I write southern historical fiction, local history, and I've written a devotional book. The two novels I'm writing are set in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1760s. My weekly blog started out to follow my journey as a writer and a reader, but in 2025 it has been greatly expanded to include current events and politics in the United States as I see our democracy under attack from within. The political science major in me cannot sit idly by and remain silent.
This is a story I have been sitting on since last Tuesday. It is impossible to make sense of what has happened here locally.
I do not personally know the young woman or her family, but hearing this family’s story on WSOC-TV in Charlotte stopped me in my tracks. I have not been able to get the report off my mind.
Her family fled violence in Honduras in 2013 when Allison Bustillo was eight years old. They found a home in North Carolina. Allison studied hard. No one in the family ever broke the law, except for staying in the United States without proper documentation.
Allison wants to be a nurse. At 20 years old, she was studying nursing on a scholarship at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, until February 2025 – the day ICE agents showed up at her house. They were looking for someone who did not live there but, in the process, they took Allison from her home. This was traumatic for her family, which includes her brother who is on the autism spectrum.
Photo by Jennifer Grismer on Unsplash
Allison was taken 350 miles from her home to the ICE Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. She tried to get released. She had broken no laws. She had been brought into the United States as an eight-year-old child.
The Stewart Detention Center is operated by CoreCivic. CoreCivic contracted with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to operate the prison, which has an official capacity of 1,752 inmates.
The ICE agents who arrested Allison Bustillo did not have to identify themselves. They didn’t have to show a badge or an identification. They didn’t have to show their faces. But Allison Bustillo was not allowed those privileges, so without warning or due process she was taken from her home and placed in a federal detention center hundreds of miles from her family.
But no one in the Trump Administration cared. Not even after her family secured the services of an attorney.
One of the ironies is that Allison was not eligible for voluntary deportation, but she was stuck in that detention center for six months. Imagine! Six months!
Her attorney was finally able to get permission for her to leave the detention center and leave the country without a deportation order. She will board (or already has boarded) a commercial flight to Honduras. Alone.
A 20-year-old nursing student returning to the country she fled 12 years ago as a child whose family sought a safe life.
Allison’s mother said, “The only memory my daughter has of Honduras is when someone put a gun to our heads.”
Trump was elected partly because he promised to get the illegal alien criminals out of our country. Perhaps some of the people who voted for him thought he would use legal means to accomplish that. Perhaps they thought he would only remove the hardened criminals.
They were horribly mistaken.
He has repeatedly said that only “the worst of the worst criminals” will be arrested and deported. That is a lie. Plain and simple.
A case in point is the Guatemalan minor children he tried to deport in the middle of the night this weekend. Fortunately, a judge put a stop to that. Trump needs to understand that even an undocumented child from Guatemala has the right to due process in the United States of America.
What happened to “Give me your tired, your poor… your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” that the high school chorus used to sing?
What happened to “the land of the free and the home of the brave” from our national anthem? We have failed our national anthem this year… or, I suppose we failed it on election day last November. I don’t think I can sing it anymore.
I couldn’t say all I wanted to say in yesterday’s blog post. Ready or not, here comes more….
Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash
Immigration was not handled well during the first Trump Administration (i.e. people put in cages and children separated from their parents without a means of identification). Immigration was mishandled by the Biden Administration (i.e. too lax about enforcing border security). But immigration is a disaster during the second Trump Administration.
Where is the voice of reason? Where is common sense?
Deployment of California National Guard
A full month after the major protests against ICE in a Los Angeles neighborhood, Trump decided it was finally time to let thousands of California National Guard members return to their families and their jobs. Some of them have started speaking out about that experience.
The New York Times is reporting that some of the National Guard personnel have voiced serious concern over being deployed by President Trump. They are calling it a “fake mission.”
The New York Times reported, “Six member of the Guard – including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles – spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come.”
There are reports of some members of the California National Guard voicing misgivings from the beginning about the deployment.
