Stephen Miller Sent 9 Special Operations Goons to Tail a Guy Driving ICE Out Signs

There’s one more detail about the documents (indexed here) that Isaac Sant’s attorney, Kevin Riach, released in a bid to get more discovery that I need to point to before trying to synthesize it all. As I laid out in this post, Riach’s discovery motion works on three levels: - The exhibits have generated media attention, both local and national, on the abusive spying. - The motion makes a compelling motion (now backed by an Amicus from three libertarian NGOs) that Sant needs an extraordinary range of discovery to defend himself. - That’s because this prosecution is part of a monstrous effort, starting last year in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder, to treat any opposition to Trump as terrorism. That’s part of the import of the designation of CUC Op Keyhole designation in the opening document. It means that the operation has been approved for the kind of tactics HSI is supposed to use against drug cartels (a point Josh Kovensky made here). And the excessiveness is shown in a number of surveillance documents showing Special Operations guys conducting physical surveillance: - Special Operations surveillance targeting Cam Kennedy on April 12 and April 19, both events at a Baptist Church. - Special Operations surveillance targeting a de-arrest training on February 22. They brought two SOG teams, totaling 20 people. And even though “this event was canceled due to the inclement weather,” those goons stuck around for two hours doing registration checks on cars at an event that had been canceled. - Special Operations surveillance targeting four people on February 26 that spanned from 6:30AM to 7:53PM, the main excitement of which involved the transfer of ICE Out signs from vehicle to vehicle. They sent nine Special Operations goons out to watch Emmett Doyle drive ICE Out signs around in his truck. They justified all this, in part, by calling these “apparent shields.” They justified using teams trained to fight drug cartels in part because of those “shields,” and in part because Stephen Miller had Trump sign a memo declaring people carrying these “apparent shields” terrorists, based on fabricated claims of assault and fabricated claims of doxing. These campaigns often begin by isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder or other violent action against them. They do so through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them. As in the case of several ICE agents in Los Angeles being doxed, the goal of these campaigns can be to obstruct the operations of the Federal Government as well as aid and abet criminal activity the Federal Government is lawfully pursuing. These campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation. There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. To a degree, this was a continuation of Greg Bovino’s invasions, in which he was accompanied by tactical goons who played a disproportionate role in fabricating those assault claims. But long after Bovino’s effort got people killed, teams trained for warfare stuck around, tailing people with ICE Out signs in their truck. While we focus on how evil they are, don’t sleep on how fucking lazy ICE agents are. We consistently found them just sitting in parking lots (sometimes empty so they weren’t running plates) and sitting in front of people’s houses involved in observing them.