ICE

The Real Trauma of Trump 2.0

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

From The Blazak Report, August 11, 2025.

NOTE: This piece was originally provided to paid subscribers to The Blazak Report on Substack.

August 11, 2025

Unpacking the impact of traumatic events on our brains is an adolescent science. We’re just beginning to understand the ways acute and chronic trauma affects how the parts of the brain work. Much of what we do know is because of the courageous sharing of war veterans. This journey of understanding is detailed in the highly readable book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by V.A. doctor Bessel van der Kolk. But the short version is that trauma can freeze the brain in the fight/flight/freeze mode. Our amygdala hijacks our prefrontal cortex and we are forever on the battlefield.

Fortunately, we’ve also learned that people can heal their deepest traumas. Once PTSD officially became a diagnosis in 1980, treatment plans followed. But the hard truth remains that it is next to impossible for trauma to heal when there are new attacks coming in. An open wound will never heal when it is constantly being picked at. And that brings us to the trauma of Trump.

So much of our nation’s history has been a piss-poor attempt to heal the scars of the past. The Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020 was a desperate plea to heal the racial wounding by American police. We clearly diagnosed the problem and began implementing treatment in the form of meaningful reforms and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion as American values. And then in 2025, it went all off the rails.

Donald Trump is the abusive husband, standing at the door, threatening his immigrant wife with violence if she leaves. Or if she stays.

There are so many groups who are suffering residual trauma from Trump 2.0.

First women. Trump’s Supreme Court rolled back women’s reproductive rights in his first term. While out of office he had to face a jury of his peers for one of his many sexual assaults and America still elected the “Grab ‘em by the pussy” rapist. His war on women has only ramped up in his second term, shored up by a cast of misogynists, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who belongs to a church that thinks women should not have the right to vote. The gang of Epstein pedophiles roams free, protected by the GOP. How can girls and women feel safe knowing the federal government has been taken over by incels?

Next immigrants. So much for the pledge for Trump just going after the “worst of the worst.” Children with cancer, nursing mothers, and any brown person within ICE’s reach has been grabbed by masked goons and sent to disgusting internment camps or Central American gulags. Legal residents, asylum seekers, dreamers, veterans, and, yes, citizens have been caught up in ICE’s “one-shade-of-not-white fits all” mass deportation plan, as Stephen Miller screams for more. The anxiety of my students, some DACA, some from mixed-status families, some just Hispanic, is palpable. Many immigrants are refugees from violent police states like El Salvador and Syria, carrying massive trauma loads of their own, hoping to find peace and safety in the United States. And now masked men with guns are smashing their car windows and ripping them away from their families.

Veterans are also on this list. We got the memo after the Vietnam War that we need to take better care of our veterans, recognizing the scars of service run deep and long. What was derided as “shell shock,” is now viewed as the very real journey of living with PTSD. Tom Cruise movies aside, we had a national call for healing in a rare example of bipartisanship. Right or left, we all agree that we need to do everything possible to support our veterans. Since January, the cuts by Pvt. Bonespurs and his fellow civilian Elon Musk have devastated struggling vets. They include $30 billion from disability benefits and $1.6 trillion in health care cuts for vets over the next ten years. Most recently, Trump is denying early retirement for transgender members of the Air Force. Why? Because he can. It should be noted that not a single member of the Trump family has served in the military. Not one. He has referred to them as “suckers and losers.” Their wound has been ripped back open by a rich brat from Queens.

We could go on and on. Trans people because of his childish “there are only two genders” executive orders. Native Americans because of his war on tribal sovereignty. Protestors because MAGA officials have promised to use lethal force against them and “put them in trauma.” And all queer people and people of color because of his undoing of decades of progress by ending federally funded DEI programs. And there are so many more. I have a Latina green card holder in my life and she recently told me that she “low grade hates white people” because they are completely oblivious to the stress she must endure every waking hour living in Trump’s America. I totally get it. I mean, wouldn’t you?

