Katerina Parizkova

I am outraged.

I was outraged yesterday, and I will be outraged tomorrow. One thing I will not be is silent.

Another man has been killed, another child taken, more people have died in detention camps, if we can still morally call them that and unfortunately, we’re not even close to 2028.

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s administration, we have seen atrocity after atrocity, and if I can be candid with you, I am nervous to write this article. But as I always tell my friends and family, I didn’t choose to become a journalist to play footsy with the government.

Minneapolis has been a hotspot for ICE murders for the past month. Every day, there is a headline about these undertrained, incompetent, power-hungry individuals.

They’re swarming people on the streets, questioning their immigration status with no justification other than the color of their skin. We live amongst them, breathing the same air, driving the same roads, living in fear, questioning who’s next.

Every day, we seem to be slipping further into a time and a country that I no longer recognize.

One of the reasons the Trump Administration has built so much support for ICE agents is by creating a feeling of “us” vs “them.”

They claim that immigrants are taking our jobs, don’t pay taxes and therefore, don’t contribute to our society. This has been disproven time and time again, but these people are like dogs with food aggression. You can’t take their bone.

On the ICE website, the careers page reads, “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.”  Referring to immigrants as “criminals and predators” is a dangerous sentiment and one that seems to have found heart in some Americans. Trump has gone on record many times calling immigrants “animals.”

This is exactly the type of rhetoric that turns people against one another.

Dehumanizing immigrants makes it easier for ICE to systematically target them, because in their eyes, they’re not human. This also eases the mental load on the Make America Great Again cronies who support this because they don’t have to feel guilty watching innocent people get kidnapped and murdered in the streets every day.

I’m tired of tiptoeing around these subjects. Can we please just call a duck, a duck?

Every day, our country slips further and further into the fascist archetype of the 1940s. Quite frankly, I think the scariest thing about it is the fact that so many people can’t see it, or simply won’t.

People seemingly forget that there weren’t just two groups of people in Nazi Germany. It wasn’t just Nazis and people against Nazis. There were bystanders. People who said, “this doesn’t affect me,” who turned away and were complicit in the genocide of entire groups of people.

Don’t be the person that no one remembers; be the Miep Geis, be the Oskar Schindler, be someone that history wants to remember, not just another statistic of people who did nothing.

ICE agents are actively seeking out people of color to question their immigration status.

In one case, a Minneapolis police chief spoke out about the profiling happening to off-duty officers, every one of which was a person of color. Those here on visas are not safe, even though they have gone through all the required legalities. Countless victims have come forward about being targeted by ICE, although they have every right to be here.

Sometimes they’re not even looking for immigrants but rather the people who sympathize with them, who, in their eyes, are just as bad.

I have no sympathy for ICE. Saying that they’re just following orders holds no water for me. The Gestapo was also just following orders.

I have been called extreme in the past for saying that we are closer to Nazi Germany than we are to the American Dream. I won’t hear it.

I am tired of being called names by MAGA because I don’t believe that people should be stuffed in the backs of vans and carted away to facilities that the government is keeping under wraps.

When’s the last time we’ve seen photos come out of Alligator Alcatraz?

In a current lawsuit against Alligator Alcatraz, detainees claim that their attorneys had to schedule appointments three days in advance and were often transferred to the next facility before their attorneys met with them.

Sound familiar? Because it should to anyone with any historical competency.

So go ahead, call me every name in the book. I can’t be bothered to care what comes from the mouths of people who sit here and justify the murder of people going about their lives in the same way you and I do.