Clinton and Obama issue statements condemning ICE thuggery — but both ushered in those self-same tactics

On 25 January, former US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama released public statements condemning the ‘killings’ of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The statements condemned the tactics used by the ICE agents, and the suppression of protest under Trump’s presidency. They called on US citizens to rise up and resist the erosion of their freedoms.

All of which is just lovely, except for the small matter of the fact that both Clinton and Obama laid the groundwork for mass surveillance, mass incarceration and the militarisation of law enforcement, both at home and abroad.

ICE became what it is today under Trump, but it couldn’t have got to this point without Clinton and Obama.

‘Stand up, speak out’

In his statement, posted on the Clinton Foundation website, Clinton wrote:

In recent weeks, we’ve watched horrible scenes play out in Minneapolis and other communities that I never thought would take place in America. People, including children, have been seized from their homes, workplaces, and the street by masked federal agents. […]

All of this is unacceptable and should have been avoided. To make matters even worse, at every turn, the people in charge have lied to us, told us not to believe what we’ve seen with our own eyes, and pushed increasingly aggressive and antagonistic tactics, including impeding investigations by local authorities.

Over the course of a lifetime, we face only a few moments where the decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our history for years to come. This is one of them. If we give our freedoms away after 250 years, we might never get them back.

It is up to all of us who believe in the promise of American democracy to stand up, speak out, and show that our nation still belongs to We the People.

All of which is rich, coming from one of the great architects of the loss of freedom for the American people.

Incarceration and intervention

In 1992, Clinton announced his ‘New Economic Strategy for America’. This included the incorporation of both unemployed veterans and active military personnel into US law enforcement. Then, seeking to remedy the Democrats’ image as ‘soft on crime’, Clinton presided over a new era of mass incarceration in the US.

As the Justice Policy Institute explained:

In fact, “tough on crime” policies passed during the Clinton Administration’s tenure resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. Although Republicans are normally thought to hold the tough on crime mantle, in President Clinton’s first-term (1992-1996), 148,000 more state and federal prisoners were added than under President Reagan’s first term (1980-1984), and 34,000 more than were added under President Bush’s four-year term

And that’s not even mentioning Clinton’s foreign policies. His administration saw US troops committed to 25 separate military operations.

Notably, the Clinton administration also expanded on Reagan’s ‘War on Terror’ – including the use of extraordinary rendition and torture. Because, you know, masked agents seizing people from their homes is fine when its not on American soil.

‘Acting with impunity’

Meanwhile, in his 25 January statement – posted to his Medium blog and social media, Obama wrote:

Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety. […]

For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city. These unprecedented tactics — which even the former top lawyer of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration has characterized as embarrassing, lawless and cruel — have now resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S citizens. […]

This has to stop. I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, administration officials will reconsider their approach, and start finding ways to work constructively with Governor Walz and Mayor Frey as well as state and local police to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals.

In the meantime, every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country. They are a timely reminder that ultimately it’s up to each of us as citizens to speak out against injustice, protect our basic freedoms, and hold our government accountable.

It’s notable here that Obama still tried to sound sympathetic towards ICE. The jackbooted immigration thugs have a “tough job”. They just need to find a way to “work constructively”, as if this is a problem of understanding.

All of which is fitting, given that Obama presided over ICE during his presidency, and even famously earned himself the nickname of “deporter in chief”.

‘Deporter in chief’

Obama was well-known during his tenure as president for his record-breaking deportation stats. In fact, as the American Civil Liberties Union explained:

the deportation system has dramatically changed over the past 19 years [1995-1914] – moving from a judicial system prior to 1996, where the vast majority of people facing deportation had immigration court hearings, to a system today of nonjudicial removals, where 75 percent of people removed do not see a judge before being expelled from the U.S.

Likewise, writing in 2014 (after five years of Obama’s presidency), the ACLU pointed out that:

In recent years ICE has locked up approximately 430,000 individuals per year in detention facilities – which exceeds the total number of prisoners serving sentences in federal Bureau of Prisons facilities for all other federal crimes.

Meanwhile, in terms of Obama’s foreign policy, his condemnation of the lack of government accountability is laughable. Amnesty International reported that, under Obama, the Pentagon simply ignored evidence US soldiers murdering people in Afghanistan as recently 2013.

Monstrous hypocrisy

All of which is to say that Clinton and Obama can decry the tactics of Trump and his ICE agents all they like.

However, whether it’s through mass incarceration, mass deportation, militarisation, or the kidnap and murder of people on foreign soil by US agents, the two presidents cannot escape the fact that they helped to usher in the tactics that the now condemn.

The US is, inescapably, a neo-colonial power. Its presidents are inevitably the stewards of a country that is fuelled by the persecution of the same immigrants and global-south countries that it ruthlessly exploits to enrich itself.

That includes the easy-going left-wingers who now voice alarm at seeing their own tactics turned against citizens of the US.

Featured image via the Canary