For Trump to keep them in warehouses in Los Angeles for a full four weeks after all threat of civil violence was over, is the icing on the cake.
It is still beside the point that Trump did not have the authority to deploy a state’s National Guard under the existing circumstances. That authority rests with the state’s governor.
“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring. This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all,” one member of the Guard told The Times.”
The piece reported that National Guard personnel of Hispanic heritage were especially uncomfortable being deployed to assist ICE in rounding up illegal aliens.
Just one more instance of the chipping away of our democracy and rule of law.
“Take the rest of ‘those people,’ but don’t take my neighbor”
The situation he wrote about is a case-in-point of how people voted for Trump because he promised to get the violent immigrants out of the United States. They claim now that they didn’t think he meant ALL immigrants.
(My question to them is, “Why did you believe anything he said?”)
Kristof lives in a farming community in Oregon where the majority of people voted for Trump for president all three times. But now that community is upset because Trump is deporting immigrants they know. He wasn’t supposed to deport local immigrants like Moises Sotelo.
Mr. Sotelo has lived in the community for 31 years, established a vineyard, and employed 10 people. He is a pillar in his church. He is a respected businessman.
But ICE picked up Mr. Sotelo and deported him to Mexico. Kristof says the community is now up in arms. They have raised $150,000 to help with Mr. Soleto’s legal expenses. Good luck with that.
Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash
The way I see it, many people voted for Trump because he voiced a hatred for immigrants and that appealed to his base. They hate immigrants, too, so Trump is their man. Trump called immigrants names, and that appealed to his base.
Trump said immigrants were a drain on our economy, that they didn’t pay taxes, and – worst of all – they are all violent criminals. He convinced his base that those things were true, even though they are all false.
Trump’s base refuses to accept the fact that immigrants – illegal as well as legal — pay income and sales tax. If they get a paycheck, income and Social Security taxes are deducted from that paycheck. When they purchase anything, they pay state and local sales tax — just like Americans. Who knew?
After Trump and his ICE thugs remove all the immigrants from the United States, the people in Trump’s base are going to be surprised that most crimes in America are committed by Americans. Many of them have white skin, and that’s going to be the biggest surprise of all for them.
The Case of George Retes, U.S. citizen, U.S. Army Veteran
George Retes is a United States citizen and a veteran of the United States Army. When he drove up to the Glass House Farms in Camarillo, California, to report for work, his car was approached by ICE agents. They broke a car window, sprayed him with pepper spray, and dragged him out of his car – all while he was telling them that he was a U.S. citizen and veteran just reporting for work.
ICE detained him for three days.
Photo by Oleg Ivanov on Unsplash
I saw Mr. Retes interviewed on TV, and this is what the Associated Press reported:
“Retes was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he said he was put in a special cell on suicide watch and checked on each day after he became emotionally distraught over his ordeal and missing his 3-year-old daughter’s birthday party Saturday.
“He said federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention. Authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, Retes said, adding that his hands burned throughout the first night he spent in custody.”
I am embarrassed for the United States of America. Such federal police action is not “Making America Great Again.”
This is even worse
Eighty-two-year-old Luis Leon from Allentown, Pennsylvania had been in the United States LEGALLY for 38 years since being granted asylum from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chili in 1987. He was a victim of torture by the Pinochet regime.
Unfortunately, in June Mr. Leon lost his wallet which contained his green card.
Thinking all he had to do was request a replacement green card, Mr. Leon and his wife made an appointment to get that taken care of.
But when he arrived for his appointment, Mr. Leon was handcuffed and taken away. His wife was held for 10 hours until a granddaughter could pick her up.
For a month, Mr. Leon’s family had no idea where he was. His name never showed up on the immigration tracker list. ICE had no answers for them. The family looked for him in local prisons, hospitals, and morgues, but they could not find him.
A relative in Chile found him in a hospital in Guatemala and called his family in Pennsylvania on Friday. Mr. Leon had never been to Guatemala before the United States Government decided to disappear him to that country. ICE still won’t confirm their thugs had anything to do with this. ICE claims they are “investigating” the case.
