hold water, claiming he was picked up in a completely different city (oh, that bit of the report was a “mistake”!), and the only way any of their claims could have been true was if the guy had been having some sort of mental health breakdown that caused him to make delusional claims to federal agents. Reading his story, it’s pretty easy to figure out who’s telling the truth, and it’s obvious nothing the feds said was remotely true, they just bald-faced lied about it all.
