Dhs Quotes

“I write to you now with the last dignity I have left: the dignity of truth, unvarnished and unembellished. I am not a metaphor, nor a statistic, nor a symbol. I am a person who has asked for protection in El Paso, in Texas, and at the federal level, and each time the silence has made it feel as though my life has no value. So I ask you, the Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, with all the seriousness my desperation allows: if this is truly how measly an immigrant’s life is worth in America, please tell me—how much would I need to pay to purchase my own freedom?”
― Samuel Martínez Roque

“There are so many ways to kill a man in America, and most of them don’t require a weapon. Some don’t even require intent. Some are performed politely through envelopes stamped with the seal of the State of Texas. This is the genius behind American violence: its ability to disguise itself as procedure.”
― Samuel Martínez Roque

“The State is never responsible for your death. It merely “regrets” that you did not submit the proper documentation beforehand. And because bureaucracy is inherently impersonal, it grants everyone involved the luxury of innocence. No one feels responsible. Everyone played by the rules. No malicious intent was present. No hate, no rage, no violence, only boxes checked, protocols followed, signatures placed in blue ink.”
― Samuel Martínez Roque

“Bureaucratic murder is the purest form of innocent cruelty, because it requires no recognition of the victim as human. All that is required is the quiet assumption that the system knows best. Thus the State does not have to shoot you. It only has to doubt you. It does not have to lock you in a room. It merely needs to close your case. It does not have to poison your food. It only has to make assistance impossible to obtain.
This is the violence of paperwork; clean, odorless, bloodless, and completely untraceable. A violence that leaves no fingerprints, only timestamps. A violence that kills not by force, but by omission; not by brutality, but by delay. The gun of the modern American State is a PDF. Its bullet is a denial letter. Its trigger is a policy no one wants to take responsibility for. And its most common casualties are the people it pretends to protect.”
― Samuel Martínez Roque

“The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays," said the ALCU's Soghoian. "Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money.”
― Jeremy Scahill, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program