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.
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’m actually thinking of cloud storage for this reason. Anyone know a good reliable and affordable cloud provider that’s not US-based, and I can pay for like a year in advance? (End to End Encryption doesn’t matter since I can just do local encryption.)
Added context for the non-tech crowd to explain the downvotes. Proton checks all the boxes, EU based (swiss), good platform that is working towards being a unified google services replacemnt. For most people I do still recommend them, I quite like their software.
But for the socially concious nerd, their CEO put their foot in their mouth on the artist formerly known as twitter late last year, and that damaged their user bases trust in them (no policy changed, they just stated opinions that were very out of touch with their user base)
There is a lot of nuance to the issue, im glossing over a lot and I feel it gets blown out of proportions on Lemmy.
Hetzner has it’s cloud storage boxes and it’s pretty cheap and supports a lot of different backup solutions: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/
Don’t store data on other people’s computers. Use encryption locally and store an encrypted backup at a friend’s house, or in a bank safe if you must.
Friend and Bank safes would be in the US, subject to the US’s ICE/Gestspo “civil asset forfeiture”. Only foreign cloud storage is safe.
I don’t see why “other people’s computers” is a problem. Encrypt, then upload.
I understood the worry to be about storage devices being stolen from home. In which case it would be safe at a friend’s house. Putting an encryptes backup anywhere online is partially okay, but most people trust their cloud solution software for encryption, which is about as good as sensing your unencrypted data to that company.
Even with encrypted backups the risk is that totalitarian regimes / corporations store data forever. And if your encyption keys ever leak, or the algorithm is broken, you’re fucked in retrospect.
A well placed encrypted backup on two separately located microSD cards (in case mice eat the other), located within a few hundred meters of your actual residence, should be beyond the ability of common goons (ICE, cops, impatient FBI agents) to locate. They’d have to engage in long-term surveillance.
If curious kids find one, it’s still encrypted and you still have the other, and curious kids won’t take your primary data carrier by raiding your house either. You just replace the backup then and put it elsewhere.
I know nothing about tech but couldn’t someone wiser than me create the ability to decentralize people’s information. Scattering bits around the world on personal servers. Similar to how the fediverse works. I don’t honestly know shit about this so maybe I’m talking out my ass.
My NAS encrypts my Backups and transfers them to some hetzner webspace on a server in Sweden. For email and day to day cloud usage I use mailbox.org. They are from Germany and put a focus on privacy and security, yearly payments are no problem.
“We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
sounds like face eating.
The US is now soviet russia.
As much as I want to blame ICE agents for this, they’re really just pawns in a much greater scheme.
No, I will direct all my ire towards the ruling class and their families. They are the ones who are conditioning everyone else to hysterically chase ghosts as a distraction from their exploitation.
ICE wanted to do this. Plenty of other agencies have resisted Trump’s orders in court. In contrast, ICE was given permission to be the version of themselves they always wanted to be, and this is what it is.
You know how police are regularly accused of having racial prejudice? The common joke is that you join ICE if you’re too racist to be a regular cop.
So you’re saying if you ended up in this line of work, you’d just, “follow orders”?
No. I’m saying a good deal of the people choosing to do this have actually had that decision made for them without realizing it.
They’re adults, not fucking children, so how are they “having the decision made for them”? They could literally not comply at many points along the way.
There are some branches of government you can try and put that on, like soldiers who joined to “serve their country” and end up in a war in a country that they didn’t belong into, but ICE literally only does one thing like they have been worse lately but that’s because they can without consequences
I know. I’m trying to see things for what they are and acknowledge that a lot of people will end up joining ICE because of their conditioning by the ruling class to chase ghosts.
“It’s not the people getting rich off of exploiting me for why my life sucks, it’s those damned immigrants!”
No need to feel sorry for “soldiers”. But I do feel bad for the brainwashed children exploited by the military.
Remember folks, every vote counts. We did this to ourselves.
