ICE: Our Own Godless, Lawless Death Squads?

With the callous murder of Renee Good, and the immoral attempt to justify it, ICE proved itself to be more than a state-funded tool for lawlessness, fear, and intimidation. Clearly, it’s also been empowered to kill with impunity. 

The horror and sadness of witnessing this brutal escalation takes me back to the notorious death squads that operated throughout Latin America during the latter part of the 20th century. We now know those death squads were funded by US tax dollars. We also know their leaders were trained on U.S. soil at the School of the Americas— since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This is a U.S. military training facility located at Fort Benning, Georgia. 

In this 18 minute video narrated by Susan Sarandon, the dark reality of our nation’s complicity and intentionality in subverting democracy throughout Central and Latin America comes to light. This history is now repeating itself, but this time it’s not just south of our border. It’s within.

Between the ages of 5 and 20, I lived in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Guatemala. When I see ICE agents with their masks, I can’t help but feel I’m living once more in a nation run by strongmen who are also criminals. It’s crushing to see this happen to any population, but it’s even more heartbreaking to accept these crimes, the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who died by death squads, are on us. And, now, it’s beginning to happen to us.

God is not a part of this. God does not “let” this stuff happen. God is love. God commands us not to kill. Stopping state-sanctioned murder is up to the rest of us who still believe in God.

The full video below has introductory and closing commentary, but I have advanced the video to where the documentary School of Assassins begins. It received an Academy Award nomination for best documentary in 1995.