Sending a couple dozen or so agents to bring in a couple of dishwashers for immigration violations at a well known public eatery with a respected public profile is less about keeping us safe and more about scaring the shit out of us.

People think it was wrong. The aftermath of the ICE raid on Buona Forchetta continues to generate local denunciations as well as nationwide attention to the sorts of indignities aimed at residents, regardless of legal status.

On Monday, San Diego's Democratic Congressional delegation, the mayor and city council members led a press conference attended by politicians from throughout the region speaking out against the raid, which they say targeted individuals that did not have violent criminal histories.

From Times of San Diego:

• Juan Vargas said that Monday morning’s news conference was being held outside San Diego’s federal courthouses specifically because a local federal judge — U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Crawford — signed off on a warrant that he said authorized agents to detain everyone working inside the restaurants, whether or not they were undocumented.

• Vargas said part of the lawmakers’ demands were to meet with the chief judge for the Southern District of California to inquire how and why warrants of this sort were being approved.

From Axios San Diego:

• State of play: Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego), Rep. Mike Levin (D-Dana Point), Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-San Diego) and Vargas said there has been no indication the targeted employees had criminal histories, beyond their immigration status.

• "If they were criminals or gang members, that evidence needs to be put forward today," Levin said.

• Vargas said he reviewed the search warrant, and it did not allege any of the detained workers had criminal records.

• This isn't about going after criminals," Jacobs said, after also referencing ICE arrests last month in courthouses following immigration hearings.

San Diego union leaders led a press conference on Tuesday to denounce the ICE / HSI raids on Buona Forchetta, and included San Diego street vendors near Padres games as victims.

Their press release included:

• The increasingly authoritarian Trump Administration is building a pattern of force that he and his administration have shown they are willing to use on American citizens, a wish he’s already stated in the Oval Office, “Homegrowns are next.” The Trump Administration is working to consolidate all power to themselves and their inner circle of billionaires. Using tactics to divide workers and communities, based on fearmongering tactics that pit workers against each other.

Support in the South Park community and beyond has been high profile. On Saturday, neighbors gathered outside the restaurants to show their support. On Sunday, there was a protest march through the neighborhood.

“We, as neighbors, small business owners, and fellow South Park residents, are rallying together to offer immediate support to these valued members of our community,” said a GoFundMe page attributed to Small Business Owners of South Park and Beyond.

Headlined “Support for Detained Buona Forchetta Employees”, the page quickly surpassed its $60,000 target, promising “Your donation will go directly toward legal fees, lost wages, and essential living expenses for the employees and their families as they navigate this difficult time… No contribution is too small. Every dollar sends a message of hope, solidarity, and care.”

***

According to the Union-Tribune, the raid was prompted by Homeland Security Investigators who believed 19 of the restaurants’ 40 employees were undocumented and working with forged identity cards. In February, Buona Forchetta voluntarily responded to a request to share its hiring paperwork with immigration officials.

Federal officials believed many of the documents were fake or falsified, according to the search warrant. Four workers who failed to produce IDs were arrested. Three of them were Mexican nationals and one was from Columbia.

None of them have been alleged to have criminal records, despite the presumptions from local Republican officials that vile vermin were now in custody.

While few rank and file GOPers will admit it publicly, the ideological basis for the acts of cruelty stemming from decades of Congressional inaction on immigration law is the white supremacist belief that people of less than their pure standards are a threat to western civilization. Hence the proclivity on the part of County Supervisor Jim Desmond to call suspicious (especially brown) persons illegal.

When there’s that kind of hate baked into your worldview, cruelty and dehumanizing rhetoric are to be expected.

As long as immigration enforcement behaves as though every citizen is a terrorist, ICE/Homeland Security deserve disrespect and scorn.

***

On Sunday Buona Forchetta posted a message on social media announcing all San Diego and Orange County locations would be closed Monday and Tuesday.

“We wish we could find stronger words, but the truth is we are heartbroken,” the company said in a post on Instagram. “The traumatic incident involving a federal enforcement operation at our original and beloved South Park location has left a mark on all of us. A wound that is still raw, still echoing in our kitchens, our dining rooms, and our hearts.”

***

Predictably, ICE leaders are trying to make their agents out to be victims. Via NBC News:

• “I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” he said at a news conference in Boston to announce nearly 1,500 arrests in the region as part of a month-long “surge operation.”

• Lyons was leaving the room when a reporter asked him about the masks. He returned to the podium.

• “Is that the issue here that we’re just upset about the masks?” he asked. “Or is anyone upset about the fact that ICE officers’ families were labeled terrorists?”

If they could only point us to records of anybody anywhere labeling ICE officers' families as terrorists perhaps this wouldn’t sound so profoundly stupid. This sort of propaganda is called projecting, namely accusing others of engaging in the behavior the accusers are actually engaged in.

Perhaps if ICE doesn’t like the designation they could stop acting like terrorists. We know this behavior and demeanor isn’t limited to the San Diego raid.

Whoa? Aren’t I exaggerating?

Here’s the Oxford Dictionary definition of terrorism.

• the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

Are these raids “lawful” (as opposed to illegal?) There are enough cases winding through the courts to make this a valid concern.

