On the night of October 20, 2010, Angel Escobar and Jorge Sarmiento were in their beds in their small, two-bedroom apartment in the Clairmont complex in Nashville. Several roomates and friends were in other rooms. The doors and windows were all shut and locked. Suddenly there was a loud banging at the door and voices shouting "Police!" and "Policia!" When no one answered, the agents tried to force the door open. Scared, occupants hid. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began hitting objects against the bedroom windows, trying to break in. Without a search warrant and without consent, the ICE agents eventually knocked in the front door and shattered a window, shouting racial slurs and storming into the bedrooms, holding guns to some people’s heads. When asked if they had a warrant, one agent reportedly said, "We don't need a warrant, we're ICE," and, gesturing to his genitals, "the warrant is coming out of my balls."
Throughout history, those in power have attempted to control access to information, to maintain — in the words of Thomas Jefferson — "tyranny over the mind of man." While it used to be books alone smoking in the pyres, today virtual information is equally vulnerable to censorship — if not more so — since all it takes is the click of a web filter to block a website.
(Editor's note: We know it's no longer Women's History Month, but we still have a lot more to say! We'll be featuring a few more posts in April.)
Imagine the uproar if women were forced to remove their shirts and bras for booking photos in police stations or jails. The feelings of vulnerability, degradation and trauma such a practice would generate would quickly put an end to it. For a Muslim woman, wearing a hijab (headscarf) is not only a symbol of her faith, but a way for her to control the parts of her body people see. Being forced to remove the hijab is humiliating, no different from being compelled to strip in front of others.
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