Masks, Power and Distrust – how a federal operation in Arizona and Louisiana sweeps away rights and leaves us barely able to keep up

A taco shop in Tucson, a morning that begins inconspicuously, and a few minutes later a commotion that raises the question of how much consideration federal authorities still show toward their own population. What began as a search ended in pepper spray, injured officers, and a newly sworn-in member of Congress who coughs as she explains she was hit in the face. The Democratic congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, only weeks in office, describes that she and her team were harassed and sprayed by the officers while they tried to understand who was being taken into custody and where people were being brought. The scene looks like a snapshot of a level of force that has long become standard practice: masked agents who answer no questions and respond to any approach as though an attack were imminent.

Federal authorities immediately reject Grijalva’s accusations. They say she was not sprayed but had merely been near someone who stood in the way of the officers. In their account, the operation is only part of a years-long investigation into restaurants suspected of violating tax and immigration law. Two injured officers, a “mob of demonstrators,” as one department official calls it, and a congresswoman who, from their perspective, is exaggerating hysterically. But the images tell a different story: people running back, holding their faces, a projectile landing near the feet of a member of Congress, frantic movements, frantic commands. The gaps between claim and reality are narrowing, and the question of transparency presses harder.

The case would be explosive on its own, but only a few states farther east the same pattern repeats, this time with a U.S. citizen who did nothing more than walk home from the store. A camera shows a truck stopping beside Jacelynn Guzman, two masked federal officers stepping out and approaching her. Guzman runs, panicked, shouting at the men that she is American. She reaches her house only when more vehicles arrive and the officers pursue her right up to the door. Her stepfather rushes outside, horrified at how his daughter was chased. He describes the feeling that she could be abducted or harmed. Guzman herself explains that she could only run because she was certain her words would not matter – not her passport, not her background, not her right to be left alone.

Here too the department provides an explanation that holds up only in parts. The masked officers had been searching for a “criminal illegal immigrant” and had approached Guzman only because she resembled the person they were looking for. They say they identified themselves and left once they realized Guzman was not the target. That the camera shows at least two vehicles pursuing her remains unmentioned. So does the fact that the young woman was not suspected of any crime and did not resist in any way. For the family it is clear: her skin color was the only reason she became a target. She and no one in her family have a criminal record, American citizens.

New Orleans‘ künftige Bürgermeisterin Helena Moreno beschreibt die Lage inzwischen als akute Gefahr für die gesamte Stadt. Hunderte Beamte sind in der Region unterwegs, viele von ihnen vermummt, viele ohne klare Kennzeichnung. Offiziell geht es darum, gefährliche Straftäter festzunehmen. Doch Moreno berichtet von geschlossenen Geschäften, eingeschüchterten Familien und Straßen, die sich innerhalb weniger Tage geleert haben. In einer Stadt, deren hispanische Gemeinden ohnehin unter besonderer Beobachtung stehen, wirkt die Operation wie ein Freibrief für Einschüchterung. Moreno fordert tägliche Daten: wer angehalten wurde, warum, mit welchem Ergebnis. Die Bundesbehörden bleiben diese Zahlen schuldig.

The cases in Arizona and Louisiana weave together into a picture that is hard to ignore. A member of Congress coughing out pepper spray, a 23-year-old American girl running for her life, officers speaking of “mobs” while civil rights advocates warn of abuses. The Trump administration claims it is about safety and law enforcement. But more and more scenes show people who have done nothing wrong and yet become targets. Two Democratic lawmakers were already thrown to the ground or detained this year while trying to obtain information about arrests. Respect for elected officials, once a given, no longer seems to matter to many of the agents involved.

What remains is the feeling that the state is treating its own population with a level of force that would once have been unthinkable. Where pepper spray is used on journalists, where U.S. citizens are chased in front of their own homes, where officers act first and explain later, the fear grows that mistakes are not the exception but the system. A climate has emerged in which belonging, skin color, and background determine how a person is treated – and in which even a congressional ID no longer offers protection. The question that runs through both cases is simple: if federal agents behave like this while cameras are rolling and members of Congress are standing nearby, how do they behave in places where no one is filming?