New York is creating a team of legal observers that will don purple vests to monitor and record the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement officers as they seek to detain and deport migrants, the state’s attorney general said on Tuesday.
The announcement follows weeks of sometimes violent tumult in Minneapolis, where Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed, masked agents as he tries to deport more migrants than any of his predecessors.
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the state’s new legal observers would be volunteer employees from her office, trained to observe, without interfering, whether Trump’s immigration enforcement “remains within the bounds of the law”.
“I am proud to protect New Yorkers’ constitutional rights to speak freely, protest peacefully, and go about their lives without fear of unlawful federal action,” James, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We have seen in Minnesota how quickly and tragically federal operations can escalate in the absence of transparency and accountability.“
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said James was putting New Yorkers in danger by not working with ICE.
Prediction: these state-sanctioned legal observers are gonna be used to “enforce the law” against the protesters, not ICE.
Like why on earth are we giving this faction of capital the benefit of the doubt over the other faction of capital? They’re all acting on the behalf of some subset of the capitalist class. Of course they come into conflict with other factions of capital, but their main class interests are, and always will be, bourgeois above all else.
Leticia James has no reason to be complicit with Donald Trump’s fascism.
Say what you will about how slow justice was during the Trump Interregnum, but James’ office was the only one that managed to push charges that stuck, and that led to conviction. Trump escaped punishment by getting elected President again, then used the power of his office to go after James personally.
If there is a single person in authority here with a score to settle with Donald Trump, it’s her.
I am confident that her and her government’s class allegiance to the local capitalists will trump her distaste for Trump, not in every way, but certainly in all the ways that actually make a difference.
Yes, James has been individually, personally fucked over by Trump, and yes she has managed to inconvenience Trump’s faction of capital, but her class interests, which can be inferred from her government position and years of liberal politics, indicate that she will go ultimately do what’s best for her faction of capital. Which is whatever helps maintain liberal capitalism, e.g. hamper effective (i.e illegal or de facto illegal) forms of resistance.
I.e., she is anti-“Trump’s faction of capital”, but as a capitalist politician, is principally anti-proletarian.
I hope I’m wrong on this but I’m super confident that I won’t be 😮💨
Stand down, Comrade, and read her bio. Yes, she’s a lawyer, but she has spent her whole law career as a public defender and local politician, eventually becoming the NYC Public Advocate, which is a weird position that amounts to a Deputy Mayor who is a permanent government ombudsman/watchdog, before becoming the State AG.
She is literally the last person you should be accusing of class warfare on behalf of the bourgeoisie. Sometimes, a politician is just a politician, and not part of a capitalist plot…
Leticia James is amazing. I worked for a Fidelis care and they had managed medicaid plans for NYS. Pre-covid a gentleman was approved for pain injections, but couldn’t get into the office before his authorization ran out, because anything non emergent was closed. Once the doctor’s office was open, the doctor submitted a new request, with the same clinical information, and it was denied. I put an appeal together for this man, painstakingly pulling the clinical records from the first authorization, the second authorization, EVERY PAID CLAIM related to his condition, AND EVERY RX CLAIM FOR PAIN MEDS the company paid for. 4 hours of work. The appeals team denied it in 15 later. I rage quit, helped the man file an external appeal through the state department of finances. The state ruled in favor of that medicaid client. Then I helped that man file a complaint against the insurance carrier with the NYS attorney general, (Leticia James.) There was lots of other bullshit going down at Fidelis, like denying claims for covid testing, which I also helped consumers make complaints about because I new what was going on was illegal. Leticia James raked them over the fucking coals. She has been fighting for everyday people, and she makes me proud to be a NYer.