Say His Name: Joan Sebastian Guerrero
Young father gunned down in Biddeford yesterday was not the person ICE was looking for
Hundreds marched spontaneously in Biddeford, Maine yesterday expressing outrage that ICE gunned down a young man on his way to work. Here’s someone from the neighborhood where the murder took place. I think she speaks for many of us.
Reports are that he was not even the person they were looking for.
As per the usual modus operandi of today’s fascist stormtroopers, ICE claimed through a soul-dead mouthpiece — in this case, Senator Angus King — that the victim had “weaponized the vehicle.” King got the scoop from Homeland Security director Markwayne Mullin whose Associate Degree in construction management didn’t prepare him to do his job any better than his predecessor, ICE Barbie.
Competence when you’re terrorizing and murdering immigrants isn’t really that important. It’s a shame is that these thugs are allowed to call themselves federal law enforcement — with no body cams or dash cams to hold them accountable for their behavior. On your dime.
There will be ongoing demonstrations of the people’s rage. We are still reeling from news that ICE shot and killed another father on his way to work. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was reportedly also not the man that ICE agents were seeking in Houston. But hey, he was brown and driving to work, so in their sick minds he was fair game.
47 and his donors want us to have a civil war in the U.S. so that we do not have the revolution we so desperately need. Lobbying your elected officials will, based on past experience, yield exactly nothing in the way of results. If it makes you feel better, go ahead.
A more appropriate response would be to shut down the cities where state-sanctioned murders occur, like Minneapolis did. Might you end up in federal custody or dead? Unfortunately, yes. (The second thing a family member said to me after alerting me to Guerrero’s death was: Be careful protesting.) I don’t feel like cowering at home is keeping us safe either but unfortunately my husband is unwell at the moment so I’m temporarily limited in scope.
Maybe I’ll just keep reposting the “make him famous” photo of the ICE dude (some described him as a gravy SEAL for the tough guy cosplay combined with chubbiness). The Portland, Maine subreddit moderators took my post down yesterday after it had received thousands of views and scores of comments. Who knows why? All social media platforms are infested with right wing ideologues to manage the narrative. I’ll keep trying.
I refuse to live in a country like this. And I’m not going anywhere.