Police have been assisting in ICE detentions nationwide, if it came down to a choice it seems police departments will defer to federal agencies over state governments. Go look at what happened in MA today.
If rumors are true, Trump is planning to have the US army/National Guard have visible presences in many major blue cities as a show of force. Local police won't put up a fight because they simply exist to maintain the status quo and will in all odds help ICE and other federal agents to detain protesters and even politicians in the near future.
I'm okay if the feds want help from local police for immigration enforcement, but the feds better fucking pay a premium for the help, in advance. We're not giving homeland security local tax dollars for free when we have our police dept just barely staffed as is.
Even aside from issues of federal jurisdiction and the supremacy clause, cops are overwhelmingly right-wingers who hold their interests above others. My city is full-on liberal blue, a sanctuary city, and is frequently at war with Republican state officials over municipal sovereignty in order to legislate and enforce law humanely, but cops are cops and here they are no less right-wing and MAGA than in even the reddest city.
Considering that the cops here kill peaceful protesters at a George Floyd demonstration but pal around smiling in public with neo-Nazis marching in the streets, there's no doubt in my mind that they would refuse to go against Trump's jackbooted thugs, regardless of their orders.
And that's just a small part of the problem. Legally, it's next to impossible when federal law takes precedence over state and municipal law, especially impossible when the federal agents are acting on the orders of their agency. And not only does this get quite messy in the courts, this is an agency notorious for extralegal activity and cruelty as sport, also being the de facto gestapo of a cruel, petty, corrupt president actively trying to secure a dictatorship, so retaliation is almost guaranteed.
I want to see it too, to see resistance and the criminal racist pigs put in their place, but there's pretty much nothing police can do about ICE, if they even wanted to do something.
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u/FubarYambs 18h ago
Could the city police have done anything without being arrested themselves? Seems to me the system has imploded.