In the overnight hours of November 9 through 10, 1938, German Jews were subjected to one of the first major government-sanctioned incidents of routine violence that would characterize their mistreatment for the next seven years.
Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass”, was so named because of the glass fragments littering streets after Nazis and Nazi sympathizers used the Paris assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Polish-Jewish student Herschel Grynszpan as a pretext for engaging in a rampage that resulted in the smashing of 7,500 Jewish businesses’ windows, burning of 1,000 synagogues, and arrests of Jewish males ages 16 to 60.
Today, it isn’t Jews’ businesses’ windows being smashed, but car windows of suspected undocumented migrants. It isn’t Nazis, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers doing the smashing.
Perhaps you’ve seen cell phone videos of ICE agents doing this. Investigative outlet ProPublica published a report last week documenting agents’ practice of smashing car windows—sometimes of incorrectly identified people—is not random. According to the report, it has occurred in at least 50 incidents, suggesting it has become a standard intimidation strategy.
According to the report:
It was one of nearly 50 documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows that ProPublica has identified from social media, local news accounts, lawsuits and interviews since President Donald Trump took office six months ago. Using the same methods, we found just eight in the previous decade. Neither number is comprehensive. The government releases no relevant statistics.
Use-of-force experts and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement insiders say the tactic was rarely used during previous administrations. They say there is no known policy change greenlighting agents’ smashing of windows. Rather, it’s a part of a broader shattering of norms.
Shattered windows represent the shattered norms disturbingly becoming too commonplace in America today.
Agents breaking windows even when crying children are present.
Victims sustaining injuries from shattered glass.
These are just a couple of conditions being reported and promoted, not disciplined.
One victim is César Ruiz Rodriguez from Spokane, Washington.
According to his attorney, ICE agents’ aggression resulted in an open wound at the back of his head. His brother, Jeison, had glass in his knees, as revealed in a subsequent x-ray.
In Kentucky, Martin Rivera and his girlfriend Jennifer Gribben, a U.S. citizen, were told agents were looked for “Garcia” when ICE pulled them over. When they informed agents neither was named Garcia, an agent replied, “And I found you instead,” and proceeded to smash the car’s windows that resulted in Gribben beaten “brutally in my head” and Rivera’s arm being fractured.
Veronica Ramirez Verduzco of Detroit reports being dragged from the window ICE agents broke, resulting in “bloody, jagged scratches up and down her forearms five days later,” according to her attorney.
Some on the right will argue law enforcement officers are permitted to use force when a suspect resists, so these people deserve it. Except, according to the ProPublica report, “Ramirez Verduzco and others said they were given little time to respond before officers broke their windows.”
Before being deported to Mexico, Ramirez Verduzco explained, “They didn’t give me a chance to understand what was going on.”
In New Bedford, Mass., Marilu Mendez states ICE agents told her they were looking for her husband Juan, except they kept calling him “Antonio”. While recording the incident, they stayed in their car and called their lawyer, Galvez Sniffin, who told them stay in the car and refuse to give agents information until she got there. It was then ICE agents smashed the window and dragged out Marilu and Juan.
Screenshots of one of the agents smashing in their window with a sledgehammer. Boston.com footage provided by Marilu Domingo Ortiz
Marilu explained to Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra:
They looked for a hammer and they broke the car window and dragged us out of the car. Three ICE agents held my husband. They took us out unjustly... I tried to talk to them and ask them if they had an order to detain him. They didn’t respond or show me anything. They had no reason to detain him. We’ve been following the rules of this country. We are doing things the right way. That’s why we have a lawyer.
Galvez Sniffin, their attorney, added:
My clients were within their rights, they were very respectful and following and exerting their rights and stating their right to remain silent and stating their right to have legal representation and they were met with brutality. They were met with violence.
Draw a line from 1938 to today and we will find parallels.
Kristallnacht targeted Jews, the marginalized scapegoat du jour that handed Adolf Hitler the excuses he needed to unleash the power of the fascist state.
We know what happened afterward.
Today it’s undocumented immigrants, or in some cases, not.
This is not “law enforcement”; it’s the product of another proto-dictator targeting another marginalized scapegoat to conveniently unleash the power of the fascist state.
Today it’s immigrants.
Tomorrow…?
