The best qualification for advancing in the MAGA world must be to prove how dumb you are.
Remember, no one is safe from ICE.
Maybe we need a bulletin that states: if your skin is brown, carry identification; failure to do so could result in your deportation to a foreign country.
CNN —
At least 15 Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico have reported being stopped at their homes and workplaces, questioned or detained by federal law enforcement and asked to produce proof of citizenship during immigration raids since Wednesday, according to Navajo Nation officials.
The reports, which have caused panic amongst tribal communities in both states, come amid the Trump administration’s attempt to ramp up undocumented immigrant arrests nationwide and amass a larger force to carry out the president’s deportation pledge. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
The reported raids and the exact number of Diné/Navajo and other Indigenous tribal citizens who were apprehended are still under investigation, Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley told CNN. It is unclear if Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other law enforcement entities were conducting the apprehensions. ICE has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.
… Arizona state Sen. Theresa Hatathlie, who is Diné/Navajo, told CNN she received a report from the family of a Navajo woman who said she was questioned by ICE and asked to show proof that she was Native after her workplace was raided Wednesday morning.
The woman says she was at her work site in Scottsdale, Arizona, when she and seven other Indigenous citizens were lined up behind white vans and questioned for two hours without their cell phones or a way to contact their families, according to Hatathlie.
“There’s a lot of fear, and I know they’re probably feeling frustrated knowing that they don’t feel safe in the country where they were born or where their ancestors come from and there’s a lot of frustration of them being stereotyped,” Curley told CNN.
“I think there’s a confusion with other races, maybe just because having a brown skin, automatically being profiled or stereotyped to be in a certain group of race.”
Diné, which means “The People” and is how Navajo people refer to themselves, and other Indigenous tribal members are being advised to carry state-issued identification along with their Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood in preparation of possible run ins with federal immigration officials and other law enforcement.
More on Indigenous People and ICE.
A day before Arizona native Leticia Jacobo was scheduled to be released from an Iowa jail, her mom visited to verify pickup details with the staff. Ericka Burns was excited to drive her daughter home after spending a month apart and wanted to make sure Jacobo wasn’t forced to wait a minute longer than necessary.
But jail staff told Burns that Jacobo wouldn’t be let go because she would be turned over to immigration agents — even though Jacobo is Native American.
The 24-year-old was born in Phoenix and is a member of Arizona’s Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. She was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, where she currently lives, in September for allegedly driving with a suspended license. Jacobo was scheduled to be released on Nov. 11, but what should have been a routine process was complicated and delayed by an erroneously issued ICE detainer. She was ultimately allowed to leave just before 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 12.
Maria Nunez, Burns’ sister, said that it was terrifying to be told that Jacobo would be taken by federal agents, especially because no one appeared willing to correct the mistake at first.
“My sister said, ‘How is she going to get deported if she’s a Native American?’ and ‘We have proof,’” Nunez recounted. “They said, ‘Well, we don’t know because we’re not immigration and we can’t answer those questions. We’re just holding her for them. So, when they pick her up tonight they’re going to go ahead and deport her to wherever they’re going to take her, but we have no information on that.”
Her crime was having brown skin.
