The March 14 directive, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, uses an obscure 18th-century law — the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — to give law enforcement nationwide the power to bypass basic constitutional protections.
According to the memo, agents can break into a home if getting a warrant is “impracticable,” and they don’t need a judge’s approval. Instead, immigration officers can sign their own administrative warrants. The bar for action is low — a “reasonable belief” that someone might be part of a Venezuelan gang is enough.
I mean, there was that dude in Dallas who shot a bunch of cops during a festival. He ended up barricaded in an office that overlooked the festival. Cops sent in an improvised suicide robot to blow him up.
Or hell, just a few months ago, cops woke up the entire state of Texas at 5 in the fucking morning, via the emergency broadcast system. Why? Because some dude in Amarillo had shot at a cop and was on the run. The cop wasn’t even dead; he had just been grazed. But the dude was on the run, so the cops sent an emergency alert to the entire fucking state. For reference on how insane that is, I got the alert a few minutes after the shooting… And I live like 8 hours away from where it happened. There are people on the gulf coast who are an entire 12 hour drive away, who got woken up because some cop got shot.
All that to say, if you’re going to be a vigilante, it can’t be just one person. The only thing cops hate more than melanin is a cop killer.
This is the crux of the situation. It’s a suicide mission unless we have overwhelming numbers (and really an organized force) on our side. Unless and until that happens, cops are just gonna find the occasional person who feels they have less to lose shooting at them than not.