Sen. Bernie Sanders also demanded “fundamental reforms” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, saying they are “terrorizing” US communities.
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday demanded the removal of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—a key architect of Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation campaign—as well as concrete reforms in exchange for any new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In remarks on the Senate floor, Sanders (I-Vt.) called ICE a “domestic military force” that is “terrorizing” communities across the country. The senator pointed specifically to the agency’s ongoing activities in Minnesota and Maine, where officers have committed horrific—and deadly—abuses.
Sanders said that “not another penny should be given” to ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “unless there are fundamental reforms in how those agencies function—and until there is new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security and among those who run our immigration policy.” The senator has proposed repealing a $75 billion ICE funding boost that the GOP approved last summer, an end to warrantless arrests, the unmasking of ICE and CBP agents, and more.
How about dining every member of literally every penny they can access, and also not another dollar for them, ever?
We need a complete list of everyone who’s ever worked for them and blacklist them from every business. Shot down ICE, starve them of every penny they have, blacklist them from every business, every job opportunity, and every charity or welfare. Y’all can literally just rot in the street, we’ll clean you up later. Byyyye
Of and take away legal recourse too.
Don’t necessarily incentive just brutalizing them, because the goal is their suffering, not just execution. Don’t shorten the fun.
Make content out of their attempts to secure food and housing.
Sympathizers can suffer a sliding scale version of the punishment.
God, what an asshole. They drove Sanders to the right too?
How 'bout not another penny for ICE, because we need to ABOLISH ICE.
I really hope he lives to be 103.
While it is cathartic to think taking these people out of their position is punishing them, the reality is they will be replaced with another Nazi.
If Trump had been assassinated it would not have stopped this. If Hitler had been assassinated the Nazi would have fought on. This situation is no different.
It is a sobering and necessary realization that this whole administration isn’t a one-off. This is a part of who we are.
Then punish the behavior and train it out.
I am open to any suggestions and ideas. There is probably a path forward that no one has thought of.
The moderate wing of fascism in action.
I’m so sick of dems. Fuck you. Not another penny ever.
Sanders is an independent
Sanders (I-Vt.)
Doesn’t that mean he’s the independent senator(?) for Vermont?
Technically yes, but he caucuses with Democrats and generally caves to their demands and supports their positions, even though they rigged the primary against him.
Fair enough. I knew he didn’t win the primary, so I thought he was perhaps as much “fuck dems” as the next person.
Twice.
Not another penny for ICE
until Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller are goneGod fucking damn it it’s always the same shit.
Republicans push some absolute bullshit to 10.
Democrats: We need to be reasonable and go back to 6!
Where is the party that says we need to go back to zero bullshit!
only way thats happening is if guns come out
Or, we finally use our most powerful means of non-violent offense: a proper, long-term, Nation Wide General Strike.
The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor, allowing us to simply ignore the democrats and their lack of spine, and simply demand real change (abolishing ICE should be towards the top of the list).
That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
There are some concrete steps all of us can take toward enacting that hard-core general strike to make it more viable and bearable for us all. (the titles below expand if you click them).
Learn First Aid! ⛑️
As we’re seeing, deadly violence is being used against us and it will only continue. It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt.
Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life.
But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing.
Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks ✊
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.
These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in [email protected] to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.
This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice.
Join a Union and Prepare for an even longer General Strike! 💪
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one, as most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike).
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch.
Adopt Security Culture and Digital Camouflage 🛡️
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE.
Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work.
Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided.
Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle.
We’ll start it off with some General Advice:
- Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state
- Be careful about who you meet online
- Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN)
- Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail
- agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don’t have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary.
For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist.
This is the one and now more of you are saying it.
This is the only way.
We have lost 1.5 million Americans to gun violence in the last thirty years. That is more than all US lives lost in every war we have ever fought.
What exactly does that mean when the guns are very clearly the fuck out already?
Been saying it for a long time now, we gotta primary every last DNC member holding a seat. They’re all either complicit or neutered to the point of uselessness.
