I couldn’t say all I wanted to say in yesterday’s blog post. Ready or not, here comes more….
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”
Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in The New York Times last Saturday. Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/opinion/immigrants-ice-deportation.html.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Janet
Janet's Writing Blog 