Trump and his MAGA masters are driving America into a new Dark Ages. The last Dark Ages was centuries of the most brutal torture. More than princes and princesses, it was random drawing and quartering. The amount of new trauma that’s coming our way while Trump and his goons golf on New Epstein Island may not be survivable. And that’s their goal, because the traumatized are less likely to fight back.

That’s why we have to fight now.

What Do We Do When the Violence Comes?

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

From The Blazak Report on Substack July 10, 2025

If we’re using history as our guide, we know it’s coming. The state sponsored violence against citizens. It’s already here at the hands of ICE and the violence against women’s body’s in the restriction of reproductive rights. But we can expect more waves of escalation. An ICE abduction that goes sideways when they try to kidnap an armed individual who does not want to be deported to some third country gulag. Protestors shot by National Guard who are unsure of their engagement orders, brains in fight or flight mode. The attempted arrest of Trump’s political prisoners who stand up to the weaponization of federal police. Critics of the regime who end up dead as is common in Putin’s Russia. We are a powder keg nation, one Kent State away from exploding. And that may be exactly what Trump wants.

Trump loves to cosplay strongman. He’s already sent the Marines to Los Angelos. He’s hellbent on turning America into one of those “shithole countries” he shit talks about. The slightest escalation could cause him to bring the hammer down so he can prove he’s an “alpha.” Then he has his pretext for suspending elections and cementing his police state rule. History has told this story before.

So how do we respond to the worst provocations of state violence?

The right has long argued for the need of a second American revolution against the multicultural liberal democracy that has sought to dethrone straight cis WASP men. (Can we start using SCWASPM, or is that too much?) The left is now quoting founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Hidden among the peaceful protestors have been anarchists holstering side pieces. Is this the preamble to civil war?

I will admit the thought has crossed my mind. As someone who has had some weapons training, arming up for the coming shit show has been considered. But then I realize that’s a Hollywood fantasy of me protecting my family from Proud Boys and federal forces with an unlimited supply of ammo and slow mo John Rambo rage. It looks super cool in my head.

There will be blood. And there will be calls of retribution.

But, again, if history is our guide, we know that non-violence is the path. This isn’t the 18th century. For the last hundred years the model for the restoration of democracy has been built on mass uprisings that used peaceful means. They don’t always work. I’ll never forget watching the carnage in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But sometimes it has. (I also remember watching The Philippines and the People Power Revolution of 1986.) There will be casualties and it’s going to be heartbreaking. But the dictates of civil disobedience requires us to throw our bodies upon the wheel. Those deaths will be the seeds of a rebirth of democracy in the United States and their names will be cherished.

This moment, this terrifying moment in this terrifying history, could use a singular voice. We need an MLK or a Václav Havel to constantly remind us that the peaceful path is the most effective. To help us to channel our rage. An army of left-wing Timmothy McVeigh’s will not bring us the revolution we need. We can storm the ICE Bastille to liberate the prisoners of Trump’s race war. Or we can use our moral authority to transform those jailers to join us in the great experiment of democracy. In the absence of our Dr. King, we will have to be that singular voice.

We must hold the line and not become them. We’ve got the numbers and the moral arc.

On the question of violence

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

June 21, 2025 (Originally published in The Blazak Report)

There are times when I see the logic of violence. If an ICE agent was trying to abduct a loved one and I was armed, I can imagine my lizard brain telling me to do whatever it takes to save that person from being disappeared from view. This country was founded in violence. Violence was used to free us from tyranny 250 years ago. And violent protest has occasionally played a role in making America great. The role of riots after MLK’s assassination played in the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 is an easy example.