I love Bernie but this obviously isn’t his fight. He’s been about economics for like, 400 years, and just economics and it’s fine, but he’s not going to lead us out of fascism. He needs to go rest and enjoy retirement.
The DNC is a container full of rotten old money and establishment-preserving collaborators with the GOP. We pour the container out, freshen it up with some new contents.
it would be like draining a swamp, so to speak /s
I agree - but also, if anyone in congress deserves the benefit of the doubt, I’d say it’s Sanders. I think the first major step back off this ledge is probably restoring the status quo. If we started on the exact best path forward tomorrow, I’m not sure it would START with abolishing ICE. It would start by utterly neutering them first, then dismantling them after eliminating their internal ability to resist, because we both know it’ll be a loud and painful process no matter what.
Damn it Bernie, if only the Democrats hadn’t sabotaged your campaign for Hillary. Where would we be today? Certainly not this hellscape. People would have forgotten Trump was even a presidential canidate by now. I’m so angry at what could have been
I agree. The Clinton’s had some heavy baggage and a straight old white dude would’ve been interesting! Idk if he would’ve won but simply having his platform endorsed would’ve changed history. He was just as angry as Trump was. If only Harambe didn’t die.
I’ve seen people claim that they were going to vote Bernie until Clinton won the nomination, then they switched to Trump.
My mind boggles at the sheer insanity of that change, but I guess they wanted someone “different.” They didn’t seem to care what “different” meant.
Clinton was a career politician that didn’t advocate for any changes, short of small ones. Trump was seen as a buffoon who would get himself impeached soon after and allow Dems to take over the Senate and House. Little did anyone know he planned on just selling the US out completely.
20 years of AM radio fucked some people up.
More like almost 100 years. Learned that on the It Could Happen Here podcast. Very good and stark background of how talk radio has been dividing this country since the 1930s, using religion as its Trojan horse.
Yes but then Reagan.
Indeed. Reagan furnished the house so Trump could take a shit in it. The talk radio era I mentioned earlier excavated the ground and laid the underground utilities.
We the people need to raze the structure to the ground and declare the site a radioactive hazard, complete with the creation of an atomic priesthood and ray cats so no one ever builds there again.
But with Bernie you knew where he stood, you knew what he was pissed about and what systems he wanted to dismantle. The rich Dems of the east Coast south and west coast couldn’t handle that.
It was literally the Midwest and iron belt that supported him and pacific nw that supported him
Trump was going to destroy everything for his own benefit not for the betterment of the general public.
Nebraska is a red state, I knew more people excited about Bernie than Trump, I threw a tantrum when Hillary got the nod and was told by better off people I knew in far bigger cities and with more money that Hillary was the safe bet. Still to this day same people so excited for Gavin Newsom, they post their hatred everyday about Trump but they aren’t willing to vote for anyone who will put up a fight with the fip. Gavin isn’t it
If you think Hilary has a lot of rejection, Bernie would have even more. Unfortunately
He also would have had to have won more primaries. It wasn’t just DWS.
People would’ve blamed him for everything possible and then elect trump the next time. He would say shit like: you would pay no taxes if i were president and bernie is an old cave troll. He would just stand there and americans would shake their fat fists
You’re getting downvoted but they did it with Jimmy Carter. He got blamed for EVERYTHING.
The left gets blamed for everything and takes some responsibility. The right is never held accountable and gets all the benefit of the doubt.
You say this about a country that had very real and strong support for Bernie, and you say it like more people supported trump than Bernie which is absolutely untrue.
Meh, more people supported Hillary than Bernie. The DNC tipped the scales and made a mess of things. But Hillary would have probably won that primary had they not been so fucking arrogant and corrupt. Could have just let the game play out, but they just couldn’t play fair.
All that being said, I obviously don’t know for certain. But no matter what happened, we got fucked either way.
If he had a chance of winning we would’ve seen more progressives getting elected outside of blue states since he ran.
