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Becky Burke, British Comic Book person returns home after 11 day ICE detention https://comicscene.substack.com/p/becky-burke-returns-home-after-us
The link isn't the best link, just the first. I googled the story and found dozens of articles that all say the same basic thing.
I'm having a hard time establishing some of the facts, primarily, what comic works has Becky created. I can't find anything and none of the articles I've looked at link to anything. The closest I saw was that she has an Instagram account. So, is she a comic creator or just someone who lists it as her profession? I have no idea.
Secondly, What are these 'chores' and how is there a debate about whether it was work or not? How does ICE even know that said 'chores' even happened?
I'm confused by this. On one hand, Trump wants ICE to be extra hard-core and now naive Zoomers are getting swept up with bad Visas. Ok, that sucks. Shit happens. Perhaps in a kindler, gentler America we would have given them a tongue lashing and sent them home, now we jail them for a week and a half. Seems...unnecessary, but I guess the message is sent: don't come here and try to get away with doing work. Very bad!
On the other hand, how did she set trigger ICE in the first place? I don't understand how doing 'chores' even registers unless she's been watched the whole time with an eye to catching her in the act of 'doing work.' I've heard of this happening with musicians or DJs who fly into Canada as tourists only to play a gig and get busted for working. I don't think it's great, but I get why it happens. Was Becky sketching the family as part of her 'chores'? Was she doing farm work? Was she cleaning dishes and sending Instagrams about it? Did she tell ICE she had been working? Like, what the heck happened? Is this another case of "lying to cops is the only rational response," and she got swept up in a dragnet fishing for gormless fools?
A separate article mentioned this recently happened to two other people (both females...coincidence?) who were arrested because they were possibly working on travel visas. One was a German tattoo artists, who, based on the scant evidence provided in the article, seems to have been travelling with her inking gear and also worked on a prior trip to the US. The third lady is an actress who somehow didn't have the right visa either and ended up in ICE detention for a few weeks. For some reason, my mind automagically starts wondering if perhaps these artists (that's a dogwhistle for lefty activists, btw) had some Interwebz posts that somebody didn't like.
My instinct is that these are the horrifying yet rare circumstances that sell news copy but don't really say much about American immigration and customs enforcement. At the same time, I dunno...Trump, man. Are we damaging our international relations or putting a stop to low-life's trying to come here take 'Murican (comic book) Jerbs. Are we just busting foreign activist-artists but no one is saying that part out loud? The information I accessed is so vague and so focused on the 'horrible treatment' I can't really get a picture of what happened, so I presume there's more going on and that if I knew what it was it would make me less sympathetic to the victim.
Everyone is lying constantly about the purposes of all immigration laws and law enforcement all the time. Debating it in public is more or less completely pointless.
These kinds of public displays of gratuitous kafka-esque cruelty are meant to scare current immigrants and potential immigrants, as they realize the power that the Federal Government has to fuck with them at will. This is leading a lot of green card holders I know who are from non-shithole countries to "jump before they push me" and consider moving home.
This kind of "enforcement" will have no impact on the job market, but it publicly displays to people that they aren't safe from stupidity and cruelty, and that they should rethink immigrating to or remaining in the USA. Deport 50 criminals and you deport 50 criminals; imprison one rando for doing the dishes and you terrify dozens into self deportation.
So your friends had no problem with the previous administration going after and locking up people for explicitly political reasons, even keeping some in prison without trial for years, but stricter enforcement at ICE leading them to lock up one bpd girl making sad pictures about her arrested development for a week and a half and that's gratuitous Kafkaesque cruelty justifying moving country?
Did the previous administration do that to random travelers and immigrants, or are you referring to something else?
Because, yes, if I were an immigrant, stricter enforcement at ICE would be a bigger concern for me than virtually anything else when deciding where to live.
Right so their opposition to Gratuitous Kafkaesque Cruelty is entirely who whom.
I never even said they opposed it. Merely that they were frightened of it happening to them.
I might or might not oppose Stop and Frisk but I know it's not happening to me either way. If it started happening to me in my town, I might consider moving, whether or not I opposed it in principle.
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