I’ve said it before elsewhere but it needs to be heard…
It’s just wild to me continually seeing posts not understanding how this all works, and how it would play out. It’s like the people who thought China paid the tariffs…
The house is almost tied. That’s who passes bills, handles impeachments, some of the most powerful committees are, and who impeaches Presidents…
218 Republicans, 213 Democrats.
Let’s see, take New York for example.
26 representatives total, 19 Democrat and 7 Republican.
5 of those were within 2 points last time their seat was up.
People who think that New York is blue, their vote doesn’t matter, skips the votes for the House and Senate and end up losing a Blue house seat but later complain that nothing changes are literally the fucking problem.
Every. Fucking. State. Is. Like. This.
Apathetic morons who don’t realize that the president is only held accountable by the other branch of government then wave their hands around when they did jack shit to help put people in place to, are the fucking problem.
District 3 of California was lost by 24,000 votes. District 22 was lost by 3,000.
Those two seats in the house, along with the close ones in New York, Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, hell every state… Are what makes the House of Representatives or breaks it.
So, if you think that your vote for president doesn’t matter, so you skip voting and let these other seats slip, yes, you’re a fucking moron who can’t grasp basic concepts of government that are taught in 4th grade.
And don’t get me started on the State House/Senates, how they define voting laws and voting zones and engage in gerrymandering.
Every fucking vote counts.
And until the country realizes it, and starts acting on it, we’ll keep getting the shit we deserve.
House needs a simple majority, and two thirds of the Senate.
Democrats would need ~18 seats.
First, that won’t happen in 2026.
Even the best cases make it hard to win enough by 2028. Which is why impeachment is just not something we can hold out for.
Gerrymandering is part of why this is a problem, which is done at the local level, and again why every vote counts.
How could it play out? Assuming some absurdly weird upside down world just opposite of what we’re living in, this is the only path just looking at the numbers…
Again, Democrats would need to gain 18 net seats. Seats Potentially in Play (Republican Incumbents): This requires looking at seats up in upcoming cycles.
- Class 1 Seats (Up in 2026):
- Highly Competitive Targets: These would be the first priority. States where Democrats have won statewide recently or that lean only slightly Republican. Examples based on recent political history might include:
- North Carolina (Budd-R)
- Alaska (Sullivan-R) - Unique dynamics with ranked-choice voting.
- Stretch Targets: States that are more Republican but could potentially flip under exceptionally favorable conditions (like the hypothetical turnout).
- Iowa (Ernst-R)
- Montana (Daines-R) - Depends heavily on candidate matchups.
- Kentucky (McConnell-R’s seat - potential retirement changes dynamics)
- Kansas (Marshall-R)
- South Carolina (Graham-R)
- Very Difficult Targets: Solidly Republican states requiring overwhelming Democratic turnout and significant shifts among other voters.
- Texas (Cornyn-R)
- Mississippi (Wicker-R)
- Alabama (Tuberville-R)
- West Virginia (Capito-R)
- Oklahoma (Mullin-R - Special election winner)
- Wyoming (Lummis-R)
- Idaho (Risch-R)
- Arkansas (Cotton-R)
- Nebraska (Ricketts-R)
- South Dakota (Rounds-R)
- Louisiana (Cassidy-R) - Jungle primary system.
- Highly Competitive Targets: These would be the first priority. States where Democrats have won statewide recently or that lean only slightly Republican. Examples based on recent political history might include:
- Class 2 Seats (Up in 2028): (Looking further ahead)
- Highly Competitive Targets:
- Maine (Collins-R) - Often competitive, depends on matchup.
- Georgia (Perdue/Ossoff dynamic showed competitiveness, depends who holds it after '26 potentially) - Assuming GOP holds a seat here.
- Stretch Targets:
- Michigan (Peters-D currently, but listing potential GOP flips back if one happened hypothetically before 2028) - Generally leans D, but could be contested.
- New Hampshire (Shaheen-D currently) - Generally leans D, but listing potential GOP flips back.
