The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.
“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.
“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.
Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.
Why is ICE seizing anything outside of whoever they supposedly had a warrant for? Did the warrant say take all electronics and valuables as they are being used to hide/fund someone we don’t like, but the people that live their, yeah their fine let them be? Like what? How is this not just want to be terrorists fucking over people with impunity?
Civil asset forfeiture… It’s uh, it’s not great.
It is so demoralizing to try and explain civil asset forfeiture. I’ve never had a single person believe that it’s real when I tell them about it - everybody insists that it can’t possibly be true since it’s so flagrantly unconstitutional.
It’s “constitutional” because they’re accusing the “money” of being used illegally. There’s no actual person being accused here, but if you want to get your money back you’ll need to prove it’s innocence in court.
It’s ridiculous. At least the Institute for Justice has been winning court cases against this, but there’s still a long way to go: https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
Edit: typo
Let’s call it what it is. State sponsored theft of civilians.
Why does ICE have jurisdiction to seize civil assets anyway? Does my cash need a fucking passport now?
We decided we needed to be able to shut down drug dealers by seizing their money without need for any real proof. Since then the majority of seizures, 84%, are civil most incidental to purposeless searches that turn up no crime. Many seizures are in fact under $1000 and most are under $2000. In theory you can get your money back but it often would cost thousands so for most victims its impossible to actually get money back without spending more.
Basically for decades the authorities have been acting as robbers and have collectively stolen billions from the people directly often stopping minorities for driving while black and treating the $400 in random bob’s wallet as proceeds of an imaginary crime they don’t need to substantiate. Being black and having $400 is enough.
How do you know they are even ICE. Not saying they aren’t agents, but there was an EO that basically repurposed a lot of other agencies to become ICE deputies. DEA, ATF, etc.
Heard in a podcast that 80% of ATF is now doing ice stuff.
The life savings were illegal immigrants?
/s , obviously
The real reason is probably civil asset forfeiture.
Generally the search and seizure is for the property, not the people. That’s IF they bother with a warrant which apparently is a big ask these days.