What Happens When Fear Becomes Policy
From the pages of history to the streets of Minnesota, the warning signs are no longer subtle
Jan 19, 2026
What Happens When Fear Becomes Policy
This is not a political post. It’s a human one, and a warning.
I’ll be the first to admit: I don’t know enough about politics to pretend I have all the answers. But I do know trauma.
I know what it feels like to be terrified, to be hurt, and to be treated like less than human. I know fear, the kind that takes your breath away, and the kind you carry long after the moment has passed.
This piece isn’t about arguing policy points. It’s about perspective.
My hope is simple: that someone who has been turning a blind eye might see this through a different lens. That maybe, by understanding the emotional and human cost of what’s happening right now, we stop justifying it, and start asking how we ever let it become normal.
When I Shared What Happened, and Was Told I Was “Unfair”
Recently, I shared the story of something that happened just a few hours from where I live, something that still sits heavy in my chest. A Minneapolis couple, Shawn and Destiny Jackson, were driving home with their six children, including a 6‑month‑old baby, when they got caught in the middle of a protest and a federal immigration enforcement operation. They weren’t protesting. They weren’t breaking the law. They were just trying to get their kids home after their kids game and a normal evening.
As federal agents deployed tear gas and flash‑bang devices into the area, a canister reportedly rolled under their SUV. It exploded, the airbags deployed, and smoke filled the vehicle. Inside that car, the baby stopped breathing. In a matter of seconds, what should have been an ordinary drive turned into a moment of panic, terror, and chaos. The father had to perform CPR on his infant son. Their children screamed. Several of them were hospitalized. Destiny, the mother, described it as a moment where she didn’t think her baby was going to make it.
This wasn’t a family resisting arrest. This wasn’t a mistake in paperwork or a criminal encounter. They weren’t even a target. They were just there. And yet they’re the ones who now have to live with the trauma.
I shared this story hoping it would open some eyes, maybe challenge the way people have been taught to think about immigration enforcement. But instead, I was met with something I’ve heard too many times before from too many people:
“You’re being judgmental.”
“You’re making this political.”
“Not all ICE agents are bad. You’re lumping everyone together.”
That last one really stuck with me. Because honestly? I get it. I know what it’s like to want to see the good in people. I have certainly gotten burned enough in life because of it as well. I understand what it means to be misunderstood or stereotyped. I’ve spent much of my life being judged for who I am, so I try not to judge or condemn others harshly, especially people who are working within systems they didn’t create. I feel things deeply, and I believe most people don’t set out to cause harm.
But this isn’t about good intentions.
It’s about what happens when those intentions exist inside a system built on fear, power, and control, a system that routinely harms people, especially those who are already vulnerable.
That same person went on to say something I’ve heard echoed in headlines and comment sections and other people we know:
“Well, if they’re here legally, they have nothing to worry about.”
Let’s sit with that for a moment. Because that sentence, if they’re here legally, is doing a lot of dangerous heavy lifting. It assumes a few things:
- That immigration status is always clear, visible, and fairly judged.
- That people who are undocumented deserve to live in fear.
- That the system treats people fairly, that race, language, and class have nothing to do with who gets stopped.
- That being “legal” is the same as being safe.
But here’s what we know, what we’ve seen with our own eyes:
There are people with green cards, military veterans, asylum claims, work permits, even U.S. citizens, who’ve been detained, interrogated, or held because of how they looked or what their last name sounded like.
That same person who defended ICE told me about someone they knew who’d been stopped by agents and had what they called a “fine” interaction; nothing went awry. I’m glad it didn’t. But let’s not pretend that the outcome is a sign that everything’s working as it should. The only reason that person was stopped was because of racial profiling. That’s not a neutral experience; that’s a warning sign.
And that person who was treated “fine”? They were lucky. Because for every person who gets waved through, there are so many others who are not, people who are held for hours without cause, people who are left without medication or access to legal counsel, people are being beaten and sexually assaulted while in detention, people’s lives are being torn apart because they don’t “look” American enough to be trusted.
