‘Spectacle of disorder’: How ICE creates the chaos ICE, cops, and the military are called in to ‘fix’
President Trump repeatedly promised that his mass deportation efforts would target “the worst of the worst” criminals, yet the government’s own data reveals that immigrants with no criminal record are the largest group in US immigration detention today. How can the Trump administration justify its deployment of federal agents, and even the military, to US cities based on the factually disprovable fictions that American cities are crime-ridden “war zones” overrun with criminal “illegal aliens”? To answer that, one must study the long-established precedent in the USA of overpolicing poor communities of color that are painted as inherently violent, chaotic, and crime-ridden. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with TRNN reporters Stephen Janis and Taya Graham about what the history of policing in America can teach us about Trump’s authoritarian deployment of law enforcement agencies today.
Credits:
Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. The Watts Riots, sometimes referred to as Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in Watts neighborhood and surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11th and 16th from 1965. The rise was motivated by anger at racist and abusive practices of Los Angeles Police, as well as his grievances over unemployment discrimination and residential segregation of property. The backdrop of it was that they arrested our individual that they claimed didn’t pass the drunk driving test. Out of that grew a conversation about police kicking a pregnant woman. At any rate,