A ruling today by U.S. District Judge William Young (Reagan appointee) will allow plaintiffs (pro-Palestinian students arrested or deported in recent crackdowns on foreign students attending US universities) to prove at trial (July 7, Boston) that they were arrested in retaliation for exercising their rights to free speech.

Via All Rise News:

• Multiple federal judges have found that the Trump administration likely violated the First Amendment rights of individual students like Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, but this is the first constitutional challenge seeking to block these enforcement actions on a policy level.

• After issuing his ruling, Judge Young said that he hoped the discovery process would shed light on some of the questions that he had regarding the arrests in those cases.

• “Why so many officers? Why masks? Is it protocol to handcuff people with their hands behind their backs, maybe?” Young asked, indicating that the government must produce any “manual” that would justify such actions.

The Trump administration’s attempts to rebuff accusations of conduct infringing on Constitutional Rights have largely not succeeded. The first big sweeps operation targeting immigrants in a so-called sanctuary state referenced above didn’t yield the kind of results predicted by tough talking government officials, just like the San Diego fell short.

Over the month of May, Operation Patriot resulted in the arrest of 1400 individuals in Massachusetts. Only 790 of those individuals were under deportation orders.

***

The ‘no criminal history’ part came to public attention on Friday, as the normally MAGA supporting Washington Examiner reported on conflict within the executive branch triggered by disappointingly low arrest figures by ICE enforcers.

According to the paper’s sources, fifty field office directors and HSI agents in charge were summoned to Washington, where White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller ripped them a new asshole.

• “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” the official recited.

• One of the ERO officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

• “Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest. ‘That’s what Tom Homan says every time he’s on TV: ‘We’re going after criminals,'” the ICE official told Miller, according to the first official.

The “illegals are criminals” is a talking point used to drum up public angst and support for the administration’s deportation agenda. No matter how many studies prove that immigrants, legal or otherwise, have lower criminal arrests than the general population, Trump and others have repeated the accusation ad infinitum.

***

What we need to be aware of is that the egregious actions we’ve been made aware of are more likely than not the tip of the iceberg. Why else would the normal conventions of enforcement of criminal law not be followed?

Has there ever been a non-authoritarian state where the people hired to maintain order have consistently felt the need to mask their identities, where requests for warrants are taken as threatening actions?

We wouldn’t be living in this world that seems more dystopian every day but for outrageous theft of our personal and collective wealth by a tiny number of individuals.

Now it’s apparent they’ve decided that a corporate version of tech-monarchy is achievable. Money is speech. A billionaire bought himself a clown candidate who was running for president. Policies favored by overwhelming numbers of Americans aren’t even considered.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: any resistance to the inanities, indignities, and insanity of the Trump administration that does not take into account the class nature of this struggle is doomed to fail.

Elon Musk And The Mainstream Media Are Screwing You, Again Via Oliver Willis Explains

• The pattern is so old and tired that it is hard to believe that we’re going through it again. But what we have to keep in mind is that the press isn’t being played, per se. If they were naïve little boys and girls that premise might have some kind of salience here, but the mainstream media is going into this farce as a clear-minded disinformation partner. These are the same people who saw everything we just saw, and most likely saw it up close and personal – and are hiding some of the more toe-curling details for the next round of books by Maggie Haberman and Jake Tapper, the Queen and King of Journalism High.

• No, the mainstream media is playing along because – as Musk’s public relations people understand – they would rather a good story with a narrative arc rather than the truth, especially if the narrative gives pleasure to a billionaire that has the power to dispense traffic and revenue to the outlets in question.

• The Musk clean up campaign is a violation of the public trust, yet another in a long and filth-ridden moments of the mainstream press fucking over the people who continue to put too much faith in them. Whether its pushing mythology about Al Gore being a liar, George W. Bush’s supposed certainty about weapons of mass destruction, elevating the right’s racist disinformation about the Obamas and Kamala Harris, both-sidesing Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s age, or obsessing over Hillary Clinton’s emails – the mainstream press is on the other side of what is right in this world, again and again.

***

19 companies pulling back their support for Pride by Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims at Popular Information

• For years, major corporations publicly celebrated the LGBTQ community. Corporations regularly highlighted the contributions of LGBTQ employees, facilitated LGBTQ resource groups, donated to pro-LGBTQ charities, and sponsored Pride Month parades each June. This was supposedly part of a principled commitment to inclusion, including the full spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities.

• But, in recent years, many Republicans, including President Trump, have decided that valuing diversity, including the LGBTQ community, constitutes discrimination against straight white men. Pride parades, fun events about accepting people for who they are, were rebranded by these Republicans as part of a nefarious scheme to indoctrinate children. Trump has issued several executive orders targeting the LGBTQ community and pressured corporations to end diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) activities.

• The pressure campaign appears to be working. Numerous corporations that have previously presented themselves as champions of the LGBTQ community have pulled their support for Pride parades this month, a Popular Information investigation reveals.

***

Drinking coffee helps women age better, landmark 30-year study finds by Athena Stavrou at The Independent

• Findings from new research three decades in the making suggest that women who drink coffee age better.

• Analysis of almost 50,000 women over 32 years has revealed that those who drank coffee in midlife were more likely to exhibit health ageing, and that it could help them stay sharp, strong and mentally well.

• The research, which was presented at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual conference in Orlando, did not see the same link with healthy ageing with those who drank tea or decaffeinated coffee.