U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement was formed after the September 11th, 2001 attacks to focus on removing immigrants who had committed crimes. Fast forward 17 years later, Donald Trump directed his administration to target anyone in the country illegally. Despite the government’s claims that ICE is mostly targeting people convicted of crimes, many people accuse the agency of stoking fear and tearing families apart. Los Angeles based punk band UPPER DOWNER have teamed up to expose the force to unprecedented scrutiny and criticism and call for ICE to be abolished. Pissed off about the imminent ICE raids in major cities across the US, UPPER DOWNER recorded a song about it, and you can check it out below, along with the first hand commentary from the band’s guitarist/vocalist Chris:
ICE is the US immigration and customs enforcement agency that is within the US department of homeland security. It was created as a reactionary response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Unfortunately this agency was unable to have any measurable preventative impact on further “terrorist attacks” and instead, started honing in on arresting and deporting law abiding immigrants and refugees who are mostly from south of the US/Mexico border. They recieve backing from right wing media and uninformed voters who blame the immigrants for taking American jobs leeching off the economy, bringing diseases and crime to the US. This sounds pretty similar to how Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat for Germany’s social and economic problems that inevitably led to the Holocaust and WWII. Whats more is that ICE have built detention centers at the border which remarkably resemble concentration camps in appearance and inhumane conditions. Now, I’m not branding this as a full blown cataclysm just yet, but I think the citizens of the world need to wake up and call this out for what it is. Its ethnic cleansing, and thats a step towards taking the word “never” out of “never again”.
