I guess you heard about the big raid last Saturday night by ICE. Yeah, they went to Lafayette’s Music Room in Overton Square and locked all the doors, trapping everyone inside. Then they wouldn’t let anybody leave until they’d checked their ID. And anyone whose ID they decided wasn’t acceptable was put in chains and loaded onto buses waiting outside. They didn’t have arrest warrants for anyone, but more than 100 people, at least 30 of them women, were just taken … somewhere. Did I mention they were in chains?
Oh wait, my bad. It wasn’t Lafayette’s in Overton Square. It was El Corralón on Macon Road in Berclair. Does that make a difference to you? It shouldn’t. If federal agents can come to a public club in Berclair and lock the doors and keep people inside, they can do it anywhere. If they can seize brown people without arrest warrants, put them in chains, and force them onto buses, they can do it to anybody. Even white people in Overton Square.
What took place in Memphis Saturday night was unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral. It was a blatant trampling of people’s civil rights. It was the equivalent of throwing a big net into a lake and dragging every fish to shore, hoping to catch a snake. It was pretextual traffic stops writ large. It was rounding up prisoners first and asking questions later. It’s what happened to Jews in pre-war Germany. It’s what routinely happens in police states and banana republics around the globe. And it’s what’s happening right now in the United States of America in small towns and in major cities all over the country.
They aren’t arresting the “worst of the worst,” the rationale given by the Trump administration when this bogus operation started. There’s not even a pretense of that any longer. ICE is just profiling and rounding up brown people, the great majority of whom have no arrest record, and sending as many as they can to detention centers — or Guatemala or Africa or wherever — as fast as they can get them on a bus or a plane. It is legalized terroristic racism. It is federalized white supremacy.
These are human beings with families and jobs and lives. Most of them contribute to our communities, often doing the manual work the rest of us don’t want to take on. Now they are being treated like animals by masked, unidentified agents of the federal government — and in this city they are being aided and abetted by the Memphis Police Department, no matter what Mayor Paul Young says. “Helping with crowd control” at the raid in Berclair is quite literally aiding and abetting. MPD should be protecting the people who live here, not the masked agents from out of town illegally destroying residents’ lives and families. Memphis leaders have bent the knee to this travesty of justice for far too long. Where is their outrage? Where is their courage?
There’s a reason ICE raids are no longer happening in Minneapolis: The people there rose up in protest and the political leaders there demanded that the harassment and seizures stop. It took two people being killed by ICE in Minneapolis to push that city’s citizens and political leaders to say “Enough!” The death count for the “Memphis Safe Task Force” (MSTF) is four — so far — the latest being Tyrin Johnson, the young man who was shot in the back in July by the National Guard. Somehow, the national media has overlooked the number of ICE-related deaths in Memphis, which is higher than in any other city. Light needs to be shined on the situation.
I was pleased to see this week that a group of more than 50 local businesses (and counting) has organized what they’re calling the “Free the 901 BUYcott.” They are refusing to allow “search or service” to the federal task force. On Monday, they held a press conference calling on local elected officials to use their power and influence to “restrict the Task Force’s access to our city property and resources,” and “resist the normalization of militarized police separating families and murdering Memphians in the streets.”
It’s a good start. And it’s about time.
