When The ICE Police State Drag Net Hits Close To Your Home & Family

By Tom Balistrieri
Special to the Commoner Call (9/9/19)

Big ICE Border Patrol check-point stop on I-89 in West Lebanon, New Hampshire  yesterday [9/5]  near the exit to a popular local Mexican Restaurant named Gusanoz. The owner, Nick Yager, was interviewed by the local newspaper, and he told them that immigrants have been his best workers. A young Mexican American woman and her kids were caught in the stop. She said they didn’t give her any trouble, but she was scared and she had to explain it to her kids, who were in the backseat. (That ‘Young Mexican American woman and her kids’ is my nephew’s daughter and her kids)

This is our 1939 … and if you don’t believe it you are utterly blind. A Border Patrol Check-Point, in New Hampshire looking for Brown people. How would YOU feel if the government was stopping you as you drove to work or while on vacation, Italians or Irish or Polish? You were being stopped because you were lily white. How would you feel if during that ‘Gestapo Stop’ your child was taken from you? How would you feel if you were suddenly imprisoned, returned to a country where you faced violence and death or poverty… and lost everything including your family?

ICE is setting up road blocks on highways and checking cars…. in New Hampshire….are you kidding me? What have we become? Who have we become?

We did this to the Native Americans. We did this to the African Americans. We did this to the Japanese. We did this to the Chinese. We did this to the Muslims. Now we are doing the same to those from Central and South America. And we call ourselves a great Christian nation? We sing, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” What the fuck is wrong with us?

Wake up!

Wake up. The Soulless Lying Sack of Skin is dismantling everything. WAKE UP!!!! Climate Crisis. Sixth Extinction. The skin bag lying about everything …. everything. Bolsonaro. Kim Jung Un. Putin. Trump. The Beast has many names now.

The Beast is working hard to lead us into complete chaos and death…Evil is real. YOU MAY NOT FEEL IT because we live in perfect little New England….well…read the above paragraph again. ‘Brown’ people seeking ‘peace on earth’ live in New England too and their world is suddenly not so peaceful.

Send your kid off today on the school bus. Enjoy your perfect Friday night dinner. Heck, maybe go out for Mexican. Don’t read the news because it is so negative. Most of us are very lucky and we don’t feel the reality of it all, yet. Yet. Already we have forgotten the Amazon burning, the latest mass shooting, the murder of Indigenous people, Trump’s latest lies…. we normalize so fast. We are so very de-sensitized. Until they come for us. Until we have no water, or air, or food. Until we are shot by a gun toting murderer as we walk in the mall. Until the Beast turns ICE on us because we speak against the Beast.

Thanks to my grandfather

I am grateful for my privileged life. I am grateful to my grandfather, my dark brown oily-skinned Sicilian non-English speaking guinea, WOP, Dago grandfather, who braved being an immigrant. Thank you Grandpa for suffering through all of this for us … for wanting something greater for us … . Please help me to know how to more successfully fight this dark time.

My nephew’s daughter, the woman and her children who were stopped, just wrote this because people are telling her to ‘lighten up’….

“Please stop telling me not to have feelings about the border patrol stops, if you haven’t had to prep your kids because they may pull you over I don’t want to hear it! It sucks and it’s horrible and keep in my mind that sure if you don’t have an accent or don’t appear to be from somewhere else they just wave you off, but think about it, they stop people who don’t look “American” what the hell does that mean?! It’s nerve racking and a horrible feeling and if you don’t get it, check your white privilege!”

And this from a friend who knows Alex,

“Alex, I can’t even imagine. I have a friend who is a legal immigrant from Sweden and she had to pull over after she was waved through, because she had a panic attack from her fear and anxiety. It tore my heart out and so does this, I hate that you have had to have this conversation with your babies. What is happening is wrong, there’s a whole Amendment about it but unless it has to do with protecting our guns people don’t care what Amendments are infringed upon.”

What have we become?

Who have we become?