When ICE Melts Down: Who Hires These People?
Put forth on February 28, 2008 by XicanoPwr
Posted in ICE, Immigration, Nativism, Prejudices, Racism, Texas
Mark Juvette, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, shot and killed himself, after an armed standoff with Grand Prairie, TX police. Police were called in to check on Juvette, 40, after co-workers expressed their concern for his wellbeing. ICE told police that Juvette called in sick on day about a week ago, saying he had a heart condition.
According to Dallas/Ft. Worth local NBC affiliate, NBC 5, when Grand Prairie police along with three ICE agents tried to enter Juvette’s apartment with help from management to check in on him, so after, Juvette started shooting at them through the door. Grand Prairie police were forced to evacuate parts of the apartment complex after he started shooting into his neighbors’ apartments. Police eventually entered the apartment after using a “pole camera” to find him dead from a gunshot wound on the living room sofa.
Associated Press reported that police found a “suitcase full of pornographic magazines in the bedroom and a red flag with a black swastika hung in a closet with a few older style military jackets.” Police also recovered a shotgun, semiautomatic rifle, a revolver, two semiautomatic pistols and other weapons from his home. It is also being reported that police also found books about Adolf Hitler.
However, it seems Grand Prairie police is trying to downplay the items they found and confiscated from Juvette’s apartment. Grand Prairie police Detective John Brimmer told reporters:
“We’re not accusing this guy or saying that he was involved with any skinhead or Nazi organization or anything like that,” Detective Brimmer said. “He could have been a memorabilia collector. A lot of people collect stuff from World War II and they specialize in German things.”
One does have to wonder how many World War II memorabilia collectors have a red flag with a black swastika hanging in their closet? Or a suitcase full of pornographic magazines? Or a whole arsenal? Just because he was not involved in a known white supremacists groups mean he rejects their views. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was open about his views considering Julie Myers, then-acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had no problem with her employers dressing up in blackface and fake dreads at an office Halloween party thrown last year.
Mark Juvette was an Immigration Enforcement Agent with the Dallas Office of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO). ICE’s DRO is responsible for the deporting and overseeing undocumented immigrants while they are in custody. Juvette served in the U.S. Navy from 1987 to 1988 and then began working with the then Immigration and Naturalization Service in June 1998 as a Detention Enforcement Officer.
It is still unknown why Juvette snapped and Grand Prairie police are continuing their investigation. But most importantly, one does have to wonder if any immigrants were harassed under his watch?
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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I bet that detective Brimmer has a lot of ‘memoriabilia.’ How many people of color and/or jews collect nazi books? ICE just keeps getting crazier.
That really was an odd statement to make. I believe giving a person the benefit of the doubt, but come on now … that was just a bit of a stretch.
Yeah, that excuse was BS. I used to have a neighbor who collected Nazi memorabilia, but he wasn’t some sort of fetishist. He was extremely critical of the Nazis and believed that it was important not to forget them, history repeats itself, blahblah…and he had his stuff out in the open, so that people could comment on it and he could go off on one of his lectures. If you’re hiding the nazi flag in the closet, then I doubt you’re doing it because you’re a historian.
When I was writing my book on Mexican history, I had some photos of the villains around — Don Porfirio, Emperor Max, etc. — but never thought of hiding them in a closet. Of course the “collector” excuse is nonsense, but that’s not what’s really important here.
I don’t know why anyone is really shocked that ICE agents would tend to be closet Nazis. While here on the border our local agents are generally local people, the kind of people attracted to jobs as bureaucrats with guns (and a mission to root out the “alien”)are going to be of the
same mindset as Fritz, your friendly neighborhood Brownshirt ca. 1935.
It does sound as though ICE should screen their employees better.
My beef with ICE is structural: they have all the power of other law enforcement agencies, including the right to use deadly force, but very few of the checks on abuse that you would see with other branches of law enforcement. It’s more like the military in a war setting than a domestic law enforcement setting, since the enforcers have all the power and privilege of the U.S. government, while the target population is definitionally disenfranchised and disempowered. There is no civilian complaint review board for noncitizens abused by ICE to bring attention to misuse of power. All the incentives are pointing towards abuse of a vulnerable population, and that is what we have seen.
ICE agents, in my experience, also love a good show of force to intimidate the already-cowed. For instance, I saw an ICE agent with a police dog at the Garden City immigration office a few weeks ago. Why a dog had to be paraded around in front of all the nervous people waiting to be interviewed for their green cards was unclear to me. It’s not like they were tracking someone across the sands of Southern Arizona–this was Long Island. Also, a client of mine who was wrongly detained by an ICE agent–clearly ignoring the relevant parts of the INA and lying to my face about a supposed nonexistent past criminal charge–told me that the ICE agent who “brought him in” not only had a sidearm in a holster, but a gun strapped to his ankle. Two guns! (And doubtful either one ever has or ever will be fired.) 007 and John McClane, you’ve met your match on the ninth floor of one of the most nondescript buildings of downtown Manhattan’s federal bureaucracy.
But ICE agents need the guns to instill an appropriate level of fear in the immigrants they are wrongfully detaining while they interrogate them outside the presence of counsel. That’s right, it’s a little slice of Guantanamo at your local immigration office. And you better not complain, or you’ll be sure to be locked up.
I heard ICE was in the house, so I took the time to air some grievances. Hope y’all were taking notes.
The comment left by “yave begnet” is ridiculous. This idiot needs to go back to school. Probably has those views because he is illegally here in this country. What a loser.
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