Sitting near the baggage carousels at LAX, a mum and her son are debating whether it is harmful to resort to religion, rather than reason, to come to terms with misfortune. She is blaming her husband’s being brought to secondary detention on the devil. They’ve been waiting for two hours, the family’s younger children have left out of impatience, and they don’t understand why this is their welcome to America. The little explanation they were given, before being told to wait on the floor below, is that her husband is being held on account of ‘name similarity,’ which means he has the same name as, or a similar name to, someone with a criminal record. His son, sitting next to me, has the same name. They are called Juan David.
As I waited, I overheard many very similar situations. None of these conversations occurred in English, and many were not so fortunate as to get a semi-plausible reason for losing two or more hours of their life to a waiting room where human decency is not a default, but blatantly refused.
This type of profiling that disproportionately targets Hispanic people is not new, but getting worse. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subagencies, ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), have a long-standing and well-documented record of xenophobia and excessive force, without repercussions (see here and here). Border Patrol, in particular, has repeatedly enjoyed impunity for human rights violations.
It is no coincidence that these are the people Trump has elected to replace more than half of the top ICE leaders and carry out his Zero Tolerance immigration policy. This organisation, which should be held accountable for its actions, is instead being rewarded with additional power and employment as Trump’s “personal police force.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” has given ICE an extra “$29.9 billion for enforcement operations and an additional $45 billion to build new detention facilities,” according to The Independent. The ensuing hiring spree dramatically lowered the bar for recruits; it now takes eight weeks for a recruit, without prior experience, to join ICE, and the previously mandatory 5-week Spanish course has been removed. Complicity is being made into an increasingly attractive option for Americans who need or want the money, don’t mind pushing their neighbours into detention camps, and who are probably delighted to have more power than they might have thought possible for themselves ever, let alone in two months.
Since their deployment to Minneapolis, troops have detained children, in cases such as that of Liam Ramos and Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano. They have arrested journalists, and they have avoided taking real accountability for the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, as administration officials continue to state that the federal agents responsible were simply following protocol.
What is happening in Minneapolis is not a freak accident, but the foreseeable and deliberate installation of a culture of terror meant to repress dissent and pave the way for the execution of Trump’s xenophobic agenda. These are the beginnings of authoritarianism.
Mass deportation and harsher control on migration through the US is about much more than reducing undocumented, illegal immigrants. It is a message that diversity is unwelcome. The ‘great America’ MAGA calls the return to is a racial caste system. We are witnessing in real time the back-pedalling from a society making progress and striving for a true multicultural democracy, in line with America’s historical diversity, to a place where homogeneity is the principal cultural clavicle.
Whether the misfortune of being pulled aside by immigration officers is a matter of chance, a misunderstanding, or the result of deliberate profiling, innocent people should not be treated like threats purely on account of their ethnicity, nationality, or race. Justice cannot be expected to arise out of an environment that encourages racial profiling and brutality — but justice is not the Trump administration’s goal. Members of Congress and state senators have a duty not to let this go on undeterred. We have a duty to speak up and stay united. For the sake of a free and fair world for all, diversity must remain something to be celebrated.
Edited by Syona Vashisth.
