Going Viral

Now children on their way home from pre-school are fair game. It is only right that they be herded into fenced detention areas by masked agents in black garb. And don’t go soft over that anxious little face beneath the blue woolen cap with white bunny ears.  

What a clever plan. Use five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos as bait to nab his father. Totally worth terrorizing a small child to get his dad, never mind that Liam’s family had been “following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through,” according to the Ramos’s lawyer. Yes, definitely detain Liam despite the pleas of other adults in the house to care for him.

And kudos to ICE for rousing – with guns drawn - a Minneapolis man from his afternoon nap and hustling him, bare-chested, out of his home into subfreezing weather. What an optic: a circle of federal agents, some heavily armed, some in camo uniforms and helmets, surrounding a graying grandfather in his underwear. As embarrassing to the country and the military as it is horrific, it would make a punchline for a terrible joke: How many U.S. agents does it take to round up a half-naked man? Awkward for Trump, Vance, Miller & Co. that the campaign was a mistake: Chongly “Scott” Thao is a citizen.  

Who are the people behind those masks? 

Didn’t Trump say he was unleashing ICE to round up the “worst of the worst”? So why are ICE agents in Minneapolis harassing random people of color, demanding to see their papers? Again, it doesn’t bode well when among those targeted are off-duty police officers, citizens all. 

And then there’s Renee Goode, white, mother of three, shot and killed while retreating in her car, and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse for the VA, shot multiple times, after filming ICE activities with his phone and trying to help a woman who’d been knocked down. 

How often has ICE victimized innocents and American citizens, but we, bowled over by the barrage of bad news, screened it out? Based on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data as of November 2025, the Cato Institute reports that 73% of ICE detainees have no criminal convictions, and in 2025, over 170 American citizens were mistakenly arrested and detained. Ironic that an administration so bent on rooting out “illegals” has so flagrantly defied the law.   

Have the protections and rights of the Constitution been abandoned by this administration? Looks it. Government diligence in discerning “the worst” is lacking.  

Is this what Trump voters had in mind? Do Republicans in Congress think this is acceptable? Have they read the Constitution they vowed to uphold? Perhaps we, The People, need to remind them: the Fifth Amendment assures that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” and the Fourth Amendment guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Generations before us fought, bled, and died to ensure American rights. Naively, I thought that battle had been won. Now it is up to us. If you abhor the cruelty and injustice of lawless ICE actions, call or write your congress people. Tell them to vote NO on funding to the Department of Homeland Security and expansion of ICE.