A Regime of Terror: We Won’t Stay Silent

By Gente Cuaderno Editors

Minneapolis, Minnesota and Pomona, California–The United States of America–circa the last two weeks.

Americans are finally starting to wake up to the absurdity of Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity after a tragic weekend of yet another fatal victim and sustained silence from the Department of Homeland Security and Trump himself. As a people, we now face a reality where state police powers and citizens are defensively activated against federally-commanded terrorists, and the true victims and perpetrators of the violence could not be clearer.

Over the past few months, Gente has been gathering testimonies for our street vending campaign in response to Pomona City Council decisions that have made street vending inaccessible, overregulated, and criminalized. These policies do not exist in isolation. In Pomona, ICE has been actively targeting and abducting immigrant laborers, including street vendors who are simply trying to survive.

While gathering testimonies, we met a street vendor who scarcely trusted us with their story. Since last year, their sales had already dropped because of the constant fear created by ICE presence. Then, just within the past two weeks, that same vendor was taken by ICE.

For five years, this vendor sold fresh, delicious snacks in Pomona—showing up day after day, feeding neighbors, creating smiles, and becoming part of the memories at Tony Cerda Park. In a moment, all of that was taken away. They were forced to leave behind their family, bills, and the life they had worked so hard to build. What remains is fear, loss, and a community left without someone who belonged.

We didn’t know Alex Jeffrey Pretti, Renee Good, or the man that sold treats at the local park personally, but we know that they are now subject to the same neglectful, all-exculpating, misleading rhetoric of the current administration. Even before their encounters with ICE, they would be grouped in with the supposed “criminals,” or the “agitators” that “impeded federal law enforcement operations.” 

Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse in Minnesota who participated in anti-ICE protests, the likes of which have been seen across the state since the murder of Renee Good. Since his death, he has been regarded as a “domestic terrorist” and a "would-be assassin" by Trump administration officials Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller– leaders of Trump’s immigration policy enforcement and framework.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not seen the last of this wave of opposition thrown their way. Anyone who has watched or heard about the tragic deaths of these individuals, or the rapid disappearance of innocent community members by ICE raids and kidnappings, would know that the true domestic terrorists are in the White House. By weaponizing and enlisting tens of thousands of agents with funding in the millions, Trump and his fearmongering administration have effectively created a state of federally-enforced terror in the United States, a country that once stood for freedom from such abuses.

State-sanctioned violence is not new to the U.S. and it is often thought to be something that only happens in developing countries or distant places. Like the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel, one of the most notable state-sanctioned acts of violence in modern history. The distance creates sort of a disconnect between your everyday folks in the U.S. and places far away. However, violence condoned, sanctioned, and perpetrated by government agencies and its leaders is also a reality within American history. 

Notable historical events include the Reconstruction & Jim Crow violence against newly freed slaves in the late 1800s, anti-Socialist repression sanctioned by the government in 1917, deputized radical white mobs in 1921 that destroyed “Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, Oklahoma, COINTELPRO in the 1960s that targeted domestic political organizations with illegal harassment, and, most recently, the attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters by various police agencies across the country. Trump and his administration are not doing anything new necessarily, in contrast, they are continuing a long legacy of repression and violence against any who dare to question the overreach of power by those powers. 

Local victims of ICE have not been afforded the same media attention and national cries for justice as the recent Minnesota victims, at least not by name. Many in our community have lived through periods of racism and discrimination, and many are more than familiar with the way the U.S. treats its immigrants, asylum-seekers, and refugees. But this isn’t a reality that the general public has to face on a daily basis.

Liam Ramos and his father were detained by ICE, and Vice President JD Vance, when asked about the supposed arrest, was quick to exempt the responsible agents from any culpability or harm caused to the child. Instead, the attention was turned to Liam’s father, referred to by Vance as an “illegal alien” that ICE needed to arrest. “What were they supposed to do?”

Charles Mills states that “white supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today.” No human is more valuable than another. This idea is absurd and quite frankly, rather worrisome. White supremacy is what fabricates the idea that five year-old Liam Ramos is less valuable than Renee Good. It is what drives the “missing white woman syndrome,” a term coined by Dr. Sherri Parks, who argues that the media is more likely to act on the disappearance of a white woman than a Woman of Color. We, regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, are valuable human beings. But Black and other People of Color have historically been demonized, Othered, seen less than, and with this current administration, white supremacy has been overtly permitted. 

So what will have to happen for everyone to speak out on the injustice? Gente Organizada and Cuaderno is committed to supporting the narrative that tells the truth of these incidents. Looking to our local representatives, we must demand that they use their positions to speak out on the Trump administration’s indifference to our rights, dignity, and lives. We must also understand that the threat of oppressive, tyrannical power is to the public, not just immigrants or protestors fighting for their lives. Silence is compliance, and we think that a peoples’ uprising is long overdue.

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To support the local vendor who was abducted by ICE, please see this GoFundMe.

Gente Cuaderno Editors stand in solidarity with the victims of ICE in Minnesota, Pomona, and across the U.S.. We urge our readers to take action and speak out against the unlawful and violent action of the Trump administration and, most of all, stay informed!