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Department of Homeland Comedy: Trump Gestapo quotes Adam Sandler film to justify mass arrests

In the latest indication that the United States is well on its way to fulfilling the destiny laid out in Idiocracy, the X account of the department responsible for stuff like ‘nuclear incident response’ continues to sound increasingly like a teenage troll.

Department of Homeland Security: going rogue

The Department of Homeland Security used a quote from the Adam Sandler film Billy Madison in response to CNN pundit Maria Cardona, who had said:

[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE is engaging in egregious, criminal behaviour, violating peoples’ civil rights, kidnapping, and snatching innocent men, women, and children off the streets, even detaining American citizens! While doing it, not identifying themselves, hiding their faces, not telling people why they are being taken. This is not normal!

The Department of Homeland Security reply took the form of the put down given to Sandler’s character by a quiz show host in the 1995 film:

Rambling, incoherent – isn’t that your typical Trump speech?

Now, this might seem like a response that would fit better in reply to virtually any public pronouncement from their boss, a certain Donald J. Trump, but the Department of Homeland Security instead used it in to lambast entirely valid criticism of its rights violating policies. ICE has been running amok during Trump’s second term, with its agents kidnapping people off the streets and deporting them into grim dungeons overseas. This is done on the pretext that those taken have violated immigration law, but this claim often cannot be verified due to the often total absence of due process followed. This had been going on since even before Trump’s escalation. Its masked agents have in many cases wrongly imprisoned American citizens.

Trump’s latest moves involve the attempted deployment of troops to supposedly crime-ridden cities like Chicago and Portland, though it appears to be a thin pretext disguising an attempt to intimidate political rivals by sending military personnel to Democrat strongholds. The man who recently told a room full of generals of his desire for them to crack down on “the enemy within” has been fighting the matter in the courts.

Others chimed in on the juvenility of the Department of Homeland Security tweet:

ICE – supporting your right to do what we say

There’s no denying that the Department of Homeland Security on X resembles a cross between your average far-right vigilante account and one run by a military-obsessed 14 year-old. Nakedly fascistic imagery abounds, with endless slow-mo clips of heavily armed, uniform clad meatheads deployed on US streets. One reposted missive aims to reassure with the bromide that now sets alarm bells ringing when heard on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean – “We supports the right to protest, but…”:

 

We support the right to protest, but…not if you say something we don’t like.

We support the right to protest, but…not any with politics we don’t agree with.

We support the right to protest, but…not for much longer.

It was left to @crystalkangg to get at some core underlying truths:

 

By Robert Freeman

This post was originally published on Canary.