Not necessarily, if you don’t live or have lived in rural areas. Change comes ar a snails pace.
Those areas voted for Trump. Nowhere near the left side of the spectrum
They voted for Trump because he was promising a radical shake up in the government. They were down with that idea because the status quo for the last 3 decades has been garbage for common folk.
You know who else was promising a radical shake up? Bernie. I lived in red ass Iowa at the time he was running, and everyone I talked to on both sides of the spectrum loved him. He even won the primary there.
Yes, my MAGA family supported me for supporting Bernie. He didn’t have the widespread opposition like Hillary. He would have been a fine president.
Don’t pretend you know why they voted for Trump.
Every MAGAT I know would never vote for Bernie. Pretending otherwise is pure copium.
These dip shit cynics need to either stfu or leave the Democratic party. Your perspective is litterally why we can’t beat the fascists.
These dip shit cynics
They’re called voters and they have communicated clearly through the election process that the majority of them are in the middle of the ideological spectrum and not interested in voting left of center. If leftists don’t wake up to that fact they will continue to lose elections.
Trump won 2016 on a platform of anti-establishment populism, and widespread dislike of Hilary Clinton. He would have lost both of those advantages running against Bernie.
The only things he would have had left would be reactionary sensationalism, narcissistic sociopathy, jingo-nationalism, libertarian capitalist cronyism, racism, sexism, xenophonia, and homophobia.
And while those things might have had a strong hold on a concerningly large portion of the american populace, it would have been fairly niche and certainly not enough to have won an election that was already close as it was.
Trump won 2016 and 2024 because he has the Kremlin propaganda machine working for him. That’s why he has a cult following.
Don’t pretend you know why they voted for Trump.
Even as you do exactly that, lol. I looked at your post and moderation history; you have a thing for making sweeping proclamations based on nothing but the crust on your right buttcheek. Yeah, no. Blocked.
Stay in your safe place
It’s litterally those places Bernie was winning in 2016.
The profundness of the idiocy people have trying to winnow politics down to a single dimension of left versus right.
Voters who ended up going for Trump in the general were sick of the anti democratic status quo. Voters who went for Bernie in the primary were sick of the anti democratic status quo.
By forcing Hillary down the throat of the voters, the DNC fueled Trump’s base.
Go search “why Trump voters vote for AOC” or “why Trump voters vote for mamdani”.
You already losing us voters with this myopic view of how people dev their political identity
No I saw a lot of former Bernie bros switch their vote to trump after Hillary got nominated. That’s how pissed they were at the system.
Out of the hundreds of Bernie bros I know I don’t know a single Bernie bro that voted for Trump.
If these imaginary people were tricked into voting for Trump so easily then they will easily be tricked again the next election cycle.
He was very popular in the Midwest. It’s the northeast Dem elites that rejected him
He was popular in Omaha and Lincoln. Everywhere else he didn’t have a chance.
Those same people would have voted for Trump 4 and/or 8 years after a Bernie victory
Quite littlerally:
Mamdani went down to the street after the Democrats failed in 2024. He asked voters who had voted for Trump “why?”
He structured his campaign on the top three answers to the question “why?”, albeit, in a democratic socialist fashion.
He won the Trump voters back.
Exactly, they’re feckless. They don’t have any core beliefs.
If Bernie wins after Obama, the GOP is dead for good, no more majorities. The supreme Court goes left, no Trump picks. Hence no dictatorship
Let’s be real, he’d have been assassinated within a year.
EDIT: btw this is not hating on Bernie, I just believe there’s enough far-right nutjobs with guns that believe he’s the literal communist anti-christ. Kennedy was killed for less “radical” progressive ideas.
Not even just far-right nutjobs, but liberals and establishment capitalists with billions of dollars to lose. He would have had haters from all over the spectrum.
Username checks out.
At least he has a clear demand, but he should be calling for the abolition of ICE and prosecution of every criminal order given or carried out.
And then also no more money for ICE after that.
