HOUSTON, Texas (PNN) - February 16, 2016 - In what could be a story straight out of the Onion, but sadly played out in reality, a Texas man was arrested by seven heavily armed Fascist Police States of Amerika Marshals for failing to pay an almost 30-year-old student loan debt.
The man, Paul Aker, 48, said he was caught off-guard by the heavily armed agents that showed up at his home to arrest him for failing to pay the nearly 3-decades old debt.
Aker’s arrest for a 30-year-old, $1,500 dollar debt is disturbing enough; but taken in concert with the fact that simply being an owner of a firearm, a protected right under the Constitution, was reason enough for agents to arrive in combat gear and with fully automatic weapons raises the ominous specter of the police state rising.
After being arrested, Aker was held at the federal building in downtown Houston before being brought to a courtroom, where a prosecutor, judge and county clerk were present. Aker said the alleged prosecutor was really a collection lawyer.
Aker was shaken by the entire ordeal and is working to secure legal representation. He claims that during the whole process he was never read his rights.
“I am still shaken,” Aker said. “I had to go to work yesterday, and it was hard to drive to work, for the fear of someone coming. I am looking out the window and I have things to do today, and I am still afraid to go outside.”
The average student loan debt for a 2015 graduate was approximately $35,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. The criminalization of those who can’t afford to repay a student loan may become a more common phenomena, with a report by Fox 26 claiming that FPSA Marshals have plans to serve up to 1,500 warrants on people who have failed to repay their student loans.
Texas Rep. Gene Green sees a problem with using FPSA Marshals to act as muscle to collect these loans for debt collectors and lawyers.
It is extremely worrisome that armed agents of the State are being used to bully people into paying delinquent student loan debt. There has to be a more intelligent manner in which to attempt to reconcile these debts than to send heavily armed men to arrest those either unwilling or more than likely unable to pay.
It speaks to the nature of the state itself that the default position is virtually always one of coercive force rather than to intellectually assess the means that will most likely provide the desired result - a reconciled debt.
When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.