Photo by Annabel Podevyn on Unsplash
In conclusion
I am at a loss for words to describe how angry I am and how embarrassed I am today to be an American – even though I did not vote for Trump.
Trump campaigned on the promise to deport illegal aliens who were criminals, but now Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) snatches people off the street, from their homes, from their places of employment, and occasionally (what seems like daily) they make egregious mistakes and kidnap the wrong person.
ICE agents are under pressure to arrest 3,000 immigrates every day. So what if they nab a few legal citizens or immigrants who are guilty of nothing more than a traffic ticket?
It is un-American for ICE agents to cover their faces, wear no badges, and not identify themselves. The excuse that they have to cover their faces because they are scared of retribution doesn’t hold water. Local police officers might fear retribution, too, but they don’t wear face masks.
If you voted for Trump, you voted for this. You knew he was a horrible man and you voted for him anyway. I don’t know how you sleep at night.
At least I don’t have to live with the shame of having voted for any of this.
Until my next blog post
Keep up with reliable news reports
Keep reading good fiction and nonfiction books.
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
I’ve read that some people who blindly voted for Donald Trump are having buyer’s remorse now. As far as I know, I don’t know any of them personally. If you now wish you had not voted for Trump, please tell me.
Not a day passes that we don’t learn of another fascist step the Trump regime has taken.
It is exhausting to watch the news. It is exhausting to try to digest it and condense it into a blog post. I refuse to stop. I love my country too much to give up or give in.
I love my four young adult great nieces too much to stop watching the news and scanning the internet for multiple reputable resources. I love them too much to leave them a tyrannical government in which they are commanded to march lockstep with the-power hungry freedom haters in charge.
I worked too hard to get an education and they have worked too hard to get an education for them to be doomed to a life of barefoot and pregnant, which is what the Trumpers apparently want for them.
Wannabe dictators don’t sweep in and convert a democracy into an authoritarian state overnight. They chip away at rights bit by bit. They ban a few books today, and they ban more books tomorrow. They institute laws that make it more difficult for citizens to register to vote.
They call the press “the enemy of the people.” They attack education. They push the envelope to see what they can get away with. They attack judges. They slowly but surely undermine the citizens’ confidence in everything until those citizens start questioning their own instincts.
They normalize lies and hate.
They exaggerate civil unrest so they can bypass a state governor and send in the National Guard. They overwhelming exaggerate civil unrest so they can deploy the United States Marines to a city.
They invent crises so they can declare martial law.
I am trying to sound the alarm bell out of a place of low and not anger.
Last Monday, June 16: Dr. Fiona Havers, a top scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resigned because she could not in good conscience stay with the agency after Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices on June 9.
Reuters reported that Dr. Havers’ email to her colleagues said that she had lost of confidence that her team’s output would “be used objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions.”
Dr. Havers’ fear is that “a lot of Americans are going to die as a result of vaccine-preventable diseases.”
She told The New York Times, “I could not be party to legitimizing this new committee.”
On June 11, Secretary Kennedy appointed eight new members to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Several of them have questionable qualifications for developing vaccine policy for the United States.
Last Wednesday, June 18: The Associated Press (https://www.npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-73572/us-resumes-visas-foreign-students-access-social-media) reported that the US State Department will restart the process of vetting foreigners who apply for student visas. The new restriction is that applicants will have to set their social media accounts to “public” so they can be reviewed by US officials.
The report said, “The department says consular officers will be looking for activity, posts and messages showing ‘any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.’”
That would probably prevent me from coming here to study. So much for free speech.
Last Thursday, June 19: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem instituted a new policy (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/us/politics/ice-congress.html) that members of Congress must give 72 hours’ notice if they wish to fulfill their duty and responsibility to visit ICE Field Office. That is in direct violation of the annual appropriation act that states that members of Congress are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility.”
