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Dear Republican family & friends

  • carrieshawmiller
  • Jan 26
  • 9 min read

Dear family & friends, especially Republican family & friends,


I do not know if you are seeing the brutality being perpetrated by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in several U.S. cities, especially Minneapolis, Minnesota. If you helped elect Trump again, I certainly hope you are paying attention because he is having ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) commit brutality on your behalf. I care about all of you and believe that you are good people at heart, so I have to hope you would not approve of this brutality if you knew about it. This is what Trump thinks you want: ICE agents are racially profiling people. They are detaining and often brutalizing people. They are denying people due process and legal representation. They are detaining children as young as 5 years old. They are detaining people without a warrant and breaking into people’s homes without any kind of warrant, let alone the required signed judicial warrant. Conditions in ICE detention centers are inhumane, characterized by overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, medical neglect, solitary confinement, and sexual and physical abuse. Detainees have limited to no access to legal representation and phone calls to family members. The DHS sent 252 men to CECOT, the El Salvadorean prison notorious for torture, despite only 8 of the 252 men having been convicted of a violent offense, and nearly half of them having no criminal history at all. Even the 8 convicted of a violent offense have a right to due process and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, yet all 252 were rapidly deported with no due process and sent to be tortured in horrifically inhumane conditions for four months. They were then sent to Venezuela, the country that many of them previously fled due to fear of persecution, and they still have not received any due process, let alone justice for the blatant human rights violations that the DHS and CECOT committed against them. ICE has shot and killed 3 people (Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti) over the past month, then lied and said the killings were in self-defense despite video evidence to the contrary.


Some of the victims of ICE brutality were undocumented immigrants. About 70% of ICE detainees have no criminal background and about 26% have convictions for minor offenses like traffic violations. Many of the victims of ICE are immigrants here legally, including asylum seekers and refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their countries of origin. I worked with refugees and asylum seekers at the Baltimore Resettlement Center and was amazed by their resilience in the face of incredible hardship. Some of the victims of ICE are U.S. citizens, including all three of the people ICE killed in the past month. Two of these U.S. citizens were peacefully protesting by filming ICE activity in order to hold them accountable for the brutality and illegal actions that many ICE agents have been committing for months now. An ICE agent yelled and cursed at Renee Good and tried to force his way into her car, so she turned the car to drive away from him, but another ICE agent who had purposely placed himself in front of her car shot her in the face 3 times and called her the B-word after murdering her. Alex Pretti was defending a woman who ICE agents had shoved to the ground and were aggressively macing. Five ICE agents then maced Alex Pretti, wrestled him to the ground, and shot him 10 times in the back and head.


If you find any of this hard to believe, so do I. At the end of this letter, after the John Pavlovitz quote, there is a long list of links to the news coverage and live footage of all of these incidents, along with many others.


In light of all this, I am writing for two reasons:


First, to make sure you know what Trump is ordering and allowing federal agents to do to our fellow human beings, paid for by our tax dollars, while claiming that this is what Republican voters want. I have to hope you are appalled by all or at least some of this brutality, violence, and abuse of human rights.


Second, ICE has arrived in New Jersey (they have authority to operate within 100 miles of all borders and coastlines) and is building a huge detention center about 16 miles from where I live. There are also detention centers in Newark, NJ and Elizabeth, NJ, and both are known for inhumane conditions. I am currently in volunteer training to accompany immigrants to their immigration court hearings and help them navigate the immigration system, as well as bring food to immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who are afraid to leave their homes. I have been protesting the inhumane conditions at ICE detention centers and will continue to do so. I will be filming ICE agents whenever I see them in order to hold them accountable for their actions, just as we should all be held accountable equally under the rule of law. Despite all of these activities being completely legal, if I should somehow fall victim to ICE brutality or detention, I want to make several things clear ahead of time to counter the villainizing lies that were spread by the Trump administration about Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and so many other victims of I.C.E. shootings, beatings, and abductions:


  1. I would never be armed with anything more than pepper spray.

  2. I will never say anything cruel, let alone threatening or violent, to anyone, including ICE agents, even if they are saying cruel, threatening, or violent things to me or others around me.

