Abolish DHS

There was news today that in the raid on Ilhan Omar's house on Monday, Homeland Security Investigations personnel seized the Congresswoman's cell phone. As if there would be evidence on her phone about documents her late father filed when she was 12 years old. They have also subpoenaed members of her family. I didn't see information on which members, but the only relevant one — if this witch hunt is actually about immigration — is deceased. Can we say fishing expedition?

The raid on Omar's home and her ongoing persecution has additional relevance as we hear about DHS's plans for a new investigative force called ERO ONE, funded to the tune of $100 million of our money, which they got through the gigantic bad bill passed by spineless Republicans last year. 

ERO ONE stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement, and it's a domestic surveillance operation that will soon be enacted early next year with bases in 26 cities across the country: Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, D.C., Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Harlingen (Texas), Houston, Laguna Niguel (California), Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Paul, and Williston (Vermont).

The ACLU's analyst 

noted that immigration officials across agencies have been using an excessive amount of surveillance tools for years, including their “Stingray” cell tower simulators, automatic license plate readers, and tools that track location from cellphones. They use a facial recognition and biometric collection app called Mobile Fortify, a Palantir app called ImmigrationOS to track immigrants’ movements, and buy data from LexisNexis to identify someone’s family and work history. ERO ONE would draw on all of that information, plus an expanded group of sources to reach into the private lives of anyone it wants, intelligence experts said.

We may be paranoid, but they are out to get us.