Detained citizens bravely speak up to refute DHS lie

Call it an accident, call it the plan.

- ANITA CHABRIA

ANDREA VELEZ speaks after being released from federal custody in June.

(BRITTNY MEJIA Los Angeles Times)

But don't stoop to the reprehensible gaslighting of calling it a lie: It is fact that federal agents have detained and arrested dozens, if not hundreds, of United States citizens as part of immigration sweeps, regardless of what Kristi Noem would like us to believe.

During a congressional hearing Thursday, Noem, our secretary of Homeland Security and self-appointed Cruelty Barbie, reiterated her oft-used and patently false line that only the worst of the worst are being targeted by immigration authorities. That comes after weeks of her department posting online, on its evermore far-right social media accounts, that claims of American citizens being rounded up and held incom municado are “fake news” or a “hoax.”

“Stop fear-mongering. ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens,” Homeland Security recently posted on the former Twitter.

Tuesday, at a different congressional hearing, a handful of citizens — including two Californians — told their stories of being grabbed by faceless masked men and being whisked away to holding cells where they were denied access to phones, lawyers, medications and a variety of other legal rights.

Their testimony accompanied the release of a congressional report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in which 22 American citizens, including a dozen from the Golden State, told their own shocking, terrifying tales of manhandling and detentions by what can only be described as secret police — armed agents who wouldn't identify themselves and often seemed to lack basic training required for safe urban policing.

These stories and the courageous Americans who are stepping forward to tell them are history in the making — a history I hope we regret but not forget.