The media and local police officials throughout the country have repeated the claims of the Justice Department and the US Marshals Service that the recent FALCON arrests are the greatest number ever in a single operation. In point of fact, the numbers are roughly equivalent to those achieved by one of Gonzales’s predecessors, Alexander Mitchell Palmer, who headed the Justice Department 85 years ago.
The infamous Palmer Raids, named after the then-attorney general, were launched on November 7, 1919, the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Further mass arrests were carried out in December and January. In one of them, FBI agents led local police and vigilantes in simultaneous raids in 70 cities, rounding up 4,000 people in a single night.
They smashed down the doors of union halls and offices of communist, socialist and anarchist organizations and dragged people from their beds without warrants or criminal charges. Foreign-born workers bore the brunt of the assault, as the government sought to blame a wave of mass strikes and radical protests on “alien sedition.” Several hundred foreign-born activists and workers were deported without the benefit of a hearing. Many more of those detained were subjected to brutal beatings.
The target of the arrests in Operation Falcon was not political opponents of the government, but rather people who missed court dates, violated parole and, at least in some fraction of the cases, are wanted for criminal acts of violence.
But the way in which these raids—portrayed as serving crime victims and making communities safer—are being used to bolster so-called “anti-terrorist” policies that are a major step toward a police state must serve as a serious warning.
This is an administration that has asserted the right of the US president to declare anyone—citizen and non-citizen alike—an “enemy combatant,” and lock him up indefinitely without charges, without the right to a public hearing or lawyer, and without even an official acknowledgement that the person has been thrown into prison.
Under these conditions, the question is posed:
was Operation Falcon a dry run for a plan to be executed in the face of intensified political crisis or a resurgence of mass opposition to the government?
Was this extraordinary federal, state and local coordination of mass arrests a dress rehearsal for a modern-day version of the Palmer Raids?

citizen x wonders…