from the straight-up-mugging dept

Let’s just clear the air right up front: this is just the government mugging Somalis because they’re currently at the top of Trump’s shitlist. Prior to last month’s escalation (and subsequent murder) because some white MAGA shitbird became famous for supposedly uncovering a whole lot of Somali-based fraud in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it’s possible ICE would have bragged about robbing money from people at an international airport.

But because this other thing (the MAGA dude) happened first — and because Minneapolis residents have proven incredibly resilient in the face of vengeful federal operations — ICE had to get out its X bullhorn and yell about taking money from people the MAGA faithful have been encouraged to hate by their dimwitted handler, Donald Trump. (For a bit of catharsis, here’s a wonderful recording of the so-called “MAGA influencer” Jake Lang being welcomed to Minneapolis by counter-protesters while he tried to get his anti-migrant hate on. It seems this mook forgot protesters burned a police station to the ground following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.)

This X post comes to us via Dom Ervolina on Bluesky. But since that post can’t be seen by people who aren’t logged in, I’m going to screenshot the X post in all of its ingloriousness, because we certainly aren’t going to be linking to and/or embedding a post from that particular den of depravity that’s overseen by a landlord who can’t seem to decide whether he should be an absentee landlord or a cheerleader for his CSAM-creating, Hitler proxy AI, Grok.

Here goes nothing:

It’s an official post by the X ICE account. Although ICE wasn’t directly involved with this airport robbery, it was first in line to celebrate it. Here’s what it says:

UNDECLARED CASH SEIZED AT MSP

On January 18, HSI St. Paul and @CBP seized $14,135 from two Somali-born U.S. citizens who were departing on international flights from MSP.

ICE and CBP remain vigilant in detecting and preventing the illegal movement of funds across borders to protect national security.

It’s accompanied by a photo of the alleged $14,135 scattered across a Formica table apparently located adjacent to (and somewhat blocking) an airport walkway.

Note that it says $14,135. $14,000 should have been enough. But the bottom right corner of the photo makes it clear federal officers weren’t satisfied until they’d rifled through these people’s wallets.

Yep, that’s $35 dollars, splayed across the table like it’s the focal point of a video produced by the least-successful SoundCloud rap artist ever.

Also, note the way this phrase is… um, phrased:

“…from two Somali-born U.S. citizens…”

You see what the government led with, right? They expect everyone who’s going to cheer whatever they do to stop reading after the “i” in “Somali” (or maybe the “n” in “-born” at best). And they expect everyone to ignore the words that follow that: “U.S. citizens.”

The rabble will get roused because it has something to do (however adjacently) with the people Trump hates and who will do all they can to stoke that hatred, even if that means the occasional bout of hypothermia. (See above link about Maga dudebro getting railed by the locals.)

Ignore the rest of the racist dogwhistling and you get nothing more than ICE celebrating the fact that the CBP stole $14,135 from US citizens.

But that’s not even the stupidest part of ICE masturbating on main. The rules for taking money out of the country are pretty simple: you must declare any amount over $10,000 to Customs. There were two people and $14,000 involved here. Even the laziest of elementary school students should be able to spot the problem here.

No matter how you slice it up, CBP cannot use a customs violation to justify the seizure of $14,000 from two people. If one person was over the limit, the other person was carrying an amount of cash that didn’t need to be declared. If both were carrying half, neither of them were violating the law.

And since the government has yet to give us more details on this, we’re left to assume the government grabbed $14,000 from two US citizens just because it thinks it can get away with it.

Now, it’s entirely possible the government will claim the two people were working together to smuggle more than $10,000 out of the country. But if it does, it should be directly and persistently challenged by the court that takes this case. If that doesn’t happen, the government will be able to steal any amount of cash from any number of passengers boarding the same plane if that total manages to clear the $10,000 mark.

And it will also assume it can free-associate connections between people boarding different flights carrying cash by pretending these unconnected people are engaged in a conspiracy to violate a customs law that seemingly only exists to allow the government to pick people’s pockets (figuratively but also LITERALLY) at our nation’s airports.

On top of that, there are the activities of other federal agencies like the DEA and ATF, who pretend any mildly significant amount of cash in travelers’ luggage must be the end result of illegal activity. And this is so fucking maddening because it has NEVER been illegal to carry cash from place to place, much less try to leave the country with an (undeclared) stack of greenbacks (under $10,000) that tend to produce better results in vacation destinations and ancestral homelands whose currency isn’t worth as much as the US dollar.

There’s no shaming the government into behaving better — not when it’s headed by some of the most shameless government officials ever to hold executive branch offices. But, for the time being, you can possibly sue them into submission. And that’s what needs to happen now. The government is engaging in racism and mouthing empty phrases about “national security” to justify its abusive xenophobia. Sure, this sort of thing predates Trump. But it doesn’t mean we should consider it acceptable just because it’s been SOP for most of this century.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, bigotry, cbp, dhs, ice, legalized theft, mass deportation, minneapolis, minnesota, somalia, trump administration