- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.
“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.
“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.
Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.
Why is ICE seizing anything outside of whoever they supposedly had a warrant for? Did the warrant say take all electronics and valuables as they are being used to hide/fund someone we don’t like, but the people that live their, yeah their fine let them be? Like what? How is this not just want to be terrorists fucking over people with impunity?
They have been doing shit like this for years anyway. The cops in some communities even outright stop countless vehicles coming out in order to 'seize drug money’and they end up taking any cash the person has without any evidence whatsoever. This is some Robin Hood villain shit.
Robin Hood was stealing from the rich to give to the poor, not robbing the poor for the rich.
“Robin Hood villain”
Civil asset forfeiture… It’s uh, it’s not great.
There’s a movie called Rebel Ridge in which this practice, and a corrupt police department, serve as the antagonists. It’s a very harsh movie but very vindicating conclusion.
It is so demoralizing to try and explain civil asset forfeiture. I’ve never had a single person believe that it’s real when I tell them about it - everybody insists that it can’t possibly be true since it’s so flagrantly unconstitutional.
John Oliver had a segment on this that may help convince people that it is real: https://youtu.be/3kEpZWGgJks
It’s “constitutional” because they’re accusing the “money” of being used illegally. There’s no actual person being accused here, but if you want to get your money back you’ll need to prove it’s innocence in court.
It’s ridiculous. At least the Institute for Justice has been winning court cases against this, but there’s still a long way to go: https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
Edit: typo
Let’s call it what it is. State sponsored theft of civilians.
It’s piracy.
If it is piracy that is authorized by the government it’s called privateering.
Oh, okay, that’s much better.
Why does ICE have jurisdiction to seize civil assets anyway? Does my cash need a fucking passport now?
We decided we needed to be able to shut down drug dealers by seizing their money without need for any real proof. Since then the majority of seizures, 84%, are civil most incidental to purposeless searches that turn up no crime. Many seizures are in fact under $1000 and most are under $2000. In theory you can get your money back but it often would cost thousands so for most victims its impossible to actually get money back without spending more.
Basically for decades the authorities have been acting as robbers and have collectively stolen billions from the people directly often stopping minorities for driving while black and treating the $400 in random bob’s wallet as proceeds of an imaginary crime they don’t need to substantiate. Being black and having $400 is enough.
This is why it was so important to declare a “War on Drugs.” Most people thought it was just political rhetoric, but it was far more than that. By declaring a literal WAR on drugs, it offers the government an array of options that aren’t available in peacetime. One of those being the ability to alter the way suspects/combatants and their possessions/ weapons are treated. Money and valuables can be treated as a tool of drug dealing, and confiscated as spoils of war.
Youre really misunderstanding what declaring an actual war is or is not. Technically the US has not been in an actual declared war since WWII.
The Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Iraq wars, none of those were declared as actual war by congress. The war on drugs is just political rhetoric and has no actual legal bearing.
You cant declare formal war on drug use because drug use isnt a recognized sovereign country
Youre argument makes no sense, and is contradicted in each sentence.
And yet, they were still wars, with lots of deaths of Americans. Clearly, those that are committed to fighting wars, don’t feel like they require the distinction of being legally declared wars by Congress.
And yet many people have died, been imprisoned, and died as a result. Just try to tell people who are serving years or decades in prison that their sentences were just “political rhetoric,” and had “no actual legal bearing.”
Youre fundamentally confusing what “political rhetoric” is versus what a legal action is. Calling the war on drugs a war doesnt make it a war with any actual legal modifications for anything.
Calling the war on drugs a war is a political justification for the actions taken against drug use. Therefore, calling the war on drugs a war is not a legal thing. Its just political rhetoric.
I dont see how else to explain that for you
You keep saying that, but their actual actions contradict that.
Its like saying HitlerPig isn’t supposed to rule with Executive Actions, he needs to legislate through Congress, as Constitutionally-mandated, and yet here he is, doing it.
It doesn’t matter what the law says, if the result is the same. They framed the “War on Drugs” as political rhetoric to provide plausible deniability for enablers like you, when in reality, it was absolutely used as a justification to greatly militarize law enforcement, deny citizens (mostly minorities) their Constituional and Civil Rights, increase prison sentences, embrace civil forfeiture, etc. You accepted it as strong language to fight the drug scourge, but they used it as cover to supress our rights, in the name of drugs.
It worked so well, they used the same strategy again. In the 2000s, they used the threat of Terrorism to declare a War on Terror, and establish Homeland Security, and reduce our rights even more.
How do you know they are even ICE. Not saying they aren’t agents, but there was an EO that basically repurposed a lot of other agencies to become ICE deputies. DEA, ATF, etc.
Heard in a podcast that 80% of ATF is now doing ice stuff.
The life savings were illegal immigrants?
/s , obviously
The real reason is probably civil asset forfeiture.
Generally the search and seizure is for the property, not the people. That’s IF they bother with a warrant which apparently is a big ask these days.