The ICE Field Offices and detention centers house undocumented immigrants, sometimes legal immigrants, and sometimes American citizens because the ICE agents who are clothed in black glasses and face masks apparently cannot see or hear well enough through all their Gestapo-reminiscent garb to tell a citizen from a non-citizen. Why don’t they just wear white hoods like many of them probably do when they are off the clock?
What do they want to hide from the members of Congress?
This is another in a long line of cases in which Trump or one of his appointees decided they don’t have to obey the law.
Also on last Thursday, June 19: Trump put on social media that we have too many holidays in the United States. Posting that on Juneteenth was no accident. He posted that “the workers don’t want it [a holiday] either.”
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
If you work for the government, at a bank, or the stock market and don’t want a paid holiday, raise your hand. Go ahead. Raise your hand.
Last Friday, June 21: Axios reported that on June 12 Trump pulled the plug on the 2023 Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. The Biden Administration dedicated $1 billion through 2033 toward restoring salmon to the Columbia River Basin along with supporting tribal-led clean energy projects in the region. Trump called the agreement “radical environmentalism.”
Also last Friday, June 21: It came to light on several media outlets that the US Ambassador to Senegal had denied visas for two representatives of the Senegalese basketball federation, the team doctor, a physiotherapist, five players, a steward, the general manager, and the ministerial delegate. They were scheduled to come to the United States for ten days to train for the biennial AfroBasket Tournament to be played July 26 – August 3 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. No reason was given for the visa denials.
This does not bode well for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In fact, nothing that has happened since January 20 bodes well for those games.
Also last Friday, June 21: I desperately look for signs of hope. I found one on Friday. It has been reported that the section in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would make it almost impossible for the Trump Administration to be sued for dictatorial behavior or almost anything else in federal court – has been removed from the bill being considered by the US Senate. The US House of Representatives passed the bill, but a few Senators and the Senate Parliamentarian have removed some parts of it. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-parliamentarian-knocks-pieces-out-of-trump-s-megabill/ar-AA1H6dqB)
Last Saturday, June 22: In a statement that would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous, this was published by The Washington Post: “President Trump is restoring the integrity of the Executive Branch following four years of relentless abuse through weaponization, lawfare, and unelected bureaucrats running the nation via autopen,” [White House spokesperson] Harrison [Fields] said in a statement. “The President and his administration are the most transparent in American history, seamlessly executing the will of the American people in accordance with their constitutional authority.”
The article contrasted the post-Watergate actions the US Congress took to rein in the power of the president with the undoing of power of the legislative branch by Trump.
The article, written by Naftali Bendavid and which can be found at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-undermines-watergate-laws-in-massive-shift-of-ethics-system/ar-AA1H8Xbx. The article includes this example: “Watergate-era lawmakers, furious at Nixon for refusing to spend money they had authorized, passed a law forbidding “impoundment.” Trump ignored that when he temporarily froze government grants, and he has all but dismantled an agency created by Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development.”
It goes on to say, “In response to Nixon’s push to replace civil servants with political loyalists, Congress created the Merit Systems Protection Board in 1978 to hear cases of federal employees claiming unjust termination. Trump, who wants to force out thousands of workers, has dismissed a key member of the board and sought to neutralize it.”
On Monday, June 23: The US Supreme Court struck down a lower court ruling and said that it is perfectly find for the Trump Administration (and, therefore, all future administrations) to deport eight immigrants from various countries, including Vietnam and Cuba, to South Sudan even though none of them are from that country.
Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash
Imagine being deported to a country where you know no one and don’t speak that language! It turns out the eight people had already been deported to Djibouti before the US Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 ruling on Monday.
Until my next blog post
I will give you my weekly post-Hurricane Helene in North Carolina road update when I blog about my historical fiction writing and the little about the devotional book I’ve written but not yet published.
I hope you are reading a book that has you so captivated you can’t put it down except long enough to read my blog!
Don’t take anything or anyone for granted.
Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
Janet's Writing Blog 