"Last July, while on his way to his job as a security guard at a cannabis farm in California, George Retes was tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and arrested by federal agents conducting an immigration raid. The agents ignored the license plate on Retes's car and the sticker on his windshield, both of which identified him as a U.S. Army veteran, and did not even bother to determine whether he was a citizen before strip-searching him and locking him up in a cell."
""No one deserves to be treated like this," Retes told this magazine after his release. "To have no rights. It's just crazy to think about-that they can just mask up and take someone off the street, no questions asked, and you're just gone.""
"Retes is one of an estimated 170 American citizens who have been detained by federal immigration agents as part of President Donald Trump's mass-deportation campaign, according to ProPublica, which warns that the count is both incomplete and unofficial because the federal government is not documenting its own abuses of power. At least 20 of those citizens, ProPublica found, had been detained overnight and incommunicado-a violation of their constitutional rights. When questioned about these detentions, Trump-administration officials claimed that the citizens had assaulted federal agents-an assertion proved false in many cases by video evidence or an inability by the government to produce serious charges reflecting the accusations. ( One thrown sandwich hardly counts.)"
George Retes, a U.S. Army veteran working as a security guard at a California cannabis farm, was tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, strip-searched, and arrested by federal agents during an immigration raid. Agents ignored his license plate and windshield sticker identifying him as a veteran and did not determine his citizenship before detaining him overnight without access to a lawyer or family. ProPublica estimates about 170 American citizens have been detained in the administration's mass-deportation campaign, with at least 20 held overnight and incommunicado, violating constitutional rights. Administration claims that detained citizens assaulted agents were often contradicted by video evidence or lack of serious charges. A Border Patrol commander said agents were arresting people based on particular characteristics.
Read at The Atlantic
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