A 67-year-old Chicago runner recently had a run-in with the “law and order” in Trump‘s America. He was simply trying to get home, but a couple of masked ICE agents broke his ribs for the crime of owning a driveway.
In a civil neighborhood in Chicago‘s Old Irving Park, a 67-year-old man finished his weekend run and drove home. He was sweaty and tired and hoping to get some rest. But instead, he found a convoy of Border Patrol and ICE vehicles blocking his street. He stopped and asked to pass. However, as per the new American standards, he was met not with reason but with force.
According to his running club, DW Running, the man is a U.S. citizen and a longtime runner. On the day of the incident, he was dragged from his car by federal agents in tactical gear. “They pulled him out of his car, knelt on his back, and subdued him,” the club’s official Instagram page wrote on a story. “They broke six of his ribs and caused internal bleeding,” and released him soon after. But without charges, without apology, without explanation.
The video was captured by a running coach and has since been shared online on multiple platforms. Sadly, it looks like something out of a military state. Masked officers can be seen swarming an unarmed senior citizen, while onlookers scream for them to stop. There is no sign of resistance. Only the panic of the innocent and the brutality of the agents.
Some officials in Chicago condemned the attack, but condemnation is easy when accountability never follows. But on social media, Americans filled in the blanks themselves. “He simply wanted to go home. Please make it make sense,” one wrote. Another said what many have been whispering for years, “The United States is a third-world country. We must begin saying it out loud.”
And yet, Trump’s loyalists flooded the comments too, calling the video fake. Bizarrely, they claimed that the elderly runner “must’ve deserved it,” while, in grotesque irony, telling a Chicago-born American to “get deported.” One can’t help but notice how the Trump administration’s sense of justice has begun to resemble its rallies. It’s violent, paranoid, and performative for we don’t know what purpose.
“I still can’t believe how Trump has destroyed America and shit on this country as fast as he has. And to think that it’s likely going to get much worse is unfathomable,” one user expressed their horror at the incident. To think that ICE was created to protect borders, but is being used to terrorize neighborhoods, is scary. The agency behaves like Trump’s personal muscle. They’re all masked, anonymous, and unaccountable. If this is the “great America,” then the bar for civilization has officially collapsed.
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