‘Pull Your Pants Up’: ICE Agents Forcibly Enter Women’s Restroom During New York Raid
Well, well, well….
You know how MAGA conservatives are always pretending to fear trans women, and that their anti-trans fearmongering is about protecting women’s restrooms from biological males. Well, it appears that if conservatives are truly concerned with a woman’s ability to use the restroom safely without the looming fear of men coming in and violating them, they should set their sights on immigration agents.
According to Newsweek, back in September, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents forced their way into a women’s bathroom and told an occupant to “pull up your pants and come out” during a raid at Nutrition Bar Confectioners, a nutrition bar manufacturing plant in Cato, New York. Police body-cam footage released this week as part of ongoing legal proceedings involving the raid shows agents moving through the facility, directing employees to come out into the hallway.
From Newsweek:
At one point, agents attempted to open a locked women’s restroom door, and after it did not open, they forced entry and issued the directive, video shows.
Workers with varying immigration statuses were among those detained; legal representatives for some detainees say at least one individual with a valid work permit was deported despite authorization to work.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office in Syracuse received information alleging that Nutrition Bar Confectioners, a granola bar manufacturer located at 12351 State Route 34 in Cato, New York, may have employed individuals without legal authorization and used fraudulent immigration documents, according to government documents.
Internal documents raised concerns about potential financial irregularities at the facility, authorities said. HSI Syracuse, in coordination with the IRS Syracuse, Oswego Border Patrol, and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Syracuse, initiated an investigation into these allegations.
So, basically, the state government got a tip about potentially undocumented employees at a work facility, along with convenient allegations of “financial irregularities” at the same facility, and that automatically gives the green light for federal immigration agents to team up with the IRS so they can swarm the place, yank employees into the hallway, and kick down bathroom doors, forcing partially undressed women to “pull up your pants and come out.”
Look, as we have noted in the numerous reports we’ve done about the deplorable, violent, civil rights-violating activities of immigration agents, just because they’re not outright exterminating people yet doesn’t mean they’re not moving like the Gestapo.
Of course, none of us should hold our collective breath waiting for the “make women’s restrooms safe again” crowd to keep the same energy they have for the non-issue of trans women using women’s facilities, because that narrative was never about safety; it was always about bigotry. After all, they elected to the White House the predator-in-chief, an adjudicated rapist who, at least once, walked in on teenage girls getting dressed backstage at a beauty pageant.
Anyway, while the federal government is sticking to its usual script, claiming that the raid was lawful and part of routine immigration enforcement — indicating that the Trump administration sees nothing wrong with forcible entry into a women’s restroom being part of agents’ “routine” — Paul Tuck, a lawyer for one of the detainees, Argentina Juarez-Lopez, asked U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes to suppress any evidence collected in the raid, which Tuck argued violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against searches and seizures without probable cause. Tuck also shared the released body-cam footage with the judge. Meanwhile, Juarez-Lopez, who is facing a felony immigration charge, said armed agents blocked exits from the break room for about an hour during the raid.
It can’t be emphasized enough that the mass deportation agenda of President Donald Trump and his administration has never been about making America safer, as it has never been about arresting dangerous criminals. They just want brown people gone, and they don’t care how brutal and dehumanizing they have to be in the process.
Our own government presents a larger threat to the homeland than immigrants, whether they’re documented or not.
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Federal Judge Places Restrictions On ICE Arrests In Chicago