President Donald Trump promised ICE agents would only go after undocumented immigrants. But on the South Side of Chicago, federal presence continues to target U.S. citizens, and folks are outraged. With all the news of Black American citizens getting hemmed up and detained, the whole thing feels a bit…like Karens making Black folks’ lives miserable just because we exist.
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Karens are typically white women, who use their race and class to get their way — usually against people of color. The rise of the Karen began in 2020; over time, more white men and women have blurred the lines of common decency all due to their race.
Similarly, experts say ICE agents are disregarding the tried and true practices of the agency. “Leaving aside border checkpoints, immigration officers have power to consensually question anyone, just like a police officer does; but to detain someone even briefly they require individualized suspicion that the person is violating the immigration laws,” Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law & Policy, told NPR.
Warren King, a 19-year-old Black teen, was shopping in a local Walgreens when ICE agents flooded the building on a mission, ABC 7 reported. Moments before, a federal operation led to a car crash, where two alleged migrants fled on foot. While King had nothing to do with the original pursuit, that didn’t stop him from being targeted.
He first noticed the ICE officers inside the store, so the teen walked outside and was immediately slammed to the ground and placed under arrest by an agent. Shocking video of the interaction showed King’s relative yelling, “He’s a citizen! He’s a citizen!” to the officer.
“You don’t know what’s going on, so get the *** back!” the arresting agent can be heard responding. King said he was one of three people arrested during the interaction, and it’s since left him with serious trauma.
“I just graduated high school,” King told ABC News. “So, they can come for literally anybody.” Since the start of President Trump’s second term, immigration enforcement has been under heavy fire from activists, judges, politicians and regular Americans who claim their practices are getting out of control.
Countless videos from Americans nationwide show ICE agents aggressively shouting at, beating and wrongfully detaining people in the country, regardless of their citizenship status. Agents have been accused of “kidnapping” people with no regard for protocol or the Constitution. Now, they’re being regarded as “thugs” who are terrorizing the country… or worse, the new “Karens.”
“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told CNN. “They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.”
These agents under Trump are trained less, paid more and are usually masked– which is unprecedented, NPR reported. With the president’s stamp of approval, it seems the officers are free to do whatever you please, although the law states the opposite. That’s why more people should know their rights and record everything.
“The first question anyone should ask if they feel uncomfortable when approached by any officer is ‘Am I free to leave?’ If the officer says they are, then they should exercise their right to leave,” Arulanantham continued. “If the officer tries not to answer, the individual should repeat the question until they get a response.”
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