Being profiled and surviving it is not the same as being protected.
We’ve seen disabled individuals detained for weeks, children taken from their parents without any process for reunification, and entire families go missing into systems where paperwork gets lost and people fall through cracks that were built to trap them.
We’ve heard stories of parents being picked up on their way to work, cars left in driveways, doors left open, kids walking home from school to an empty house.
And again, this is not about whether ICE agents are good or bad people. I am not interested in moralizing individuals. I’m talking about the system they are operating in, and what it does to human beings, families, and communities.
Because when a baby stops breathing in the backseat of a car because of a government-issued flashbang, that is not okay.
When a disabled teenager is held for 50 days without appropriate care, that is not okay.
When U.S. citizens are pulled aside and told to “prove they belong”, that is not okay.
You don’t have to believe in cruelty to uphold it.
You just have to look away.
And I won’t, I refuse to, and I can’t.
Section 2: The Uncomfortable Truth, This Isn’t Just About Minnesota
Before I go further, I want to be clear: I understand nuance. I know there are probably people wearing ICE badges who didn’t set out to harm anyone. I know some likely believe they’re serving a purpose, protecting something, doing it to provide for their families. This isn’t about condemning individual people, but when the system they work for routinely traumatizes innocent families, intentions don’t undo the damage they are causing and the repercussions from this will last for generations to come.
And the damage is real, not just here in Minnesota. Across the country, we’re watching fear become policy, and force become routine.
A System That Harms, Regardless of Intent
In 2025 alone, 32 people died in ICE custody, the highest death toll in more than two decades. That’s not just a statistic. That’s 32 human beings who died while detained by our government. Many had not committed any crime. Some were asylum seekers. Some were awaiting paperwork. All of them were under the “care” of a system that failed them.
There have been widespread, credible reports of physical abuse, sexual assault, medical neglect, and psychological mistreatment inside ICE facilities. Some detainees were denied medications, hygiene supplies, and legal access. Others were placed in solitary confinement for minor infractions or for being LGBTQ+ or mentally ill.
Outside detention, we’ve seen:
- People kicked in the head while restrained.
- Bystanders pushed into traffic for filming agents.
- Faces bloodied for asking questions or trying to speak.
- Homes raided. Doors left open. Children returned from school to find their parents gone.
And the most haunting part? These aren’t exceptions. This is part of a pattern.
Children Left Dirty, Hungry, and Alone
Among the most disturbing reports from the past year have been those involving children held in government custody under immigration enforcement.
Legal and humanitarian observers who visited detention sites have described:
- Toddlers and young children left unsupervised, in cages or holding rooms not meant for long-term care.
- Children in soiled clothing, some covered in mucus or urine, with no access to showers or clean clothes.
- Kids sleeping on cold floors under aluminum blankets, given inadequate food and water, sometimes with nothing but instant noodles or crackers for days at a time.
These are not allegations made in passing, they’ve been documented in court filings, Senate investigations, and by respected human rights groups. Some children were sick, injured, or emotionally shut down, and no adult was tending to them. Just guards. Just doors. Just lights that never turned off.
Let’s be honest: if this were happening in a daycare, or a foster home, or a hospital, the people responsible would be under arrest and charged with child endangerment and neglect. But because it’s happening under the label of immigration enforcement, it’s treated as acceptable. It’s treated as policy.
That should never be normal here or anywhere else in the world.
What Fear Actually Looks Like
People aren’t hiding because they’re guilty.
They’re hiding because they’re afraid.
Not afraid of justice. but of injustice.
They are afraid of disappearing into a system that won’t see them as human, afraid of being torn from their families, detained without cause, or harmed and taken with no one watching.
This fear isn’t irrational. Real events, real losses, and real trauma inform it. It doesn’t matter how many agents are “good” if the system itself is functioning in ways that violate basic human rights, dignity, and safety.
I’ve Known That Fear, Intimately
I’ve lived through abuse. I’ve seen what danger looks like when it wears a familiar face.
I’ve stood in rooms where love and harm coexisted, and where survival meant reading someone’s every move to know which one I was about to get.
That experience taught me something I wish more people understood:
Good people are capable of terrible things.
And people capable of terrible things can still do good.
That’s not a contradiction; that’s just human complexity.
Good intentions don’t cancel out harm, they don’t erase consequences, and
they don’t absolve silence.
Section 3: Inside the Imagination of Fear
Fear doesn’t always look like screaming.
Sometimes it’s quiet.
It looks like staying home when you’re sick instead of going to the doctor, or like crossing the street when you see a government vehicle.
It looks like holding your child a little tighter at bedtime because you’re afraid tomorrow might come with a knock on the door, or that they may be snatched and separated from you on the way to school, daycare, or the grocery store.
Fear then becomes a part of the routine, the background noise of daily life, even when nothing is happening, because when people live with the threat of being taken, or their children and families, they live in constant preparation.
Even if it never happens, their nervous system doesn’t know that.
The body reacts as if it already has.
That’s how trauma begins.
Not only in moments of violence, but in the hours, days, and years of bracing for it.
When Children Are Taken
Picture a child. five years old, maybe younger. They’re in a car seat one moment, and the next, they’re being separated from their parent.
The adult is pulled away. The child is crying, clinging, trying to understand, and no one explains.
They’re placed in a vehicle. Sometimes multiple children are loaded into one van at once.
Sometimes siblings are separated.
That child arrives at a holding center with harsh lights and unfamiliar sounds.
There are no parents. No one to hold them, sing to them, or reassure them.
They are handed off to a guard or a stranger who may not speak their language.
They aren’t told where their mom or dad went, or when, or if, they’ll see them again.
Some are too young to speak up.
Others stop speaking altogether.
They cry until they’re too exhausted to cry anymore.
This isn’t just disorientation. It’s a full rupture of attachment, the primary emotional bond that gives children their sense of safety in the world.
When that bond is broken abruptly and without explanation, it leaves a wound that doesn’t simply heal when they’re released.
From the child’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether this was a “policy.”
It doesn’t matter whether the adults meant harm.
It doesn’t matter what the paperwork says.
It feels like being kidnapped.
Because for them, it is.
They were taken by strangers, locked away, and left with no sense of safety or care, or with no idea when they’d see their families again.
When Parents Are Left in the Dark
Now shift perspectives.
Imagine being a mother whose child has disappeared into a system you can’t navigate.
You don’t know what agency took them, what city they’re in, or how long they’ll be held.
You ask questions. No one answers. You call numbers. No one picks up.
You’re told to wait. You’re told to file paperwork. You’re told nothing at all.
Imagine days going by. Then weeks.
You don’t know if your child is safe.
If they’re sick.
If they’re scared.
If they think you abandoned them.
You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. You don’t breathe deeply until you know.
Some never got that chance.
Some families still haven’t been reunited.
Others were reunited with children who had already been changed by the experience who looked the same, but no longer trusted the world in the same way.
The Damage We Can’t See
We tend to focus on what we can measure, detention lengths, deportation rates, cost per head.
But what about what we can’t see?
- A child who stops laughing.
- A teenager who can’t sleep through the night.
- A parent who checks over their shoulder every time they leave the house.
- A whole community that stops trusting authority, not because they’re defiant, but because they’ve learned not to expect protection.
These things don’t show up on spreadsheets,
but they live in bodies, families, and our communities.
It lives in the child who stops laughing, the parent who startles at every siren, and
In the teen who stays quiet because hope feels dangerous.
This kind of trauma doesn’t disappear.
It’s passed down, through silence, and through survival.
And people numb to survive: with addiction, with shame, with disappearing.
We call it policy.
But it reshapes lives.
And the irony?
We’re all immigrants here,
on stolen land.
Now immigrants are punished for seeking safety,
and the original people of this land are still being targeted,
still treated as threats because of the color of their skin.
It’s cruel.
It’s backwards.
And it’s breaking us all.
And Still, They’re Told to Be Grateful
Many of these families still try to rebuild.
They show up for work. They enroll their kids in school. They contribute. They try to move on.
And even after all of this, they’re expected to be grateful.
To keep quiet, comply, and blend in.
They are told that if they’re here “legally,” they have nothing to worry about.
But they know better, because they’ve seen how quickly legality can disappear under suspicion and how easily people have justified what’s being done.
They know how easily safety can be taken away.
When people say, “They should’ve followed the rules,”
or “They brought it on themselves,”
they are missing something essential.
These are not statistics.
These are families.
These are children.
These are HUMAN BEINGS whose lives are being reshaped by fear, even after the moment has passed.
And the question isn’t just what happened.
The question is: what are we willing to live with?
What are we allowing, by calling it policy instead of what it truly is?
Because no paperwork, no badge, no border can make this humane.
And no parent, child, or person should ever have to live this way, anywhere.
Section 4: This Isn’t New, And That’s the Problem
There’s a quote from The Diary of Anne Frank that has stayed with me since I was a child:
“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes… Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
She was 13 when she wrote that. And when I first read those words as a child, I believed they belonged to another time, a past we had learned from. Something we would never allow again.
But today, in this country, in 2026, we are watching a hauntingly similar story play out in front of our eyes.
People taken from their homes in the middle of the night.
Children who once felt safe now learning that even home can vanish without warning.
Families separated, sometimes permanently, and communities forced into silence.
And again, we are told to accept it.
We’re told it’s legal.
That it’s necessary.
That it’s someone else’s problem.
And when we question it, when we share the stories, the videos, the first-hand accounts, we’re told it must be fake.
That it’s exaggerated.
That “they can’t do that,” as if laws always protect, and systems never lie.
But just because something shouldn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t.
Denying it doesn’t make it untrue.
Turning our heads doesn’t make us innocent.
What it does, is let it keep happening.
And what happens next, when fear becomes policy, isn’t always as obvious as flashing lights or sirens.
Sometimes it looks like an impossible choice between survival and safety.
Like what also happened recently in Minneapolis.
We saw this play out in real time when a DoorDash driver, fleeing ICE agents, ran into a stranger’s home for safety. The homeowner, understandably afraid and trying to protect their baby, asked her to leave.
There was no villain in that moment. Just two people, both scared, both trying to survive, caught in the fallout of a system built on fear.
One feared what might happen if they protected the person and their home.
The other feared what would happen if she was caught outside it.
It’s easy to say what should have happened.
It’s harder to sit with what did, and what it reveals.
Because this is what fear does:
It isolates and confuses. It turns neighbors into strangers.
And when we accept that as normal, we all lose.
We’ve Done This Before
The United States has a long, sordid history of persecuting those it deems less worthy, the poor, the racialized, the disabled, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups.
We did it to Black families during slavery,
ripping children from their parents’ arms,
selling them like livestock,
treating entire communities as property to be owned, beaten, and exploited.
Their labor was stolen. Their bodies controlled, and it was all written into law, enforced with whips, chains, and silence.
We did it to Indigenous peoples,
stealing their land, their languages, and their futures.
We tore children from their families and placed them in boarding schools designed to erase their identity.
We broke every treaty.
We buried entire cultures beneath broken promises and mass graves.
We did it to Japanese Americans during World War II,
citizens born on this soil,
rounded up, locked in camps,
stripped of their rights, their dignity, their homes,
not because of what they did, but because of who they were.
And we are doing it again.
The labels have changed. The language is a bit more polished.
But the pattern is exactly the same:
- Dehumanize a group.
- Strip them of rights.
- Isolate them from public sympathy.
- Disappear them, and normalize it.
ICE vans instead of slave patrols.
Detention centers instead of internment camps.
Immigration holds instead of forced relocations.
We look back on atrocities and ask,
“How could people let that happen?”
The truth is: it didn’t happen all at once.
It never does.
It began with language, people labeled as dangerous, illegal, less than.
Then came laws, quiet, technical, written to target without saying so.
Then the silence, from neighbors, churches, leaders.
Not because they agreed, but because it was easier not to look.
People told themselves it wasn’t about them.
That it would stop before it got worse.
That someone else would speak up.
They mistook distance for innocence,
and by the time they realized what was happening,
it had already become normal.
The answer is always the same:
They thought it didn’t concern them.
They thought their silence kept them safe.
They mistook comfort for innocence,
and looked away until it was too late.
“But Not All Agents Are Bad…”
I’ve heard this so many times:
“Not all ICE agents are bad.”
“Some are just doing their jobs.”
I know and do believe that people are complex.
Some are maybe scared. Some possibly regret it. Some perhaps try to be kind within the limits of their role.
But systems of harm are not sustained by evil people, they’re sustained by ordinary people who stay silent.
They’re sustained by people who say:
- “I’m just following orders.”
- “It’s not my responsibility.”
- “Someone else will speak up.”
That’s how slavery was upheld.
That’s how internment happened.
That’s how genocide is allowed.
“Good intentions” don’t stop harm.
Silence doesn’t neutralize complicity.
Kindness inside a violent machine does not make the machine less violent.
If you are part of a system that disappears people, traumatizes children, and breaks families, and you stay, then yes, you are part of the harm.
Even if you never raise your voice.
Even if you mean well.
Even if you “don’t agree with everything.”
The Lie of Safety
What’s just as dangerous is the lie many people are still clinging to:
“This won’t affect me.”
They say:
- “I’m not undocumented.”
- “I follow the law.”
- “I’m white.”
- “I’m safe.”
But here’s the truth:
No one is safe in a system that normalizes dehumanization.
If your sense of safety depends on someone else being harmed, it’s not safety, it’s privilege. And privilege is fragile.
The same system that deports a neighbor without notice can one day target you.
The same government that can ignore your rights because of your status can later ignore your rights because of your politics, your beliefs, or your body.
This is how it always happens.
People believe that by staying close to power, by staying silent, compliant, distant, they will be protected.
But history never spares the bystanders.
They are simply the next to be disappointed.
We Are All Human
And this is what it comes down to:
We are not separate from one another.
The line between “them” and “us” is imaginary, and the moment we draw it, we lose something of ourselves.
When we allow others to be treated as disposable, we teach the system that any of us can be.
You are not more human because you are white.
You are not more worthy because you have papers.
You are not more deserving because you were born here.
We are all human.
If we forget that, and allow fear, comfort, or silence to define us, then we are not just failing others.
We are also failing ourselves.
Section 4: This Isn’t New , And That’s the Problem
There’s a quote from The Diary of Anne Frank that has stayed with me since I was a child:
“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes… Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
She was 13 when she wrote that. And when I first read those words, I believed they belonged to another time, a past we had learned from. Something we would never allow again.
But today, in this country, in 2026, we are watching the same story play out.
People taken from their homes in the middle of the night.
Children coming home from school to find no one there.
Families separated, sometimes permanently.
Communities forced into silence.
And again, we are told to accept it.
We are told this is legal.
That it’s necessary.
That it’s someone else’s problem.
But this is not new. It never was.
We’ve Done This Before
The United States has a long history of targeting people once they are labeled as “less than.”
We did it to Black families during slavery, children sold away from their parents, entire communities treated as property, with violence and separation written into law.
We did it to Indigenous peoples, taking their land, their languages, and their children. Boarding schools ripped generations apart. Treaties were broken. Cultures were nearly erased.
We did it to Japanese Americans during World War II, citizens locked in camps, stripped of dignity, based not on actions, but ancestry.
And we are doing it again.
The labels have changed. The language is more polished.
But the pattern is exactly the same:
- Dehumanize a group.
- Strip them of rights.
- Isolate them from public sympathy.
- Disappear them, and normalize it.
ICE vans instead of slave patrols.
Detention centers instead of internment camps.
Immigration holds instead of forced relocations.
We look back on past atrocities and say, “How could people let that happen?”
The answer is the same every time:
They thought it wasn’t about them.
They thought their silence made them innocent.
“But Not All Agents Are Bad…”
I’ve heard this so many times:
“Not all ICE agents are bad.”
“Some are just doing their jobs.”
And I do believe that people are complex.
Some are scared. Some regret it. Some try to be kind within the limits of their role.
But systems of harm are not sustained by evil people, they’re sustained by ordinary people who stay silent.
They’re sustained by people who say:
- “I’m just following orders.”
- “It’s not my responsibility.”
- “Someone else will speak up.”
That’s how slavery was upheld.
That’s how internment happened.
That’s how genocide is allowed.
“Good intentions” don’t stop harm, and silence doesn’t neutralize complicity.
Kindness inside a violent machine does not make the machine less violent.
If you are part of a system that disappears people, traumatizes children, and breaks families up, and you stay, then yes, unfortunately, you are part of the harm.
Even if you never raise your voice.
Even if you mean well.
Even if you “don’t agree with everything.”
The Lie of Safety
What’s just as dangerous is the lie many people are still clinging to:
“This won’t affect me.”
They say:
- “I’m not undocumented.”
- “I follow the law.”
- “I’m white.”
- “I’m safe.”
But here’s the truth:
No one is safe in a system that normalizes dehumanization.
If your sense of safety depends on someone else being harmed, it’s not safety, it’s privilege. And privilege is fragile.
The same system that deports a neighbor without notice can one day target you.
The same government that can ignore your rights because of your status can later ignore your rights because of your politics, your beliefs, or your body.
This is how it always happens.
People believe that by staying close to power, by staying silent, compliant, distant, they will be protected.
But history never spares the bystanders.
They are simply the next to be disappointed.
We Are All Human
And this is what it comes down to:
We are not separate from one another.
The line between “them” and “us” is imaginary, and the moment we draw it, we lose something of ourselves.
When we allow others to be treated as disposable, we teach the system that any of us can be.
You are not more human because you are white or because you have more money than most.
You are not more worthy because you have papers.
You are not more deserving just because you were born here.
We are all human.
If we forget that, and we allow fear or comfort or silence to define us, we are not just failing others.
We are failing ourselves.
Another Lie We’ve Been Sold
There’s another argument people keep repeating about all of these people being targeted:
“They’re a drain on society.”
“They’re living off our taxes.”
“They’re scamming the system.”
“They’re taking what doesn’t belong to them.”
And listen, I get it.
Nobody likes corruption.
Nobody likes being lied to.
Nobody likes watching resources get wasted while they’re working hard just to survive.
But let me ask something honestly:
How is any of that new?
Politicians have been stealing from the public forever.
Corporations dodge taxes while working people carry the weight.
The rich hide money offshore while schools go underfunded.
Healthcare is a business. War is a business. Prison is a business.
People with power have always used that power to take more than their share.
So why aren’t they the focus?
Why aren’t we raging at billionaires who don’t pay taxes?
Why aren’t we marching over corporate bailouts?
Why aren’t we losing our minds over politicians who insider-trade while people can’t afford rent?
Because it’s always easier to blame the ones who can’t fight back.
It’s easier to go after people who don’t have lawyers, headlines, or money behind them.
Easier to punish someone who’s already exhausted, already afraid, already told they don’t belong.
It’s the same logic used in abuse:
You don’t pick a fight with someone who can hurt you back.
You pick someone who’s cornered.
You make them feel like the problem.
And you count on everyone else looking away.
Systems work the same way.
They target the poor, the undocumented, the disabled, the racialized, not because they’re the real threat, but because they’re the easiest to isolate, control, and blame.
Because there’s no risk in going after someone no one’s been taught to defend.
It’s not justice.
It’s strategy.
And it’s been working for a long, long time.
This isn’t about taxes or fairness, or about “doing it the right way.”
This is about distraction (ahem, Epstein?) Who’s talking about that lately with all the ramp-up with ICE.
This is about turning working people against other working people so we don’t look up,
They don’t want us to see who’s actually holding the money.
So we don’t see who’s actually writing the laws.
So we don’t see who’s actually benefiting.
When you’re taught to blame immigrants, you stop blaming billionaires.
When you’re taught to fear your neighbor, you stop questioning the system.
When you’re taught that some people are “less,” you stop noticing who is truly above the law.
That’s not accidental.
It’s intentionally designed that way.
Supremacy Always Needs Someone to Step On
Every system built on supremacy needs a group to stand on.
Someone to be “less”, to be blamed, someone to absorb the anger that should be aimed upward.
That’s what white supremacy really is, not just hatred, but hierarchy.
The belief that some people deserve more simply because of who they are and what they have and who they know.
The belief that being closer to power makes you better.
The belief that cruelty is justified if it protects your place in the line.
And here’s the hardest truth:
Most people being manipulated by this system think they’re being protected.
They think they’re being chosen.
They think they’re safe.
But supremacy doesn’t love anyone.
It uses people until it doesn’t need them anymore.
You don’t become free by standing on someone else’s neck.
You just become useful, to the people at the top.
We Are Being Played
They tell us to fight each other while they take everything.
They tell us to fear the poor while they rob the public.
They tell us to hate immigrants while they offshore billions.
They tell us some lives matter less so they never have to answer for what they’ve done.
And too many of us fall for it.
Not because we’re stupid,
But because fear is a powerful tool when so many are already struggling just to survive, provide, and get by.
Because anger is easier than grief and because it’s simpler to blame a face you can see than a system you’ve been trapped inside your whole life.
But none of us are free in a world where some people are disposable.
None of us are safe in a system built on hierarchy.
None of us win when we let ourselves be turned into weapons against each other.
This isn’t about “them.”
This is about all of us.
And the moment we stop letting them divide us,
The moment we remember we are all human,
Is the moment their power starts to crack.
Section 6: The Reckoning, And the Choice
After World War II, the world held its breath as the Nuremberg Trials began.
And one by one, the excuses came.
“I didn’t know.”
“I was just following orders.”
“I had no choice.”
“I didn’t make the rules, I just enforced them.”
But the world didn’t accept those defenses.
Because history had seen this before.
And it knew where it led.
And now, we are living in another moment where people are disappearing not into gas chambers or death camps, but into detention centers and courtrooms, into chains and holding cells and silence.
We are told it’s different. That it’s lawful, orderly and that it’s necessary.
But legality is not morality and systems built on fear always find a way to justify themselves.
Hard Truths and Harder Choices
I know what it means to live in survival mode.
To need a job so badly you take what you can get.
To want safety for your own family, even if it means turning a blind eye to someone else’s pain.
I have been face to face with desperation.
And I have made decisions that still haunt me.
So I do not write this from a pedestal.
I write it as someone who has also had to choose between what’s right and what’s easier, and learned the hard way that every choice leaves a mark.
We tell ourselves stories to survive:
“If I don’t do it, someone else will.”
“I don’t make the rules.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
But intention does not erase impact.
And the truth is: people are hurting right now.
Because of raids. Because of silence. Because of choices, and
because of the systems we uphold, actively or passively, every day.
This Is About All of Us
While some are being targeted more directly, let’s not pretend that the rest of us are truly free.
Because the same system that can erase one person’s rights can erase another’s.
The same system that normalizes cruelty can turn it on anyone.
This is not just about immigration.
It’s not just about ICE.
It’s not even just about racism, though that’s a core part of it.
It’s about power.
And who is willing to hurt others to protect their place inside it.
We are being lied to, not just by politicians or media, but by the idea that staying silent makes us safe.
It doesn’t.
It just makes us next.
This Is Not What God Wanted
I don’t pretend to speak for God.
But I know in my core, heart, and soul.
This is not what God wanted.
Not the cages.
Not the tear gas.
Not the trauma we justify in the name of law, or the silence we excuse in the name of fear.
What God wanted was love.
What God wanted was justice.
What God wanted was mercy.
What God wanted was a world where we see each other as kin, not as threats to be managed, removed, or forgotten.
If we say we believe in love, then love must mean something.
If we say we believe in justice, then justice must apply to everyone.
And if we say we believe in humanity, then it has to start here, with the ones being dehumanized right in front of us.
You Still Have a Choice
Maybe you didn’t know.
Maybe you looked away.
Maybe you didn’t think it was your problem.
But you know now.
And you have a choice.
You can keep protecting your own comfort.
You can keep telling yourself it’s not your fault.
You can keep convincing yourself that legality is the same as justice.
Or
You can choose to stand.
To speak.
To get uncomfortable.
To tell the truth.
To stop protecting systems that would throw any of us away the moment we stop being useful.
When This Chapter Is Written…
Because this chapter will be written.
There will be hearings.
There will be books.
There will be documentaries.
There will be survivors telling their stories.
And people will ask:
“How did they let it happen?”
“Why didn’t they say something?”
“Where were the ones who claimed to care?”
Make sure your answer is this:
“I didn’t stay silent.”
“I saw them as human.”
“I stood with the truth.”
Because in the end, that’s what will matter.
Not how clean your record was, or how nice your intentions were.
But whether you remembered, when it counted most,
We are all human.
And no one is disposable.
A Final Word
Thank you so much for reading.
I’m sorry this was so long.
I honestly couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t stop crying, until I got it out.
What’s going on is not okay.
It’s cruel. It’s horrifying.
And watching it happen, knowing how wrong it is and feeling powerless to stop it, it breaks something in me.
I’ve always been someone who wants to fix things.
To solve problems.
To protect people.
And right now, I don’t know how to fix this.
But I know I can’t be silent about it.
If you made it all the way through this, thank you.
I hope it opened something.
Even if just a little.
Because silence protects no one.
But truth? Truth makes cracks in the dark.
And that’s where light gets in.
A Prayer for the Heavy Hearts
For every person carrying the weight of fear,
For every parent watching the door,
For every child afraid to cry out,
For every neighbor holding grief in their body
and silence in their throat
I am praying for your safety.
For your protection.
For your peace.
I am praying that you find shelter.
That your loved ones are held close.
That your name is remembered, your pain is seen,
and that your story is never erased.
I am praying for courage, not just for you,
but for the world around you,
to finally rise in your defense.
You are not forgotten.
You are not invisible.
You are worthy of love, of freedom, and of peace.
May you be held in light,
and may that light grow stronger every time
we refuse to look away.
With care,
Wendi Kehn
At Helbloom Haven, I offer gentle, intuitive spaces for healing and connection, including:
- Peer support
- Energy healing and intuitive mapping
- Intuitive services and readings
- Poetry, digital downloads, tees, and more
If this piece spoke to you, if it stirred something in your body, your heart, or your memory, I’d be honored to connect. My work is grounded in compassion, and I hold space for people walking through grief, awakening, and the hard truths of being human.
You’re not alone.
You’re not broken.
And your voice matters.
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