But America is plagued by the dark side of political violence. The deadly shootings in Minnesota by a Trump supporter is only a recent example. And the death at the No Kings rally in Utah was the result of a protest “peacekeeper” trying to stop a man with a gun but shooting a fellow protestor by accident. The narrative of “civil war” has never felt closer

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I’ve had many people ask if I have a gun or urge me to get a gun. I’ve comfortable with guns but I have a kid in the house, so that changes things. I want through the FBI Citizens Academy and got some good firearm training, but who exactly would I be shooting? When I see ICE agents brandishing weapons or heavily armed Marines in the streets of Los Angeles, I wonder who are they planning on killing. Every gunshot fired is fired with the intent to kill. Nobody shoots a gun just to scare people.

All this is to say, that while the pressure for violence seems to be ramping up, nonviolence is still our path. Even famous pacifist John Lennon said he would use violence to protect his family, but America is not there yet. We still have a clear ethic of doing this with non-violent civil disobedience. I’ve certainly had violent thoughts in this moment. Seeing the hell being levied on our communities by Gestapo-like ICE raids led me to wonder if we could protect those people by just burning all the ICE offices down to the ground. But ultimately people would be hurt or killed and then we’re worse off than we were before. We can do this without fire.

Growing up in the shadow of MLK in Atlanta led me to study Gandhi’s tactics more closely. We take the moral high ground when we throw our bodies against the wheel of death. And, as was the case in India, some of our bodies may be crushed. It seems inevitable that in the clash between protestors and Trump’s federalized goons there will be protestors killed. We could have Kent State on a weekly basis. And Trump will say they hated America and we will make them martyrs, but they will be dead either way. And then there will be those on our side to call for violence as a form of protection. It’s the old MLK vs. Malcolm X dynamic.

I’ve assigned Malcom X to my students for decades, because I want them to know where that “violence as self defense” impetus comes from. I get it. If Marine tanks roll into Portland, there’s going to be a cash course in Molotov cocktails in the Rose City, I’ve already posted the Doors lyric, “They got the guns, but we got the numbers.” You can feel the tension rising. But Mel Gibson fantasies aside, what does that actually get us?

It should be perfectly clear that Donald Trump is a madman. A senile, syphilitic madman. He’s willingness to jump into to the Israel-Iran war should be proof enough. Hundreds of protestors dead as Kristi Noem “liberates” the supposed “socialist” cities on the West Coast would be a trumpeted as a MAGA victory. And then we are in a civil war. We must maintain the moral high ground.

So there are two strategies here that must be kept up in the planning of all actions.

First is the value of peaceful resistance. Things are going to get ugly. Rumors of DHS deputizing Proud Boys and bounty hunters may turn out to be true. They will try to provoke a violent response so they can bring the hammer down, even employing agent provocateurs, so they can claim, “Antifa fired the first shot!” We must resist the impulse to hit back. Non-violent monkey wrenching can take many forms, from human barricades blocking ICE vans to (and this was a YIPPIE trick from the 1960s) loosening the lug nuts on the tires of said vans.

Secondly, these Marines, police, National Guard, and even ICE agents are Americans. They swore an oath to the Constitution, not to Stephen Miller or the Mango Mussolini. We have to encourage them to lay down their arms and walk away from this fascist abuse of the legitimate work they are bounded, by law not Trump, to do. We have to start diffusing the tools of authoritarianism by taking way their cudgel.

June 14 saw 5 to 13 million Americans in the street (depending on your sources). The people are sick of what this madman is doing. Yeah, they got the guns. But we got the numbers and that should be enough.

Note: I’m currently in LA to check on things. I was at the ICE detention center downtown where a half a dozen armed National Guardsmen stood watch, fingers on triggers.

Escaping Gilead – My experience crossing the border

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

May 21, 2025

Ever since January 20th, when Trump pretended to take the oath of office, things in America have felt really dark. From people being grabbed off the street by ICE and disappearing from public view without due process to the rise and fake fall of Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, it’s felt very end of a nation-ish. This includes rumors about changes at the border.

