"We bleed just like anybody else bleeds."

But don't expect Convicted Felon Donald Trump's Department of Justice to care.

TWENTY armed men bust open your door. All of the lights are off. It’s dark. You’re a woman, a mother…alone in your newly rented home in Oklahoma City with your three daughters. Your husband is more than 1,300 miles away in Maryland.

These armed men—claiming they’re from the US Marshal’s Office, ICE, and the FBI—force you out of your home and make you stand outside in the rain with your daughters who are in their underwear. These men want you to change in front of all of them.

These armed men do not identify themselves by name. They say they’ve got a search warrant. The names on that warrant? NOT YOUR NAME. NOT YOUR CHILDREN’S NAMES. NOT YOUR HUSBAND’S NAME. These alleged federal agents have got it wrong. You tell them you just moved here from Maryland. You tell them that you’re all US citizens. These men…they don’t care and continue to tear apart “every square inch” of your home.

They ransack your home. The home you just moved into two weeks earlier…in the presumably safe neighborhood you chose for your family to start a new life. The armed men seize your phones, your laptops, your documents, and all of your cash life-savings. You and your children are traumatized. You’re left with literally nothing…not a penny to feed your children, not a penny to care for them. And when these agents leave, they tell you it might take days or even months to get your personal property returned. But you don’t know who has actually seized your things because you don’t have a business card or a name.

Local news reports reveal that the US Marshal’s Office denies being involved. The FBI denies being on the scene. Homeland Security said they’d “look into it” and as of today, there’s been no response. If the US Marshal’s Office wasn’t involved and the FBI wasn’t even present, then who were these ARMED, unidentified men busting down the door?

This domestic terrorism isn’t a nightmare, but a reality for “Marisa” and her daughters in Oklahoma City. And if you think this is an isolated one-off, you’re dead wrong. Because this could happen to anyone, anywhere.

These men obviously didn’t knock before they busted down Marisa’s door in the dark to execute the search warrant. No-knock warrants, as they’re called, are only ok in very specific circumstances: when there is a credible fear for officer safety or a belief that evidence may be destroyed if the occupant gets advance notice that law enforcement is there to execute on a warrant. No-knock warrants have to be approved by a judge after a warrant application has been made by officers. In other words, there has to be the presentation of specific facts and circumstances by the police that would justify the use of a no-knock warrant. Otherwise, the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, especially in the sanctity of your home, and the police must knock and announce their presence before entering.

In this instance, I haven’t seen or read the search warrant at issue, so I don’t know if these federal agents had in their possession a no-knock warrant. However, the fact that the subject(s) of that warrant weren’t living in that house FOR WEEKS is bad news for the government. Marisa said that she and her daughters moved into that home about two weeks earlier. You mean to tell me the police could not be bothered to try to confirm prior to executing the warrant whether the identified suspects were even living in the subject residence? How dangerously incompetent do you have to be?!

Do you remember Breonna Taylor? On March 13, 2020, Louisville police attempted to serve a no-knock warrant at her apartment. Her boyfriend, mistakenly believing that a break-in was being committed, shot at who he thought were intruders. Officers returned fire, killing Breonna after shooting her eight times.

Marisa said: “My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces.” Luckily, no one was killed in Marisa’s case. But, was tragedy really averted? Marisa and her daughters are now left traumatized for the rest of their lives after being cruelly treated like criminals. These kinds of terroristic, Gestapo-like tactics were used for an immigration search warrant?? For an immigration case??

And if Marisa complains about her civil rights being violated? Don’t expect any real action from Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s Department of Justice. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is hemorrhaging hundreds of lawyers and staff, after its new head, Harmeet K. Dhillon, weaponized the division against the communities it traditionally protected. Dhillon recently announced that the Division’s new priorities include “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” and “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias.” And most relevantly, Dhillon has suspended investigations of police abuse. Like I said, don’t hold your breath for any justice.

I urge you to take the time to watch the report by local Oklahoma news station, KFOR, and listen to Marisa’s brutally emotional description of her nightmare:

https://kfor.com/video/federal-immigration-agents-raid-home-but-suspects-dont-live-there/10669308

This is the kind of police state action one can expect in an authoritarian regime. Be outraged. Be mad. And demand accountability.