But that’s not the worst of the locura that swirls around La Frontera. Tens of thousands of migrantes/refugees thought they were finally going to be allowed to cross the border because the Biden Administration had indicated that it would no longer enforce Title 42. This Trump policy, continued by Biden, denied them entry because of the alleged risk of Covid spread, even though every major US health agency assessed that no such health risk existed. In fact, by squeezing these populations into unsafe encampments, Title 42 increased their health risk. Well, now a Trump-appointed US federal judge has blocked the Biden Administration from ending Title 42.
As if that’s not enough, on May 10, the Los Angeles Times reported that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — ICE — has created a surveillance system to spy on most people living the United States, without legal warrants or attention to privacy laws. A report by the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology shows that ICE has collected data on hundreds of millions of US residents largely without oversight or accountability. So any fool who thought that ICE only endangered Brown migrantes should know that ICE is watching them too. They could potentially be rounded up for any perceived threat to “domestic tranquility.”
For real now, the tail wags the dog in El Norte, where ICE has become the country’s largest spy agency and the Border Patrol its largest armed police agency, bigger even than the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. Talk about crazy politics in Los Estados Unidos . . . Tanta locura y más!