A U.S. Senator Just Turned Me Into Legislation
When a U.S. Senator Calls You Out, You Know You’re Hitting a Nerve
Written by Dominick Skinner | Editor
The last thing I expected when I woke up this morning was a Google alert telling me that my name had just shown up in the US Congress, I rubbed my eyes and looked back at my phone, sure enough, there it was in black and white, Senator Marsha Blackburn decided to use her position as a United States Senator to single me out by name in an official press release. Apparently, the work we have been doing has made her uncomfortable enough to cite me as the reason behind a new bill in congress, and the basis of a threat towards a website, PimEyes, and their Tbisli-based owner, EMEARobotics.
The fact of the matter is, this has nothing to do with me, it is about ICE and the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates as if it were a secret police force. It is about the illegal detentions, the people who have died in their custody, and the horrific conditions that countless others have been forced to endure. It is about an agency that has chosen secrecy and masks over accountability and lawfulness. This is about the agency that has terrorised Americans, kidnapped children and even shot a man in cold blood. True police do not need masks, they do not need to hide their faces from the public they claim to serve and they absolutely do not need to shield their faces because they themselves break laws so regularly to warrant masks.
If ICE agents were proud of their work, they would not be so ashamed as to hide their faces. If their work was lawful, they would not be afraid of sunlight.
Since Trump took over, it has been more clear than ever that ICE is an agency that is not built on justice, it is build cruelty and uses cruelty as a weapon. If ICE acted as a normal police force, who cared about the laws that they were tasked with upholding, then people like me would not be necessary to shine a light on what they are doing. But ICE has built a system of fear, intimidation, and violence, lent directly from the secret police forces of history, like the Gestapo. The current US regime have allowed ICE to operate behind a wall of secrecy, and they believe that wall should never be touched. That is why they are terrified when activists start pulling back the curtain. However, it is not just activists who have taken to fighting against the mask policy of ICE, from New York’s Bar association, to senators on the house floor, and even the state of California, opposition to the masked goons on the streets has become the popular opinion in the USA.
The fact that a sitting Senator has taken the time to try to turn me into the villain of this story only proves the point. They want to criminalize transparency.
If you want to pretend that revealing the identities of agents who hide behind masks is somehow an attack, without recognising the genuine attack present on US democracy by ICE, then you are culpable in the fall of American Democracy, Senator Blackburn.
Families have been destroyed by ICE, neighbourhoods are turning into battle zones as people try to defend their fellow citizens, and people have died at their hands. You are not a representative of your citizens when you advocate for the removal of their human rights. Having seen the record of Senator Blackburn, she believes that software should be used to identify Americans, but that belief stops at ICE. Is it her opinion that ICE are more important than the citizens she represents?
And let me be clear, we would not be doing any of this if ICE agents never put on those masks in the first place. The mask is a symbol of the agency’s shame, it is the admission that what they are doing cannot stand in the light of day. They hide because they know the public would hold them accountable if they saw who was carrying out these acts. They hide because they know they are not serving justice, but enforcing cruelty.
As to the bill itself, and the threat made by the Senator towards me, I don’t care. Bring it on.
I am not ashamed of that fact that I have exposed ICE’s abuses. You should be happy with the work of my team, to make the citizens you represent safer, instead, I anticipate you’ll move to call me a terrorist.
If this makes me the villain in your story, then I can live with that. Because the real villains are the ones who think secret police belong in a free society. And Senator Blackburn is that villain to all US citizens.