I dunno... I grew up in southern Arizona, and getting pulled over for Driving While Brown has kind of always been a thing. Latinos have always been harassed by cops, going all the way back to the Zoot Suit Riots and Marijuana prohibition and long before. This country has never been nice to Latinos. Though it does seem to be getting much worse.
"And they just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window, you know," Machado said. "Everything was really fast."
Machado said the officers told him the name of a man for whom they said they had a deportation order, and who had purportedly given Machado's home address. He said he offered to show his Virginia driver's license—a Real ID requiring proof of lawful status to acquire—but "they didn't ask for any ID."
"I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving," Machado told Quiñonez. "After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, 'Do you believe him?'"
Congratulations, sir. You have successfully avoided being beaten or shot by ICE officers because you kept calm and followed instructions. Now let your mind wander to how the scenario will play out when they pull over your teenage son or daughter. Will your child stay calm? Or will they be terrified and panic and do something that gives the officers the excuse they need to beat them bloody or even kill them?
You mean he got lucky and didn't receive conflicting orders like "keep your hands up and lay on the ground. " Your only option is to face plant, but the fast movement of doing that will scare the officers too.
Conservatives can often learn to feel 1 specific form of empathy, but only after it personally affects someone in their life and only for that single issue.
Don't forget lucky that the officers didn't start giving conflicting commands. Yelling "freeze" and "put your hands up" then shooting and later claiming "oh I thought he was reaching for a weapon, I feared for my life."
Machado said he was uncuffed and immediately released after the officers saw his identification. The two men with him were taken into custody. Machado said he does not know why.
MAGA folks never care about cruelty until it affects them, then they cry for mercy and compassion. To them the damaging human consequences are either justice, religious imperative, or necessary cost - until they are the ones paying. Now they reap the fruits of their indifference or often full-on support of the suffering of others. I still feel bad for the innocent, like children or those who have opposed this malevolent chaos from the beginning.
Yep - the GOP over the last few decades tossed away any morality and took the easiest path they could for coalition building, assembling the stupid, bigoted, gullible, and most importantly - least empathetic bunch of people. Literally tossing away conservative ideology and specifically preying on these people's weaknesses.
assembling the stupid, bigoted, gullible, and most importantly - least empathetic bunch of people.
To me the one of the funnier things is these same people who whine endlessly about the oppression by political correctness getting upset about being called deplorables or plain ol' stupid.
There's going to be a lot of that. I live in the Southwest, and the number of Trump-voting Latinos is shockingly high. There are a lot of conservative Latinos who straight up consider themselves to be white. Gonna be a real shock for them when it finally sinks in what the rest of their party thinks about that.
Latino voter implies that they are citizens. So when they hear something like "stricter immigration laws" they think it doesn't apply to them because they have the documentation that says they are citizens. But none of that matters when ICE pulls you over at gunpoint for looking illegal.
Pity they released him so fast. Idiots like this are part of the reason the whole world is now suffering the turd presidency, so no amount of schadenfraude will be enough when it comes to them.
We gotta stop calling it a presidency. It’s an authoritarian oligarchy not a presidency. Let’s get terminology right so the minority of literate maga retards keep reading it until their 1 brain cell clicks and understands the long words.