IMO, immigration control in general is stupid. IDC where you’re from or how you come to live here. Just pay the taxes to contribute to the community and those in need. Enforce it through the IRS like any other citizen. Abolish ICE entirely.
Same. Do the paperwork for citizenry and voting rights, social services, etc. But you wanna live here and work here? Sure, just pay taxes. If we allowed this, it would be less likely to see falsified documents, resumes, etc. which lead to actual fraud. Good luck convincing Cletus Grand Dragron of MAGAts that though.
“Gone”? To prison, right?
I was daydreaming differently.
But that will do, yes.
They’ll just put someone else equally terrible in. No funding for ice until Trump and the GOP are goneffs.
How about just abolishing ICE?
That might be necessary but customs and immigration systems are still required in some form.
This country already has agencies that actually do that work. ICE is specifically a law enforcement agency that does nothing but round people up for civil immigration infractions, that is literally all they do. Customs is handled by US Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration is handled by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service. These are existing agencies that have been around for more than a century doing this work.
ICE was created in 2003 specifically to be a goon squad to hassle immigrants. That is all that its for.
It’s not only ICE, though. Border Control is working with them. It’s 2 different agencies that are equally guilty.
Border patrol are the guys actually shooting people.
ICE doesn’t need funding at all because it doesn’t need to exist.
Yeah. Getting rid of Noem would be great, but she’s just doing what Trump wants. She’s a symptom, not the disease.
And I suspect Miller would still have Trump’s ear even if he wasn’t officially employed by the US government.
The whole regime has to go.
Trump is a symptom. So is Biden. And so forth and so on and shooby dooby do…
They got 200 billion last summer. They do not need more money. There is no legitimate non-corrupt way to spend what they got already in 3 years
At a certain level, wealth is only about power. They want more power.
So the issue is not ICE, but who’s managing ICE.
That’s basically same as saying that the nazis were just following orders.
The issues, Bernie, are both who’s managing ICE and ICE itself. ICE are terrorists, you can’t just say that you will give money to ICE if they remove those two assholes ignoring all the shit each ICE agent has done so far, Bernie.
I think you missed the part where he wants drastic reform within the agency on top of axing the ghouls running it. He’s much more likely to succeed politically with those types of demands than just straight up defunding the entire thing.
Can we stop pretending that compromising with the fascist institutions is the correct political move? Why? Why are people so stuck in the Obama mindset? It was and is a complete failure.
More Americans support abolishing ICE than oppose it!.
It is absolutely the right political move to abolish it. It’s an institution younger than most Americans. Stop this “it’s the right political move” bull shit. The American public does not agree with you.
Sadly, politics, in this case, is not among the voters; it’s among the senate. It’s a bunch of old fucks who are not going to vote for defunding ICE, no matter what. They may be convinced that temporary defunding is good, and we know the regime isn’t going to compromise, so its as good as any other defunding functionally.
Sure, for the other senators, defunding would be the right move for them politically. Sanders already agrees with us. He’s on the right side of politics for the voters. He just has to play the game the best way he can to get things done, which is not to go with the most extreme position even if that’s the most supported by voters.
SS troops door knocking and asking for papers and liberals are still talking about “playing the game”. I can’t. I can’t take this level of delusion.
We need a massive political movement to fix what the federal government has become. One that at this point is literally hitting the brink of armed conflict. There is no “playing the game”. The game is over. The Republicans know this and the Democrats are the only ones still playing it.
The point of Bernie not compromising on what needs to be done is to SHOW that the political system is a failure. Seriously, are you still thinking ICE will be reformed with Trump as president? What is the point of starting from a compromised position that literally only serves the purpose of creating a zero substance bill that will only serve as another illusion of democracy working?
Seriously. There is nothing Bernie should be doing but calling balls and strikes. He use to do that. Now, he is an old man that is in denial of the institutions he spent his whole life defending falling apart around him. He is “playing the game” when the game is over. And it’s only serving as a means for people like you to think the umpires are still there.