  3. I do not wish harm or hurt on anyone, including ICE agents.

  4. I genuinely hope to encourage ICE agents to follow the rule of law and due process, and to respect universal human rights and human dignity while doing their jobs.

  5. I will not do anything to obstruct legal ICE operations, but I will obstruct them from illegal actions, especially beating, brutalizing, or killing someone who poses no lethal threat to anyone.

  6. Despite having absolutely no evidence, the Trump administration called Renee Good and Alex Pretti “domestic terrorists” which is defined as “people or groups who use unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political aims” (Oxford Languages). I hope you know I would never participate in anything even remotely close to domestic terrorism.


I see the fear of people of color who are afraid to leave their homes, and I think of the ghettos in Nazi Germany. I hear the pleas of people of color whose family members have been abducted and detained or deported to an unknown location and I think of the concentration camps of the Holocaust. I hear the cries of people of color who have been racially profiled, harassed, and brutalized and I think of the horrific lynchings of the Jim Crow Era and the brutal beatings of nonviolent activists during the Civil Rights movement.


I wish universal human rights were the foundation upon which human society was built, and I am sad that the United States is moving farther from that ideal, along with so many of its supposed ideals. I wish there was no place for brutality in anyone’s hearts and minds, let alone in those of our elected representatives and so-called public servants. But, alas, brutality runs rampant, and I could not live with myself or sleep well at night if I chose to turn away or overlook it because it does not (yet) impact me personally. And so, with ICE presence increasing here in New Jersey, I am doing my due diligence by putting my affairs in order, just as the Freedom Riders of 1961 wrote their wills before boarding a desegregated bus to Alabama to nonviolently protest segregation, fully expecting exactly what happened to them: they were beaten with baseball bats, pipes, and fists by racist mobs in Alabama and thrown into maximum security prisons as if they were the ones committing crimes just for riding a desegregated bus.



The late Congressman John Lewis was only 21 years old when he was a Freedom Rider and he was beaten unconscious by the racist mob.

 


None of the Freedom Riders fought back or perpetrated violence of any kind, and nor will I, and I wanted to make that known to my friends and family ahead of time.


I hope you will not turn away or overlook what is happening. Better yet, I hope you will call the White House and your representatives at the local, state, and federal level and condemn ICE brutality, let alone murder (https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials).




Thank you for reading my letter.


Carrie

 

“The America we thought we lived in is dying as millions of people we share this nation with ignore it or allow it or applaud it. It's happening as masked thugs rip mothers from carpool lines, knock old men from bicycles, and tear gas teenage girls. It’s happening as terrified, half-naked children are being zip-tied by cosplaying super soldiers. It’s happening as armies of unidentified goons smash out car windows and shoot family dogs and drive women’s heads into the pavement. It’s happening as people are being kidnapped from their places of business and houses of worship, without probable cause or due process or legal representation. It’s happening as law-abiding, tax-paying, community-enriching human beings are being deported or disappeared…You either believe in the sanctity of life or you don’t. This Administration’s violent weaponizing of ICE is a test of Americans’ tolerance for dehumanization, for illegal Government overreach, for brutality against the most vulnerable among us—and millions of those who call this place home are failing that test…in moments of consequence when they turned away and said nothing; moments where the inhumanity and illegality and cruelty would have compelled any human being with a fully functioning soul to raise their voices.” -John Pavlovitz, longtime pastor and current author, speaker, activist and storyteller at “The Beautiful Mess” 

 

Links to News Coverage of ICE and the DHS violating due process, rule of law, and human rights (Warning: very disturbing language and violence):


SHOOTINGS:


CHILDREN:


DETENTION CENTERS:


PEACEFUL PROTESTORS & PRESS:


OTHER BRUTALITY, HARASSMENT, AND ABUSE:


HOW TO HELP IMMIGRANTS:




 
 
 

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