The national news about ICE’s terror campaign has predominantly been from Los Angeles, which makes a twisted kind of sensse – it’s a densely populated area that’s a little under half Latino, so it’s easier for ICE to work toward its quota there.

It wouldn’t be a national terror campaign if some parts of the nation were left out, though, so a few attacks have been sprinkled over the less quota-filling parts of the country.

Last week, it was Bangor’s turn, as a clique of overlapping federal agencies – ICE, HSI, the Border Patrol, and maybe others – rolled up to a local Japanese steak house in unmarked vehicles and “arrested” three of the employees.

Heh. Uniforms by Bass Pro Shops. And operator beards, because they probably think of themselves that way. Somehow.

Compare and contrast these two:

Heh heh. Look at all that mismatched tacticool, complete with mismatched helmets. And they’re wearing enough masks for four or five ordinary cowards.

I don’t know whether they saw someone with a camera and threw all that on quickly or they had it on beforehand, but either way, it’s pathetic.

Meanwhile, some of them were carrying random boxes out of the restaurant:

“Hey, I saw the FBI do this once, and it looked really professional. Now what movie was that from…”

Ha ha ha.

 

The next day, these two fuckheads turned up on the side of a nearby road:

I don’t quite believe them abouut their show of public bootlicking being a “coincidence” planned a week in advance. I mean, it probably took more than a day for them to get that sign made, but it’s more likely they had it ready and waited for something to come up in the local news and draw attention that they could soak up.

And they’re also cowards. I’m not talking about their guns, although even the average “open-carry protester” would be embarrassed. I’m talking about them picking the side of the intersection where people were least likely to pull up and stop on the street beside them.

Searching their names is a fun ride, too; one is a failed Portland city council candidate and reputed white-supremacist groupie who’s nuked his Facebook and Twitter accounts but failed to scrub everuything:

If liberals cant abort babies theyll try to rape them.

His rep is of someone spouting whatever righty talking points will get him the most notice, or indeed any notice – a pathettic little man. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to be provocative with a sidewalk banner, either, although last time he couldn’t find a “friend” to hold the other end of the banner and had to tie it to a lamppost.

The other fuckhead is basically an adult juvenile delinquent – at least a quarter of the relevant search results came from the Portland Press Herrald’s police blotter, and the worst offense was “criminal misichief.” He also has a reputation in the Portland area as a whacknut. Here, look…

Hahahahahaha I actually have two first impressions of this: “I could build a more impressive weapon out of Legos” and “I bet he saw the taped magazine trick in Die Harrd 2, and it was barely cool even then.”

 

The capper:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement won’t say how many people it has arrested in Maine since President Donald Trump took office, a day after agents arrested three people at a Bangor restaurant.

[…]

ICE will not provide local statistics about arrests and detentions, a spokesperson told the Bangor Daily News on Friday.

Remember, these fuckers are working toward a quota. They absolutely keep track of how many people they’ve “arrested,” because that’s how they measure success or failure. They keep track of it by state or region, probably by office, and possibly by the individual contributing goon, too, because that’s how higher-up goons know which subordinates to praise for their zeal or shame for their underperformance. Anyone who’s worked for any employer that uses performance metrics knows how this works.

But they stopped publicly posting those stats in December 2024, apparently, because even a miniscule chance of being held accountable is more than they can tolerate.

As disturbing as their domestic terror campaign is, it’s almost comforting, in a way, to see that its perpetrators – who are set to be gifted a budget bigger than a mid-sized European country’s entire military – are cowards not just at street level, with their ridiculous masks, but at the supervisory and executive levels as well.

 

Happy Independence Day, by the way.