The murder of Lorenzo is part of a nationwide escalation of police state violence under the Trump administration. In Memphis, federal forces attached to the Memphis Safe Task Force killed two men within four days. Early Sunday morning, Tennessee National Guard soldiers shot and killed 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson during a foot pursuit, even though the official account does not allege that Johnson fired at the soldiers or police. On Wednesday morning, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent assigned to the same task force fired into a hotel room and killed 47-year-old Alfonso Ivy. No officer was injured in either shooting.

The Tennessee NAACP responded by appealing to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate the deaths of Johnson and Darius Chappell, a 34-year-old father of three who died in jail days after police shocked him with Tasers, dragged him by the hair and allowed a police dog to maul him while he lay on the ground. Its letter called for the Memphis Safe Task Force to be suspended.

The appeal is directed to Trump’s political hatchet man, former personal lawyer and acting attorney general, who has overseen the administration’s ongoing cover-up of the Epstein files and now commands the Justice Department agencies participating in the Memphis occupation.

ICE and Border Patrol are being developed into a national police force operating above the law. Immigrants are its first and most vulnerable targets, but the apparatus being constructed will be directed against the entire working class, regardless of citizenship status, including strikers, protesters and political opponents of the Trump administration and the financial oligarchy.

ICE killer remains free as witnesses to Houston shooting are held in immigrant prison