A Miami Proud Boy wants us to snitch for the government, Cuba-style

Miami Herald

7 days ago

When Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader recently pardoned by President Donald Trump, showed up at a 'No Kings' protest in downtown Miami Saturday, he was greeted by chants of 'Send him back to jail' by protesters.
But Tarrio wasn't there to make a political statement. He was there to promote an app called ICERAID that encourages users to report undocumented immigrants in exchange for cryptocurrency. He calls it patriotism. It's something far more dangerous.
We've seen this tactic before.
In 1960, Fidel Castro stood before a euphoric crowd in Havana and announced the creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution — los comités — neighborhood watch groups that turned into grassroots informant networks. Their mission: expose Cubans seen as disloyal to the revolution. It was surveillance disguised as civic duty.
Over six decades later, those networks still exist. And now, Tarrio — himself the son of Cuban exiles who fled that oppressive system — is championing a digital version.
Instead of turning in 'counterrevolutionaries,' the new enemy is the undocumented immigrant. And instead of whispering to secret police, app users upload photos and locations of 'suspects' — and receive crypto as a reward.
Until recently, Tarrio was serving a 22-year sentence for his seditious conspiracy conviction for his involvement in organizing the Jan. 6 attack. Now, though, he's dubbed himself the ICERAID czar and aligned himself with the Trump-era playbook of encouraging civilian tip-offs to fuel immigration crackdowns.
The app has no official affiliation with the federal government. But it coincides with a troubling Department of Homeland Security campaign featuring a vintage-style Uncle Sam urging Americans to 'Report All Foreign Invaders.'
The message is unmistakable: Spy on your neighbors. That's the same message Tarrio is pushing with this app.
This is not patriotism. It's vigilantism cloaked in red-white-and-blue. Tarrio — who identifies as as Afro-Cuban, the Herald reported, and grew up in Little Havana — knows that Miami's Cuban exile community was shaped by the trauma of political surveillance and persecution. And yet, here he is, promoting the very thing so many Cuban families fled.
In Castro's Cuba, a whisper could ruin a life. In Tarrio's America, a photo upload could mean detention and deportation.
In Cuba, informants earned perks and privileges from the government for turning in those who did not support Castro's revolution. Here, it's crypto coins. But the goal is the same: normalize suspicion of one another and persecute and punish the perceived 'other.'
What this app is encouraging people to do is not about protecting borders. It's not about law and order. It's about validating people's worst instincts — to profile, to assume guilt, to fuel the Trump administration-sponsored paranoia against immigrants.
It doesn't take much imagination to see where this inform-on-your-neighbor fervor inevitably leads. Even ICE officials admits many of the tips they receive today come from jealous exes, spiteful neighbors and professional rivals. An app will only make that worse.
All of this, of course, is unfolding against a backdrop of national political tension. Scapegoating immigrants is, once again, politically convenient. But that doesn't make it right; it makes it cruel.
When governments — or their proxies like Tarrio — encourage citizens to turn on each other, the casualties aren't just those who are accused. It's democracy itself.
Let's not make informing on a neighbor a civic virtue or a patriotic duty. And let's hope this app — and the ideology behind it — is a bust.
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