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ICE

Nothing has tested our values as a nation in the US as when we decide who can be a citizen. Aside from Native Americans all of us came from elsewhere. Often the decision as to who to bestow privileges upon has been explicitly racist, with the previous generation of immigrants wanting to exclude the next one.

It is unpleasant and so we often delegate such decisions to our government and try not to think about it. A humane approach would be to identify who could benefit most from admission and become productive citizens, but bigotry has often triumphed.

Social justice has been important to our children, making my wife and I quite proud. My son led pro-immigrant rallies in university and very early on pointed out to me the brutality of ICE during the first Trump administration.

This time around ICE has been the defacto armed thugs suppressing freedoms of citizens and non-citizens alike. Masked and without badge or judicial warrant they have been terrorizing city after city, killing and injuring witnesses with impunity as they "disappear" folk who appear Hispanic, Somalian, etc. Minneapolis is there latest target.

In a nation of checks and balances there would be repercussions, but the Republican Congress has approved funding for ICE dwarfing all law-enforcement agencies and the Roberts Supreme Court has decided the president does not need to follow the law. The Legislative and Judicial Branches have publicly committed to supporting an imperial Executive Branch.

Many of Trump's enablers in Congress have grown disgusted at this without taking any responsibility for their work in making it possible. Rather than atone there are record numbers of Republican legislators retiring early and pretending that they've done all they can.

I am hopeful that the 2026 elections will change Congress but that is only one branch of government. We will need leaders who use their powers to stymie Trump rather than just give speeches. 

It's gotten really bad people, far worse than I ever imagined it could as a child.

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