I’m unlikely to be able to follow this closely, so follow Jason on Twitter (@JDTalley) and Pete (@peteeyre) if you haven’t already. Also, tracking the #MHD tag on Twitter is a way to get the news, especially if the boys go silent.

From Jason’s tweets, reverse-chronological:

1. We will now be escorted into a new holding area. This time it’s the U.S. government. 16 minutes ago
2. Reinforcements have been called. Homeland Security vehicle is now blocking MARV. 19 minutes ago
3. U.S. Border Guard told @peteeyre to stop recording or his camera would be confiscated. 21 minutes ago
4. Now we are getting hassled by U.S. Border Guards in Detroit. #MHD 23 minutes ago
5. Canadian border guards are tossing our motorhome again. I just cleaned it. about 2 hours ago
6. We’re in the no man’s land between Detroit and Windsor, Canada… on accident. Wrong turns suck. about 2 hours ago

Gak.

Welcome, former masters!

From CBS News, 6 October 2006:

Terry Gilliam Sounds Off

Director Of ‘Brazil’ Says Current Events Parallel His Cult Movie

Visionary director Terry Gilliam, whose 1985 film “Brazil” was a classic tale of terrorized citizens crushed by an authoritarian government, is miffed.

“I’m thinking of suing George Bush and Dick Cheney for making the remake of ‘Brazil’ without my approval,” he told a New York screening audience this week. “Their version isn’t as funny, though.”

The 65-year-old native of Minnesota who emigrated to England in the 1960s and helped form the legendary comedy group Monty Python, held dual citizenship for three decades. (He married a British citizen and has three children.) This past year, though, he renounced his U.S. citizenship. He sees the current political scene in America – and its extension into the world – to be scarily similar to the Orwellian nightmare of his cult film.

In the film, government agents arrest suspects in hordes, going so far as to charge them for their interrogation, including the electricity applied to their bodies. Detainees who couldn’t afford the costs of their torture could apply for loans (at favorable interest rates). The machinery of government-sanctioned torture and data collection became a self-sustaining apparatus.

“It is absolutely frightening,” he said of the current political scene. “Homeland Security is just like [the film's] Ministry of Information, because if your job is counter-terrorism, what do you need to keep in business? You need terrorists, and even if they aren’t there, we may have to create new ones. It works very well.”

From The Onion’s AV Club, 11 October 2006:

AVC: Why did you renounce your American citizenship earlier this year?

TG: I thought I’d just simplify my life. I’m getting old. I’m gonna die. I’m not at all happy with what America has been in the last 10 years. [Laughs.] The reality is, when I kick the bucket, American tax authorities assess everything I own in the world—everything I own is outside of America—and then tax me on it, and that would mean my wife would probably have to sell our house to pay the taxes. I didn’t think that was fair on my wife and children.

ENDGAME: HUNDREDS ARRESTED IN IOWA IMMIGRATION RAID; FAIRGROUNDS USED AS FEDERAL “HOLDING FACILITY”

May 13th, 2008

This is almost certainly a Department of Homeland Security ENDGAME operation.

I hosted the document on Cryptogon:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
ENDGAME
Office of Detention and Removal Strategic Plan, 2003 – 2012
Detention and Removal Strategy for a Secure Homeland

Via: The Gazette:

More than 300 people here have already been arrested in what is being called the largest operation of its kind in Iowa, federal officials said this afternoon.