- Very Difficult Targets: (Many solidly Republican states)
- Tennessee (Hagerty-R)
- Alaska (Murkowski-R historically, depends on dynamics)
- North Carolina (Tillis-R)
- Iowa (Grassley-R seat potentially)
- Texas (Cruz-R)
- Kentucky (Paul-R)
- And many others similar to the 2026 list (SC, AL, MS, WY, ID, NE, SD, KS, WV, OK).
- Highly Competitive Targets:
It’s going to take an absolutely historic level of pain to both drive enough people to vote MAGA out to make this change though.
The amount that’s being excused, sanewashed, and just drowned out with other absurdities…
We’re on all on this shit ride until some new wildcard comes into play.
No impeachment, no Supreme Court, no guardrail is going to change that.
Something new and unaccounted for is the only feasible catalyst.
every vote counts
Ummm, not to be an ass but no. The usa has some of the highest number of disenfranchisement in the world. Then you have people like me who’s vote does not count at all in american elections (there are dozens of us!).
Confidently incorrect.
Like I said, every single local election, from city BOE and councils, to county boards to state officials count.
The local elections are who draw the districts are who disenfranchise.
The county courts, the district courts who are elected are who rule in favor of gerrymandering.
So if you skip a vote, if you are too busy, too tired, too hungover, that’s it. It’s on you.
If you can’t grasp that, it’s on you.
I am not american, and if I was one of approximately 5.1 million (that is about 1 out of 44 or so people) who have lost the ability to vote, no I don’t have a say in any level of us politics.
You are as a nation well past the “lesser evil” party saving you. You are full on into the sort of terrible collapse shown in the subject of the article you are promoting. As a side note, with how the silly two teams system of yours works, the dems if back in power will forever be a little worse then before trump.
Not be that guy, but the person you’re replying to isn’t exactly wrong in saying “every vote counts is wrong” in some cases.
Being pedantically literal, yes, every vote is counted.
The reality of First Past The Post voting and the Electoral College is that the only votes that “count” insofar that they actually affect the outcome of an election are votes for the winning party. Now add on to that the common understanding that both major parties only care about what their corporate donors have to say, and that individual voter participation isn’t likely to influence anything other than the party campaign strategy for the next election.
That means that if enough people vote as a collective to flip which party wins, then and only then does their vote count for anything meaningful. People should vote anyways, but it’s not hard to see why someone might be just a little bit disenfranchised when their participation in the democratic process seems to result in nothing but wasted time because they live next to a bunch of a conservative hicks.
You are absolutely right about smaller state and local elections, though. Those are where each vote actually has a chance to be meaningful.
Once everyone has seen it, totally.
Don’t suppose you’re in the camp wanting to disenfranchise voters, are ya skippy?
It is true, every vote counts, but not for the Democrats. They have approved Trumps household and supported him in other legislation already. Biden continued much of Trumps legacy of deportations, wall building and raiding innocent people. The laws around “civil forfeiture” have been expanded by Democrats on state level and upheld by Democrats on the federal level throughout the past 30ish years.
Unless the leadership and party elites of the past decades are purged from the party it will never be a vehicle of change, only of maintaining the decline at a slower rate than under the Republicans.
EDIT: Another example of the Democrats making sure that progressives that could challenge Trump are blocked as much as possible on their way. https://www.jezebel.com/75-year-old-democrat-who-beat-aoc-for-key-role-resigns-after-4-months
Remember folks, every vote counts. We did this to ourselves.
Who is “we”? Keep me out of your cult.
I didn’t nominate any cops and I don’t vote for them. That’s how we got here.
I wish people didn’t vote against Bernie in the primaries.
I’d vote to support progressive candidates, but neo-liberals can legitimately go fuck themselves.
We should unite and convince people to stop voting for establishment candidates. It’s their turn to fall in line since progressives aren’t doing it.
I wish people didn’t vote against Bernie in the primaries.
They didn’t.
