Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman, opens with an unhinged racist, Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard, standing in front of a screen as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation is projected onto his face. Beauregard laments the glory days when Anglo-Saxons were unchallenged masters of the nation, repeating several times, “We had a great way of life.” Today that lost “great way of life” has become a dog whistle for white supremacists and anti-immigrant groups alike.
Beauregard may be a fictional character, but John Tanton is not. Tanton is a retired Michigan opthalmologist who single-handedly created about a dozen white supremacist and anti-immigrant groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes most of them as hate groups because they demonize non-whites and immigrants as inferior races and cultures.
One of Tanton’s white supremacist creations is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and one of its most vocal advocates is Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, who sits with Tanton on FAIR’s national advisory board.
On August 20th Tom Hodgson was at the White House to celebrate Donald Trump’s “Salute to the Heroes of ICE and CPB.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protecton (CBP) have been in the news a lot — for anything but heroic acts.
But they are Donald Trump’s private deportation army, and heroes to anti-immigrant groups like FAIR and CIS, whose policies both Trump and Hodgson support.
Abolish ICE
When Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. Senator, has to walk back remarks critical of institutional racism in the nation’s police and criminal justice system, it’s another sign that we live in something uncomfortably close to a police state.
If criticizing the police is off-limits, imagine the response to calling for the shutdown of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Though Republicans have long called for shutdowns of agencies they don’t like — the IRS, DEA, EPA, OSHA, for starters — shutting down an abusive law-enforcement agency that functions like the president’s personal paramilitary force is a step too far for most Republicans.
And, predictably, centrist Democrats agree with them.
With progressive Democrats like Randy Bryce, Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and progressiv-ish Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Kirstin Gillibrand calling for an ICE shutdown and possibly a reboot, party strategist Tad Devine sees opportunity for Centrists. For Devine, candidates like Mikie Sherrill and Andy Kim, and kinda-sorta-Democrats like Heidi Heitkamp, ought to distance themselves from, and bash whenever possible, what the New York Times calls “far left” critics of ICE. Heidi Heitkamp rolled her eyes and said “It’s crazy town,” echoing a 33-word Boston Herald article, “Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley crosses border into crazy territory.”
But shutting down ICE is not such a crazy idea.
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