The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preemptively mobilizing against a potential protest by U.S. truckers inspired by their Canadian counterparts, who for weeks have been protesting against a vaccine mandate and other COVID-19 measures. "The White House said the department is 'surging additional staff' to the Super Bowl just in case," the Associated Press reports, as "the convoy could begin in Southern California as early as this weekend."

The surge is happening despite the fact that the U.S. trucker convoy is—by the DHS's own admission—more aspirational than anything.

In a Tuesday memo to federal, state, and local law enforcement, the DHS said "this event appears to be purely aspirational, because the event is only being discussed online and we lack any information indicating the event is actually being organized."

"There are currently no indications of planned violence or civil unrest," the memo added.

And while some discussion of a potential convoy was taking place online, "we have no indication that individuals discussing participating in these activities in the United States are engaged in anything other than First Amendment-protected activity," the DHS stated. "Nonetheless, DHS remains concerned that these events could have significant public safety implications or potentially be exploited by ideologically motivated actors to potentially act or encourage others to act violently."

That federal law enforcement is springing into action anyway isn't surprising—it's forever creating reasons to enact more of a police state around the Super Bowl, with terrorism, counterfeit goods, and sex trafficking serving as previous pretenses. It seems a hypothetical convoy of truckers is helping to do the trick this year.

It's one of a number of reasons the department is citing for its extreme presence and increased operations at the Super Bowl:



Homeland Security Investigations promises that it will be "investigating and arresting those exploiting children, conducting human trafficking, and identifying and rescuing victims of these crimes" during the Super Bowl. (Such "human trafficking" efforts from Homeland Security tend to translate into things like scaring sex workers, arresting immigrants, and federal agents getting handjobs.)

U.S. truck protest rumors simply mean that the Super Bowl will be swarming with even more feds this year.



The Canadian protests have received millions of dollars in donations, first through GoFundMe and then—once GoFundMe rejected them—through another crowdfunding platform, GiveSendGo.

Now, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has persuaded the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to freeze the donations from GiveSendGo.

Meanwhile, a copycat protest has begun in France. "Dozens of trucks and vehicles left southern France on Wednesday and headed for Paris as part of a convoy opposing the country's vaccination pass program," notes The New York Times: