On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump rode down a golden escalator and said the sentence that would define his politics:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
You can read the full campaign announcement speech transcript here or in many other archives, but that one line is the part that stuck. At the time, a lot of people treated it like a bad joke. A clownish bit of over-the-top rhetoric that would either sink his candidacy or get sanded down once “real governing” began. Others, especially immigrants and Latinos, heard exactly what it was: an invitation. A green light for a certain kind of imagination about who “we” are and who “they” are.
Fast-forward a decade, and I’m sitting in Durham, North Carolina, reading about Operation Charlotte’s Web: heavily armed federal agents sweeping through Charlotte’s neighborhoods and business districts, grabbing people outside churches, bakeries, apartment complexes.
On the first day alone, at least 81 people were arrested in Charlotte. Reports describe masked agents, long guns, and aggressive tactics that left local immigrant communities terrified to leave home. Local coverage and national outlets have documented businesses closing, children kept indoors, and a Honduran-born U.S. citizen violently detained when he fit someone’s mental picture of what an “immigrant” looks like.
This is what it looks like when that original sentence finds a uniform.
The Story He Told, and the Story the State Is Now Acting Out
Trump’s campaign launch didn’t just throw around generic “tough on crime” language. It told a very specific story:
- There is a pure “we” inside the country.
- There is a dangerous “they” coming from outside, especially from Mexico and Latin America.
- “They” are mostly criminals, with a few “good people” sprinkled in.
When you repeat that story for years, defend it as “the truth” you’ll never apologize for, and then take control of the machinery of immigration enforcement again, it’s not surprising that operations start to look less like law enforcement and more like a live-action version of that speech.
In Charlotte, Border Patrol and ICE have been deployed deep inside the state, not just at the border, in a sweep explicitly branded by the Department of Homeland Security as part of “making America safe again.” The targets are “criminal illegal aliens” in the official language, but the practice on the ground has included:
- Masked agents with long guns,
- Raids near churches and stores,
- A U.S. citizen tackled and thrown to the ground,
- Entire immigrant neighborhoods too afraid to leave home.
From Raleigh to Charlotte, protests are already happening, with people holding signs and chanting as the crackdown spreads across North Carolina.
It’s hard to look at that and see “neutral policy.” It looks much more like the state acting out a fantasy: the fantasy that the country is being invaded by dangerous outsiders, and that the bravest thing you can do is join the posse to “take the streets back.”
Some of the officers involved no doubt believe they’re just doing a job. Others, let’s be honest, are attracted to the job precisely because it offers a socially sanctioned way to act out that fantasy: to prove loyalty to a single leader and a single idea of who counts as “real Americans,” at the expense of their own reason and humanity.
When you hand that kind of power to people steeped in a “they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people” worldview, you’re not just enforcing a law. You’re providing an outlet for a white-nationalist imagination of the country.
Where My “Calm Language” Values Meet My Righteous Anger
I care a lot about how we talk about injustice. I really do. I recently wrote an essay arguing that if we actually want to change anything, screaming at everyone who doesn’t already agree with us is a bad strategy. Demonizing ordinary neighbors who are confused, misinformed, or cautious tends to push them into the arms of more extreme voices.
I still believe that.
But I also live here. In the same state where masked agents are now roaming neighborhoods under orders personally authorized and celebrated by a president who built his career calling my immigrant neighbors criminals. In the same region where immigrant-rights groups like Siembra NC are launching tools like the Ojo Obrero map so families can figure out whether it’s safe to take a bus to work or school.
So I need to say this clearly, without a lawyer’s filter:
This is not normal. And it’s not something we can only talk about in polite, academic tones.
There is a place for righteous anger when:
- the state is using fear as a tool,
- families are being torn apart to score political points,
- and basic human dignity is being treated as conditional on a document status.
There is a difference between:
- treating every skeptical neighbor like a monster, and
- naming a policy and a political project for what they are: cruel, reckless, built on a story that dehumanizes millions of people at the stroke of a sentence.
We can still refuse to see our coworkers, classmates, or relatives as demons. But we do not have to pretend that what’s happening in our communities right now is just “one side of the debate.”
Beyond Papers: Who Deserves Dignity?
One of the most poisonous ideas in all of this is the quiet assumption that citizenship is the border of who deserves basic decency.
You can see it in the way these raids are defended:
- “We’re only going after criminals.”
- “We’re only enforcing the law.”
- “If they didn’t want this, they shouldn’t have come here illegally.”
But the footage out of Charlotte tells a different story. It shows citizens and non-citizens alike terrified to walk down their own streets. It shows a U.S. citizen dragged from his car and slammed into the pavement because he matched someone’s idea of what an “illegal” looks like. It shows whole neighborhoods going quiet, not because anyone’s safer, but because everyone’s afraid.
Once you accept the idea that some categories of people are inherently suspect, it becomes very easy to expand the circle of suspicion. The line between “non-citizen” and “citizen who looks foreign” gets blurry. The line between “we’re targeting criminals” and “we’re clearing out that part of town” gets blurry too.
My posture is simple:
- People are human beings before they are paperwork categories.
- Dignity, safety, and the right not to be hunted through your own city should not vanish because of your status in a database.
- And the rest of us have a responsibility not to look away when that line gets crossed, especially in the places we call home.
Marking This Moment
I don’t have a magic policy to offer here. I’m just one person in Durham, watching this unfold, feeling a mix of fear, rage, and a stubborn refusal to let this be normalized.
Part of me wants to stay in the “statesmanlike” lane all the time — to always search for the most balanced words, the most bridge-building tone. Another part of me says: if I can’t call this what it is now, when will I?
So I’m writing this to mark the moment:
- To say out loud that there is a straight line between that campaign-launch speech and these raids.
- To say that turning our cities into hunting grounds for political theater is not public safety; it’s an abuse of power.
- To say that righteous anger has a place — especially when it is grounded in love for our neighbors and a refusal to let anyone’s humanity be treated as disposable.
Tomorrow, or next week, I might go back to carefully crafted essays about how we talk to each other across political lines. I still think those conversations matter. But tonight, in North Carolina, with helicopters in the air and agents on our streets, I think it is also honest to say:
I am angry.
I am worried for people I have never met.
And I refuse to pretend that this is just another “policy difference” between parties.
It’s a test of what kind of country we are — and what kind of neighbors we are willing to be.