In June, I spent a week in San Diego on a much-needed working vacation. One night, my friends and I got takeout from Buona Forchetta, the restaurant that made national news after a brutal, militaristic Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on May 30.
As NBC 7 San Diego put it, the “raid involved at least 20 masked agents in military-style gear taking a group of workers into custody, while also confronting and handcuffing others and at one point detonating flash-bang grenades in the vicinity.”
Our food wasn’t quite ready when we arrived. As we waited, the restaurant phone rang. The young woman working the pickup counter took a break from folding cloth napkins to politely answer—before abruptly hanging up after just a few seconds. With a sigh, she explained that ever since the raid, the restaurant has been repeatedly receiving angry, harassing phone calls.
There’s no question that our immigration system is messed up and in serious need of reform. If the restaurant owner, who is accused of forging visas and other wrongdoing, is found guilty, he should be held accountable.
But does that justify the ways in which ICE is doing what it’s doing—with masks, unmarked cars, weapons, no warrants and absolutely no sense of humanity?
On May 30, the Reno Gazette-Journal told the story of a man who was apparently arrested by ICE. “Yesenia’s husband was dropping her off at a construction job in Sparks in early May when three unmarked trucks surrounded them. Armed men in ski masks and bullet-proof vests emblazoned with ‘ICE’ ordered him out and shoved him against the vehicle before taking him away,” Mark Robison wrote. “Yesenia hasn’t seen him since. Adilia Medina—his mother—desperately contacted every immigration office and jail she could think of to ask where he was.”
Robison goes on to say that Medina’s oldest son was killed by a government-backed militia after being deported from the U.S. back to Nicaragua. Her family had been targeted for opposing the dictator, Daniel Ortega. She’s justifiably afraid that the same could happen to her youngest son—who’s lived in Sparks for two decades—if he’s deported.
These raids are happening, in part, because Stephen Miller—Trump’s deputy chief of staff, whose extreme anti-immigrant views (or, I should say, anti-nonwhite-immigrant views) are well-established—has demanded that ICE needs to up their game, and start arresting 3,000 immigrants a day.
Given ICE’s recent targets of dishwashers and construction workers, and the horrifying use of force being deployed, it’s clear this isn’t about safety. It’s about hate. And while some have found these ICE raids to be shocking, not everyone has been surprised.
Our sister paper, the Coachella Valley Independent, reported on a series of raids that started in the Palm Springs area on June 6. On that day, local activists held a press conference to denounce the actions.
“A common narrative was shared by multiple representatives at the press conference was: They had been expecting this for some time,” wrote Esther Sanchez in the Independent. “‘President Trump said he was going to do it, and we took him at his word,’ one speaker stated. ‘That’s why we’ve been preparing for this.’”
How is America being made “great again” by raiding grocery stores, restaurants, U-Haul locations and even people’s yards (to “catch” gardeners)? These actions don’t make America greater. They make it a punitive state inching disturbingly close to authoritarianism.
To those of you can look past the inhumanity and support these raids in the name of legality, or dismiss them as not affecting you, here’s a warning: In a nation without due process, where people can be snatched up by masked, unidentified paramilitary agents without charges or warrants, nobody is safe.
What happened to America being the land of the free and the home of the brave?