Seriously, are you still thinking ICE will be reformed with Trump as president?
I literally said it wouldn’t. Did you read? I said this is a way to get defunding done, because they won’t allow it to be reformed. If he went with a full defunding then he’d be used as an enemy for the supporters of the regime to gather support and they would definitely pass funding. With this move he may be able to get funding stopped.
If you’re a representative, your best play is to “play the game.” Us though? We don’t have to. We should be pushing for what needs to be done. We’re in different positions than them. You’d be an idiot to think they should just give up all power to make an idiological last stand. Sure, it’d feel great to watch, until the regime gets everything they want and fucks you.
What is the point of starting from a compromised position that literally only serves the purpose of creating a zero substance bill that will only serve as another illusion of democracy working?
Do you know what’s happening here? This isn’t about creating a new bill. It’s about not passing a bill for increased ICE funding. It’s already passed in the house and he’s trying to prevent it passing in the senate.
I don’t think you are actually aware of what’s being discussed and you’ve read too much from idiots who say if something isn’t exactly what they want to hear then it’s bad. Sadly, in the real world, this isn’t how things work. No one has ever been able to get exactly what they want. Even the most ardent revolutionaries have to compromise to get enough allies, or they just fail and no one hears about them. I guess you’d prefer the latter.
The equivalent of what you are doing here is trying to reduce funding to the concentration camps! There are fucking concentration camps! What are we talking about? The fascist aren’t defeated by a budget. They are fascist. All this serves to do is justify the existence of concentration camps.
Your problem is that you still believe the liberal institutions will turn back fascism. It will not. Please read a history book. Please understand this is exactly what the liberals in Nazi Germany did. They literally compromised with the Nazis for the “promise” of their party not being abolished. Voted on the enabling act. And then were quickly banned as a party. Please, please read a book.
Sanders needs to use his voice while he has it. Not use it to justify the existence of ICE. That is the only outcome of this. He is saying “ice should exist”. That’s it. That’s all this does.
God, you don’t read, do you. How do you intend to abolish ICE in this case. It’s purely about a bill that’s already passed the house. He’s trying to prevent it from passing the senate. Abolition is not an option in this case. That requires a new bill. The only thing that can be done in this case is to stop a funding bill passing or passing it. There’s no third option.
Your problem is that you still believe the liberal institutions will turn back fascism.
No. My problem is that I want power to be used when we have it. I don’t think we should give up power just to sound strong to idiots on the internet. Sanders taking an idiological stance that the senate doesn’t support sounds cool to internet communists, but it doesn’t actually get anything done except for handing over power to the Fascists.
Your stupid community that insists we get nothing done because it isn’t perfect are annoying as hell. You aren’t as smart as you believe. The leftists who have actually accomplished things did so by working with people they didn’t agree with completely. You take what you can get when you can get it. You don’t throw it away because you want something better.
Sanders doesn’t have the power to abolish ICE (at least, at this moment). He does have the power to maybe have this bill not pass. Even that is unlikely though. It sure as hell won’t happen if he takes the stance you want, and then ICE gets even more funding. Is that what you want?
So the issue is not ICE, but who’s managing ICE.
You can say that about any organization. If the Nazis had been run by Rosa Luxemberg, they wouldn’t be the Nazis. They’d be a totally different thing.
But we’ve been staffing ICE with ice chewing psychos for decades. I don’t believe a reformist bureaucrat can lead ICE. The organization’s rank-and-file would rebel, in the same way the CIA rebelled under Kennedy and the FBI rebelled under Obama.
The issues, Bernie, are both who’s managing ICE and ICE itself. ICE are terrorists, you can’t just say that you will give money to ICE if they remove those two assholes ignoring all the shit each ICE agent has done so far, Bernie.
Even the most left-wing Democrats are still convinced that an organization dedicated to terrorizing migrant workers and extra-judicially deporting Enemies of the State is too popular to dismantle. That’s a bleak prospect for the nation’s future.
