CBP's Border Theater: US Citizens Are Now the Enemy
Newsweek highlights the 'aggressive' detention of US citizens by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inside a retail giant like Target. Shocking, isn't it? That a government agency, originally tasked with border protection, now operates with such impunity kilometres away from any actual border, harassing individuals simply 'because they look suspicious.' (One might wonder 'suspicious' of what,
exactly?) This incident isn't an anomaly, but a feature of the expanding surveillance and policing state, normalized under the guise of national security, where 'the border' has become a fluid concept stretching into every citizen's daily life. This escalation of CBP's internal powers follows decades of mission creep, largely unchecked by legislative oversight. Remember the Patriot Act? The
initial public outcry over violations of privacy and due process has long since been drowned out by bipartisan consensus that more surveillance equals more security. The fact that US citizens are now 'aggressively detained' within a Target store for simply existing while brown is the logical conclusion of a system designed to treat entire populations as potential threats, a system Congress
continues to fund without serious challenge. Perhaps these 'aggressive' tactics are just conditioning for the homeland's future policing challenges, where everyone is a suspect until proven otherwise— preferably by biometric data collection.