Anti-ICE activists in Minneapolis may have just stumbled into the most awkward case for borders and ID checks imaginable.
In a video circulating online, one self described activist openly explains how protesters have begun setting up roadblocks and informal checkpoints in city neighborhoods to monitor who is coming and going.
“We are literally creating a place that we know who’s coming and going in and out of our neighborhoods,” the activist says, apparently without a hint of irony.
Read that again.
According to the activist, the goal is to control access to certain areas during heightened Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. In practice, that means stopping cars, monitoring traffic, and deciding who belongs and who does not. It is borders. It is checkpoints. It is ID enforcement. Just with cardboard signs and moral certainty instead of uniforms.
For years, activists have insisted that borders are immoral, voter ID laws are discriminatory, and checking documentation is authoritarian. Now, in the name of resisting federal immigration enforcement, some appear perfectly comfortable creating their own localized version of all three.
The logic is hard to miss. People who oppose national borders are now defending neighborhood borders. Groups that denounce law enforcement checkpoints are now running their own. The same crowd that calls voter ID racist is openly advocating for determining who “belongs” in a community before allowing passage.
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