My latest at The Barbed Wire:

It’s hard to ignore Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents when they come crashing into your neighborhood.

It’s become the topic of conversation in #Austin’s North Loop, Reilly, a 42-year-old #transgender resident, told The Barbed Wire one February evening from a graffiti-covered picnic table in the grass behind Epoch, the neighborhood’s beloved 24-hour coffee shop.

“I think when people are confronted with the realities — in their face — of what our immigrant neighbors are facing, there’s no choice but to respond,” Reilly said, adding that it becomes harder to “stay in your home and try to remain ambivalent to it when you’re watching people get yanked out of their cars and thrown into the back of a van and disappeared off to God knows where.”

As reported by KUT’s Greta Díaz González Vázquez, a car chase involving #ICE ended on Feb. 2 when the driver agents were pursuing crashed onto the front lawn of an area home. An Austin Police Department spokesperson confirmed the incident to KUT and told the outlet none of the vehicles involved in the chase were marked as law enforcement vehicles. A social media video shows armed men with covered faces pinning another man to the ground.

North Loop is a bustling, popular destination for events as varied as a workshop on “romantic rope restraint” at sex toy shop Forbidden Fruit to history presentations by the Democratic Socialists of America in the backyard of Barrett’s Too, a bar and eatery serving vegan powerbowls and hemp THC-laced seltzer on tap.

It’s important to recognize, Reilly said, that people who live in neighborhoods like North Loop “are recognizing that it’s about their ability to use (their) privilege to protect their neighbors.”

Read more ... https://thebarbedwire.com/2026/03/02/lgbtq-texans-in-defense-of-immigrants/

#activism #antifa #fascism #Trump #Texas #politics #USpol #immigration #racism #HumanRights #extremism #Minneapolis #zines