Sh*tting where you eat: ICE conducts raids in SW Kansas.
Recently, the US Department of Homeland Security deployed ICE agents to communities in Southwest Kansas. Over the span of several days, federal agents parked outside of schools, restaurants, mobile home parks, and processing plants that prepare nearly a quarter of America's beef for consumption. Businesses were forced to shut down, students stayed home from school, and workforce disruptions led to millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Rumors swirled that ICE descended on Kansas at the behest of Republican political candidates facing low polling numbers ahead of the midterm elections. Kansans have been inundated with their "tough on crime" commercials running ad nauseam over the last few months. An immigration crackdown, these struggling GOP candidates allegedly surmised, would demonstrate to conservative constituents that they were delivering on their "promise" to make Kansas "safer."
But let's be honest, ICE agents are neither qualified, nor capable of removing truly violent offenders from Kansas. Hence, they resorted to snatching up older women like Araceli in Dodge City. They terrorized US citizens who were on their way to work like Frank and Guadalupe in Liberal.
When this callous era concludes, I suspect we will see that ICE did nothing to curtail violent crime in America. Statistics will likely show their numbers game, like everything else about Donald Trump, was a façade.
The qualifications to become an ICE agent are minimal. One need only pledge filial obedience to Mr. Trump, and you're essentially hired and rewarded with a $50,000.00 sign-on bonus.
New recruits are rushed through orientation in a matter of weeks. While members of local law enforcement are meticulously trained in the classroom and the field, ICE agents are issued a firearm and sent to wreak havoc. They are, in large part, Gravy Seals and members of Meal Team Six with an insatiable appetite for violence.
As ICE terrorized communities on the arid plains, the castrated Kansas Congressional delegation stood by and mindlessly watched like cattle.
The Kansas Livestock Association, on the other hand, issued a joint statement along with the Oklahoma and Texas Livestock Associations.
"Sudden workforce disruptions can create immediate animal-welfare, operational, and economic consequences that extend well beyond an individual business," the Livestock Associations jointly wrote. "These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the cattle supply chain moving. Additionally, these types of disruptions will lead to higher beef prices for consumers."
You'll note the Livestock Associations didn't express even an iota of concern for their undocumented employees.
In fact, the members of the Kansas Livestock Association are having the day they voted for. Their organization endorsed the very candidates who campaigned on the platform of ICE raids and immigration "crackdowns." They were fine with the violence that unfolded in so-called "blue cities" like Los Angeles and Minneapolis. It was only when ICE arrived at their feedlots and processing plants that the KLA expressed concern.
They aren't outraged about the injustice.
They're nervous about their bottom line.
Perhaps, in some sadistic sense, they should be thankful. Unlike the undocumented workers they knowingly hired, members of the KLA won't face any legal repercussion. The processing plants, feedlots, and farms will get off scot-free. The slaughterhouse bosses won't be aggressively rounded up, shackled, and loaded into vehicles bound for who knows where. And that's all thanks to the Kansas Livestock Association padding political pockets.
In the aftermath of the ICE raids on the prairie, there are rumors of a Latino economic blackout. Members of the immigrant community are allegedly weighing the possibility of simply not showing up to work for a few weeks; to demonstrate that without Hispanics, the Southwest Kansas economy will be crippled. In a community like Dodge City, where 65% of the population is Hispanic, that could spell financial disaster -- no housekeepers, no dishwashers, no meat processors, no construction workers, no janitors -- and contrary to the myth, no "American" workers willing to fill the void.
In the meantime, beef prices will continue to increase, there will be more food recalls, fuel prices will skyrocket due to an ongoing senseless war, mortgage rates will go up, and the most devastating parts of the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" won't even go into effect until after the midterms.
Not immigrants, but Kansas MAGA voters, and indeed MAGA voters across America are squarely to blame for the very long, rough days that lie ahead. Days they knowingly voted for.
Are we "great" yet?
