This is enough to strike terror into anybody’s heart. I’ve lived for over four years at my current residence but I still do get mail sent to the previous occupants and those names are Hispanic. It is entirely possible that those names might be in the ICE/FBI computers and that federal authorities could come breaking in my door to get the people who used to live here. Think that that’s an extreme proposition? Not in the slightest. That very thing happened to a woman and her three daughters in Oklahoma City. The family moved from Maryland to Oklahoma and they were only there a few days when ICE and FBI agents came busting into the home in the wee hours.
"Can you reprogram yourselves to see us as humans?" Federal immigration agents raid home, but suspects don't live there https://t.co/eY4BkpVV7T
— Ursula Faw (@ursulafaw56) April 30, 2025
“We bleed, too.” Wow. Straight out of Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice, published in 1600. Human nature has not changed one jot, if we are to believe both this lady in Oklahoma City and Shylock, the Bard’s protagonist. Just substitute the word “Hispanic” or “immigrant” or “possibly illegal alien” or anything you like for the word “Jew.” The “other” is the point here. And both Shylock and Marisa, the victim of the ICE raid, speak for the Other.
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
— The Merchant of Venice, Act III scene 1
We can only hope that the family will get its phones, laptops, cash, etc. back. It’s unclear what these things were seized as evidence of, but seized they were and the excuse was that the items were evidence. The reality is that the chattel and cash was seized to cripple the family’s ability to function. Being without a phone or laptop would inhibit anybody’s ability to function. Most people don’t keep their life savings in the house, but it makes sense here that if they just moved they may have had their assets, or a good portion of them, in cash to go from one bank to another without delay.
Marisa makes the point, “What if I had been armed?” What indeed? ICE and FBI agents would have shot her dead in her own bed for the “crime” of occupying a residence that was on a target list. Again, any of us could be in this same boat.
ICE and the FBI bang down the door first and ask questions later. And Trump takes it one step farther. He doesn’t believe in due process because he says, “We know who the criminals are,” and “We don’t have time for millions of trials.” And Trump may think he knows where the criminals live but in this case, wrong.
This is not making America great or making America safe. It is making America into a paranoid hell hole that nobody sane will want to live in if this kind of behavior continues. And we have every reason to believe that just that will happen, that this awfulness will continue. Just think about it. ICE could be after the prior residents of your house or apartment, or the next door neighbors, or the people with the same house number but on a different street — but it’s your door that they come crashing through. And what can you do about it?
We bought a house that, previously, had been rented to an assortment of college students. Even after ten years, we were still getting phone calls and snail mail from collection agencies trying to collect on student loans. One such caller asked my wife “Are you sure he isn’t hiding under a bed? Have you looked?” Like clockwork, the calls would start up anew every six months, when, it seemed, the delinquents’ names were farmed out to a new set of collection agencies. Writing “addressee unknown” on the mail and sending it back didn’t help. Putting a more strongly-worded reply on the outside of the envelope earned us a personal lecture from our Mail Carrier on the topic of politeness. Writing to our Congressman didn’t help. Luckily, we were never put in “Marissa’s” situation!