Immigration and Customs Enforcement is obviously and technically an immigration enforcement agency. But when you look at what’s happening in Minnesota and across the country, this doesn’t look like immigration enforcement. “Can I go check a pulse?” “This is a school.” Immigration enforcement is largely an administrative issue. And so why do we have these paramilitaries on the streets taking children and using them as bait to get their parents? That’s essentially what happened in Columbia Heights, Minn., where a 5-year-old prekindergartner, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his father were taken and sent to a detention facility in Texas. They are legal immigrants. They have a valid asylum claim, but that doesn’t matter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Why is it, in fact, the status of the people in question is irrelevant to ICE agents, and why is it that the architect of these policies, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, is so obsessed with the number of removals? “A minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day.” If you think, as I think many Americans thought, when they voted for Trump in 2024, that immigration enforcement primarily means removing people who have committed some kind of criminal offense, then you’ll never reach 3,000 people a day. “I’m a U.S. citizen.” “I was born and raised here.” The only way you’ll reach 3,000 people a day is if you’re yanking people from their communities. “We’re going to come back for your whole family.” “These are kids. What’s wrong with you?” “Where is your warrant?” Is if you’re taking people who are legally here, or who have valid claims to be here. If you are destroying communities, trying to root out whoever happens to look wrong in your eyes. “Were you born here?” We do know that ICE is utilizing people’s race, ethnicity and language to determine if they’re going to be detained. This is in part thanks to an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which allowed for this kind of behavior. “The color of my skin was the reason I was assaulted that day.” “C.B.P. officers yelled at me, saying: Get him. He’s Mexican.” Essentially describing it as an acceptable cost of immigration enforcement. Thank you, Justice Kavanaugh. in any case, this obsession with numbers, with arresting as many people as possible, makes communities less safe, both in a very literal way. You do not feel safe when there are armed, masked men roaming the streets looking for people to detain. And it takes the focus on the potential criminals who might need to be removed from the country. The answer to all of this is that what ICE is doing, what the administration is pushing, is not immigration enforcement. It has much more in common with ethnic cleansing, with trying to change the overall ethnic and racial mix of the country. There are campaigns of indiscriminate mass deportations that targets anyone who authorities believe simply does not belong, And their belief that these people do not belong rests on a racialized idea of what an American is. “We only take people from [EXPLETIVE] countries.” “We’re under invasion from within.” “I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia. Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden? Just a few.” And if that doesn’t persuade you of what is actually happening here, Imagine this is happening in another country and another place that isn’t the United States. Imagine you see political leaders in some other nation talking like our president does, talking like Stephen Miller does, sending masked armed paramilitaries through the streets to go door to door looking for various ethnic and racial minorities. Would you call it ethnic cleansing then? I think you might. We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the West from the depths of the Dark Ages. Why are they taking people with legal status? People who are naturalized citizens, people who are natural-born citizens, and treating them as if they could be potentially deported to where? I do not know, because these are, again, citizens and legal residents. And here, you don’t need to take my word for it. Just listen to the president of the United States, who describes any number of different immigrant groups as essentially unable to be American, Filthy, dirty. Disgusting. Ridden with crime. Do we have any individuals from Somalia? Integral. Please raise your hand. These are low IQ people. How do they go into Minnesota and steal all that money? So in Somalia, the Somalians, you know what they’re good at, that’s about the only thing they’re good at is they’re good at pirating ships I Fox. don’t know. it. Yeah! Oh, You’re hurting your community. You’re an orphan. Get