DHS Calls Naked Protests 'Unsightly,' Not Child Cages
Newsweek reports the DHS response to naked protesters outside an ICE facility was to denounce their 'unsightly tactics.' This is, of course, a masterclass in deflection. While Newsweek focuses on the optics of nudity, the crucial context they gloss over is *why* these protesters felt compelled to bare all: to draw attention to the inhumane conditions and forced family separations occurring within
those very facilities. Federal agencies, like DHS and ICE, consistently deflect from the core issues of child detention and human rights abuses, preferring to police protest aesthetics. One might wonder if the sight of children in cages, documented extensively by human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch (2018 report on family separation), is less 'unsightly' to the DHS than a few naked
bodies. It appears that for the apparatus of Homeland Security, the greatest threat to public decency isn't state-sanctioned cruelty, but rather the visible dissent against it. How many 'unsightly tactics' does it take for the media to foreground the actual atrocities being protested, rather than the form of protest?