Exactly one year ago, I wrote an op-ed about being an exhausted track on a broken record player in the wake of Trump’s second presidential term. It will not be the first nor the last time I use writing to emphasize the necessity for basic empathy and humanity in politics.
Since I wrote that piece, we have seen the government directly go against the people it claims to protect. Making those who came here for a better life live in fear of speaking their native language or going to work. The Trump Administration is making children of immigrants, like myself, fearful for their parents to leave the house because it has become legal to racially profile. The administration continues to allow masked agents to get away with unnecessary violence and still be called the victims. These occurrences have flooded our news cycles so much that it is becoming an unnerving normalcy.
At the start of the new year, the world saw 5-year-old boy Liam Conejo Ramos being used as “bait” at his own front door before being detained in Texas with his father. Their immigration case is still pending, and they are not eligible for legal deportation. Regardless, Vice President JD Vance was quick to defend the agents’ actions, stating, “If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who have violated the law because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement.”
The world has also seen two people get murdered by the government on camera, about a mile apart and 17 days apart, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One of them is Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse who dedicated his life to saving lives and died at the hands of ICE agents doing precisely that. The other, Renee Good, is a 37-year-old writer, poet and mother who was murdered after dropping her child off at school. Neither of these individuals were “violent criminals” that ICE claims to be targeting. Despite these brutal killings and continuous lies from the government, we keep scrolling.
Before the fatal shootings of Pretti and Good, ICE agents caused three other fatal shootings — Silverio Villegas Gonzales, Isaias Sanchez Barboza and Keith Porter. Gonzalez was a 38-year-old cook from Mexico and father of two, fatally shot during a traffic stop with ICE agents while on his way home from dropping his children off at school. Barboza was 31 years old when he was shot along the U.S.-Mexico border by an unidentified agent. Porter was a 43-year-old father of two who was deemed an “active shooter” by an off-duty ICE agent after firing a gun into the sky to celebrate the new year. While Porter’s actions might have warranted an arrest, an off-duty ICE agent gave him “a death sentence.”
These repeated tragedies and blatant lies the administration gets away with — such as calling the victims “domestic terrorists” or asserting that ICE agents are the “victims” — are prime examples of America becoming immune to the violence we denounce in other countries.
We are living in a so-called “democratic” society that fearmongers about protesters exercising one of our most important constitutional rights. We are seeing journalists such as Don Lemon and Georgia Fort get arrested for covering an ICE protest in a Minnesota church — in other words, doing their job.
What is happening in Minnesota should not be the turning point — Americans continue to exist in a perpetual cycle of waiting for the loss of multiple innocent lives to take action. Action should have been taken when reports revealed that around 73% of the people in the ICE detention centers were not criminals, while the man creating false statistics in the Oval Office is 100% criminal. Action should have been taken when the Department of Homeland Security announced the $50,000 bonuses that are given to those who sign up to criminalize migration.
This state violence and terror that ICE is perpetrating is not new. It is a part of a long-standing relationship between law enforcement and Black and brown communities.
George Floyd was murdered by the police, only 20 blocks from the murders of Good and Pretti. As a Black woman and daughter of a Latina immigrant, I am not shocked by the facts that such state violence exists and that over-policing is a product of systemic racism. We cannot truly address these problems until we come to terms with the fact that ICE is now treating white people the way police have always treated Black and brown people. This is not a new phenomenon. No one is really safe from state violence, and that is apparent now more than ever.
Due to all of the advocacy and calls to action on Liam Ramos and his father’s case, on Saturday, Jan. 31, a U.S. judge ordered Liam and his father to be released from the detention center. The judge asserted, “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
Sunday afternoon, Liam and his father were welcomed back to Minnesota with neighbors gathered around their home, celebrating and bringing attention to more children and families that have been wrongfully detained. Liam garnered so much discourse that U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) wrote him a letter in part stating, “Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t your home. America became the most powerful, prosperous nation on earth because of immigrants, not in spite of them.”
Liam’s and his father’s return home is proof that taking action can bring about change. While the administration is actively weighing an appeal of the Ramos’ release, the work done to bring them home shows this is a cause worth fighting for. Liam and his father would not have been able to return home if it weren’t for the constant pressure on senators, rapid social media posts and the insistence on keeping up to date on their whereabouts.
It is not enough to say we could have prevented this with a vote, because while possible, focusing on the past does not lead to progress. If you regret your vote, take action to change the outcome. If you regret your silence, it’s never too late to use your voice. Kids should not worry about whether they will see their parents after school or whether they will be able to return to school. Parents should not fear their drive home from school drop-off and nurses should not fear for their lives while doing their job. Our country would be nothing without the hard work of immigrants. To now deem these humans as “illegal aliens” and immediately put a target on their backs is to turn on the foundation of our country as a whole.
Now, my broken record is repeating that people’s deaths should not be our nudge to care. What we are seeing is not normal and cannot be deemed a characteristic of the United States.
“I don’t do politics” is a privileged statement that only gets one so far. There is a point at which everyone has to care. It is easy to feel hopeless in times like these, but be a voice for the voiceless. Call your senators, protest, boycott big corporations that are funding this violence, vote in the midterms, be a good neighbor and don’t let this be another tired news cycle.
Grace Harris has a passion for social justice and advocacy. Her email is always open to more ideas — [email protected].
