Nothing but Window Dressing

The shifts in personnel change nothing—abolish ICE

"I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. They ain't seen shit yet.” [Phot credit: Anna Moneymaker]

The fascist Greg Bovino is out of Minneapolis, and it looks like he is going to be forced into retirement. Good riddance. The problem, however, is that Bovino is being replaced by another fascist and thug, Tom Homan. Homan met with Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis, and Governor Tim Walz. Hopefully a solution can be reached here, but there is no reason to trust it would be a permanent one. I’ve been trying to think of an analogy for what’s going on. Is this a shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic? Well, no, not exactly because, sorry to say, ICE isn’t going anywhere. They’re not putting lipstick on a pig either because, again, they’re just switching out one fascist for another.

Perhaps it’s window dressing. Whatever the case, we need to understand that it’s a diversion and we can’t fall for it. Department of Homeland Security and puppy murderer Kristi Noem still has a job. She, along with Bovino, is largely responsible for the chaos and horror that has been unleashed on the citizens of Minneapolis. Also, Kash Patel, JD Vance, and others in the Trump regime who defamed Renee Goode and Alex Pretti before all the facts of the case were available are suffering no consequences of their defamation of two murder victims. The change of personnel is a way for Donald to change the subject and avoid taking responsibility. He is never to blame for anything. Somebody else always gets thrown under the bus. This time, it’s Greg Bavino. It may well be Kristi Noem in the not- too-distant future. But what exactly is going to change?

The thing that worries me most is that Democrats will fall for this and back off their insistence that ICE be entirely dismantled. They have a lot of leverage right now because a budget has to be passed by January 30 to avoid a government shutdown. In the wake of the murders of Good and Pretti, Senate Democrats said they will refuse to fund ICE and the DHS. They will risk a government shutdown to make sure ICE is defunded. Many Democrats are also calling for Kristi Noem to be impeached or fired.

I worry that Democrats will think that removing Bovino and replacing him with Homan and that the Trump regime’s overtures to Gov. Walz mean that all is well. I worry that they will think, as they often do, that it’s better to go along to get along than it is to make the hard choice to take a stand. I worry that they’ll make the calculation that it’s worth keeping ICE in operation, with conditions, as long as the government stays open.

I hope this isn’t the case because there’s plenty of evidence to believe that the Republican party will do nothing substantive to reform ICE. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has made it clear that she will vote to fund ICE and she’s an alleged moderate. Donald made it clear that he believes Mr. Pretti is dead because he was carrying a gun. He is, in other words, perpetuating the narrative that Pretti is responsible for his own death despite the fact that he was carrying his gun legally and he never removed it from its holster.

Sending Homan to Minnesota and transferring Bovino is not enough. The entire system has to be dismantled. Anything else is window dressing designed to trick the American people into believing there have been substantive changes to the current system they reject wholesale. Democrats need to understand that. Donald Trump is responsible for unleashing the Gestapo into American cities and it needs to stop.