As Rachel Maddow says, watch what they do and not what they say.

The press needs to stop reporting what “DHS says.”

Photo by Meg on Unsplash

On Monday, I had the pleasure of joining Antonia Hylton of MSNOW for an interview. Antonia wanted to discuss the morning’s Washington Post article, “Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers.” She opened with the article and an investigative piece that she did on ICE and immigration. I then answered about three questions. That is fairly standard in mainstream media. I do not enjoy doing these types of interviews because it is not possible to explain something so complicated in a minute or less, but that is the format and what it requires.

MSNOW published the lede but cut my statements in the clips posted to YouTube and their app. This is their prerogative. I was not told why, and frankly, I am not offended. I was happy to have been given the opportunity to speak live. MSNOW has tons of clips to choose from and cannot possibly publish everything they do on their sites. They may have been disappointed in my statements commenting on the media and press, but then again, they may not have been. I simply do not know, nor do I care to spend time wondering about it now.

Because I do not have the video, I cannot say verbatim what the questions and responses were. My neighbor happened to take a quick video when she saw I was on TV. It is only a partial, but gives you an idea of the conversation on why there is little accountability.

Antonia wanted to know what my thoughts were on the WAPO piece that described hundreds of use of force incidents inside ICE facilities. I stated that the report showed the pattern and practice of the agency that has gone on since its inception. It is well documented that people held in ICE and CBP/Border Patrol custody are often beaten, tased, pepper sprayed and so on. The ACLU has documented ICE abuses over and over again for years.

None of this is new.

She asked why we are just hearing about this, and while I explained that there were a few reasons, the most important reason is because more can see ICE violence happening on national news. While many Americans do not care about how immigrants are treated, I have found that most do not know that these agencies have always behaved this way. Perhaps that is intentional ignorance, perhaps it is not. Either way, most have little comprehension of how these agencies have run amok on the southern border with little accountability and have designed complicated coverup systems to hide their use of force crimes. Most believe the agencies and their agents are only behaving this way because Trump is ordering them to do so.

The truth, which is what I told Antonia, is that these agencies have used the southern border these last two decades to hone their violence skills and to design and perfect the coverup systems used to protect their agents and the agencies. I said that Americans either did not care because it was aimed at Black and Brown undocumented bodies, or they genuinely did not know because the national press had not covered the abuses of these agencies well until now.

Antonia said that DHS replied that ICE officers are highly trained in de-escalation techniques and are trained to use the minimal amount of force necessary to perform their jobs. I replied that the statement is true if you only consider the academy trainings that agents/officers receive in the first few months of official training. Academy training is generally by the book, follows the Constitution, the law and policy. But this fails to recognize that it is the field trainings and the sector level trainings where immigration agents are taught how to get away with use of force violations. That is where we were and still are taught how to ram cars without just cause, how to give a Mexican heart attack without leaving marks, how to get away with sexual assaults of women and children in custody, beatings, tasings, etc.

When Antonia asked why Americans are so unaware that all this is normal pattern and practice by the agencies, I replied that it is because the national media has not covered the corruption and brutality well. I said that the press needs to stop reporting what “DHS says” and start focusing on what they do. We have plenty of evidence that DOJ, DHS, ICE, CBP and Border Patrol officials constantly and consistently lie and not just under Trump. They have lied to judges and even ignored court orders. Most of all, they lie without hesitation to the press and in turn to the public.

Again, none of this is new. Here’s an essay I wrote on how CBP and Border Patrol literally teach and even defend agents caught lying on court documents, which is a felony. This piece shows how the agencies claimed in U.S. district court in 2008 that they train their agents to lie in official government and court documents regarding narcotics cases. The agencies’ literal testimony to the court was that they train agents to lie. When the court and the U.S. attorneys’ office demanded to see the training documents that teach agents to lie on government and court documents, the agencies refused to turn over the training documents claiming they were “law enforcement sensitive.” Those two agents who lied about a narcotics seizure were let go, the case was dropped and they were allowed to continue serving as federal agent—even though they admitted to lying about a drug seizure.

As Rachel Maddow says, watch what they do and not what they say.

When I watched the coverage of the Marimar Martinez shooting and the Renee Good and Alex Pretti homicides in real time, I was able to state the next steps taken by the agencies as if I were there simply because I had this training in the 1990s and I have read the same pattern and practice responses in nearly every use of force incident I find:

• Escalate the violence by putting yourself in harms way.

• State over and over that you feared for your life.

• Contaminate the evidence so a case cannot be built by walking or driving over the evidence, or dragging the body away from the scene.

• Hide evidence that shows agents acted improperly.

• Only contact the Critical Incident Teams of ICE or CBP-Office of Professional Responsibility who are made up of our ex-agents.

• Disperse witnesses by any means.

• Claim the agent responsible is injured and send them to the hospital whether injured or not because the hospital cannot legally comment.

• Disparage the victim in the media.

• Agency press officers, high ranking agents and union representatives receive official version of events and are to paint the victims as violent and the aggressors.

• Refuse to cooperate with local and state police unless we control them through our funding and have an established relationship with their investigators.

• Move the offending agent to another sector.

• Ignore the media. Refuse to testify before Congress. Close the case.

• Rinse and repeat with next case.

Pattern and practice since the 1990s, and now it has spread to the interior. I say the media played a large part in this because they have kept many Americans in the dark about what these agencies have been doing. Decades of documented systemic violence, corruption, use of force violations, sexual assaults, lying in court — it all exists. You just haven’t heard the stories from the national media.

For what it’s worth, I believe the journalists from MSNOW have done some excellent work. Antonia has been following a family in Houston, Texas to expose the violence of mass deportations. Jacob Soboroff was instrumental in covering child separations under the first Trump administration. It was Rachel Maddow who first alerted many Americans to the horrible separations and spawned protests that ended the official policy. Maddow is now focused on the ICE warehouses and apparent kickback schemes. Julia Ainsley shows us an inside look at DHS during the first year of mass deportations under Trump 2.0 in her new book “Undue Process.”

The larger picture of what these agencies do, their brutality and corruption, their coverups are what scares the mainstream media. It is the same reason why it took me so long as an ex-agent to see and speak the truth; the same cause for why Congress never investigates these agencies thoroughly and independently — American exceptionalism and indoctrination into systems built upon racism. The desire to see these institutions as honorable or trustworthy when they have consistently shown and told us that they are none of these things, that is our responsibility to correct. For far too many of us, it has simply been easier to listen and regurgitate their propaganda or to pretend that the immigration agencies are who they claim to be. That is what these agencies require for their lies to be believed. They cannot exist without our approval, without our support.

I recognize that I say and write things that scare people and make them uncomfortable, but it is this feeling that we must all lean into if we are to escape this rope-a-dope game they are playing. The uncomfortableness comes from the hypocrisy. And there are only two ways to deal with it: ignore it as we have for generations and pretend it is a just, lawful and humane system or admit we have created a brutally inhumane system that employs some of the worst among us and then hold them and ourselves accountable.

The immigration agencies have perfected their violence and coverup systems for generations on the southern border. Everything you are seeing in Chicago, Minneapolis and elsewhere is standard, pattern and practice.

The national media has just not told the story, yet.