New York is creating a team of legal observers that will don purple vests to monitor and record the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement officers as they seek to detain and deport migrants, the state’s attorney general said on Tuesday.
The announcement follows weeks of sometimes violent tumult in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed, masked agents as he tries to deport more migrants than any of his predecessors.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the state’s new legal observers would be volunteer employees from her office, trained to observe, without interfering, whether Trump’s immigration enforcement “remains within the bounds of the law”.
“I am proud to protect New Yorkers’ constitutional rights to speak freely, protest peacefully, and go about their lives without fear of unlawful federal action,” James, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability.“
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said James was putting New Yorkers in danger by not working with ICE.
While I get what you’re saying, having officially anointed state observers that are sitting there and being like “the state of New York is officially watching you, and I’m it” is a change to the equation.
Sure, it’s “just a few more observers”, but any of those state appointed observers witnessing constitutional (state or federal) or state law breaches are probably going to yield immediate and aggressive state prosecution of any ICE agents involved.
And if ICEatzgruppen decides to accost or arrest any of those officially appointed observers, that kind of a signal to begin no-holds-barred total legal warfare.
Public observers are absolutely important. But this is important a different reason.
Thanks, stranger. Sometimes my cynicism takes me toward dark places, but this is a splash of realistic optimism.
Hey, no worries. I get pessimistic as fuck about shit these days, especially when everyone who’s ostensibly in a position to do anything about anything is like “this is a very disturbing development 🙁” and then resigns their position in protest or votes to fund ICEatzgruppen or whatever. It absolutely fucking maddening.
But I view this development as one of the first true signs that officialdom is laying some groundwork to be like “no. Fuck you. We are going to use the system you are trying to abuse against you. And if you end run it, we are going to make it very fucking clear that the system no longer applies to anyone, anywhere.”
Or at least, that’s where I hope this stuff goes.