UPCOMING EVENT: Next week, Wednesday, February 5 at noon. FFF is hosting a get-together in downtown Boston after the oral arguments in Ian Freeman’s appeal, where we will discuss the oral arguments. I will be there. Trillium Brewing Fort Point, 50 Thomson Pl, Boston, MA 02210; (857) 449-0083; https://trilliumbrewing.com. Reminder: The Court of Appeals is located at One Courthouse Way in Boston. The oral arguments are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on the 7th floor of the courthouse. Trillium Brewing is about one block away. See here for more details.
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According to the Washington Post, President Trump is now issuing quota directives to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, directing ICE agents to ramp up their daily arrests of immigrants from hundreds to at least 1,200 to 1,500. So, more farms and restaurants and other establishments should expect an increasing number of armed raids every day in a nation where lots of people sing to themselves how proud they are to be Americans because at least they know they’re free. Meanwhile, fear across the nation is pervasive, even among legal immigrants and even darker-skinned American citizens, who are afraid that they will be swept up in the raids and deported.
I can’t help but wonder whether Trump will now move to a system of snitch bounties as a way to catch more illegals. If he were to offer, say, $500 to anyone who snitches on an illegal immigrant, the ICE agents would be able to meet their arrest quotas more easily.
Many years ago, I visited Cuba, which is ruled by a communist, totalitarian regime. A guy on the streets told me that in the residential areas, there was an official snitch on each neighborhood block. His job was to report to the authorities anything out of the ordinary. The scheme was somewhat similar to the U.S. government’s post-9/11 exhortations to Americans to immediately report anything suspicious to the authorities.
So, that’s another possibility here. Trump and ICE could appoint an official snitch on every block, one whose job would be to turn in people in the neighborhood or in a retail establishment who were speaking a foreign language. My hunch is that there would be an overabundance of patriotic Trumpsters who would be willing to take the position for free.
When I was growing up in Laredo, which is on the U.S.-Mexico border, lots of households had maids and nannies who were from Nuevo Laredo and who would come to Laredo illegally. Some of the housewives were terribly abusive of their servants because they knew that the servants couldn’t do much about it — except to quit and go to another household.
If she did that, the servant would do her best to keep her new employer secret. That’s because if the previous housewife learned where the servant was now working, the previous housewife would telephone the Border Patrol and snitch on her. The next morning, the Border Patrol would show up at the new employer’s home, knock on the door, make the arrest, and deport the maid or nanny.
Needless to say, a snitch society is not part and parcel of a genuinely free society. As the Cubans know, it’s part and parcel of a police-state society.