Here in Portland, it’s about a four-and-a-half our drive to the Canadian border. I’ve made the crossing many times. Last time was in December when Cozy and I drove up to Vancouver for the Taylor Swift concert. The crossing was a blast with carloads of Swifties shouting to each other and Canadian border guards the recipients of countless friendship bracelets. It’s so nice having another country just up the road a piece.

So I decided to make a run for the border.

After Andi picked up Cozy yesterday, I hopped on I-5 to make that long journey north; Olympia, Seattle, Bellingham, to the Peace Arch crossing about 10 pm last night. Late on a Tuesday, the usual border traffic jam was gone, but there was something new this time.

On the American side of the Peace Arch, there was a red traffic light and a barricade pushing cars into one lane. Up ahead I saw two armed men talking to a driver. When they finished, I was waved me forward. Two men in black military gear and long rifles stopped me. I searched for any identifying organization; border patrol, ICE, HSI, FBI. Nothing. I could have asked. I could have said, “Hey fellas, I’m on a DHS CP3 project. Who are you with?” But the rifles just shut me up.

It was a brief interaction. One of the men asked me to role down all my windows so he could look in the car. It was clear they were looking for people, not contraband. I have no idea who they were. To tall white guys straight out of central casting. I assumed that if I wasn’t a white male, the stop would have been longer, but they sent me forward where I showed my passport to the border guard and headed into our great neighbor to the north.

I didn’t go all the way to Vancouver. I booked a “pod” just south of the city in Richmond because I saw a program about Japanese pod hotels and it seemed like a fun way to crash for the night before turning around and heading back the U.S.A. in the morning. If you ever wondered what sleeping in a coffin would be like, this was it. But the coffin had wifi, so I got an Instagram post up about the experience. Actually, it reminded me of sleeping on the tour bus back in my road manager days, so I slept well.

This morning, after breakfast at IHOP (it truly IS international!), I headed south. There had been a lot of talk that entering the US would be the real problem. That I would be made to swear loyalty to the Mango Mussolini or would they search my phone and look at my social media footprint where I daily proclaim the emperor has no clothes. One wrong thoughtcrime and I would go from Canada to El Salvador.

There were only two lanes open at Peace Arch so I had time to watch and get nervous. It was obvious that the guards were taking their time, especially with Canadian cars. When is was my turn, I got the 20 questions, about what I did in Canada, who I met in Canada, what I bought in Canada. I know that most of these questions are meaningless and just meant to give the guard a chance to evaluate your demeanor. He took my keys and opened up the back of my car. He said, “Where are all your clothes? Your backpack’s empty.” I wanted to say, “That’s my brother’s backpack. He’s dead.” But, for some reason, I said, “I left them in Seattle.” Again, my white maleness played a role, I’m sure. I was allowed to enter my country and head home to pick up my kid.

The whole thing was weird. Why are there armed guards before you get to the Canadian border guards? What are they asking Canadians coming into the U.S.? Last night, it felt like they are trying to stop people from escaping  the United States, not escape into it, like a scene from The Handmaid’s Tale. I can’t change my skin tone to repeat the experiment, but the joy of international travel by car is now tense and scary. Part of me wonders if I should have just stayed in my pod.

Donald Trump’s Uncivil War on American Values and Human Decency

~ Randy Blazak ~ 10 Comments

January 30, 2017

There’s been so much to write about in this new year, but last Friday’s immigration ban from Donald Trump was a call to arms to everyone in this country (and across the globe) who cares about the core values of American freedom and decency. Fortunately, thousands of Americans quickly flooded airports across the country to protest the ban and defend those trying to legally enter the country. Within twelve hours of Trump’s executive order, five federal judges (four who were female) struck down the provisions that detained individuals and families (including children) in several American airports. Many people are still stuck in limbo, but the pressure is on the goon squads.

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When he was on the campaign trail, I wrote more than one piece about how Trump represents a slippery slope toward fascism. A lot of mainstream folks poo pooed the seemingly alarmist concern. After he won the electoral college, his cabinet appointments, a motley crew of seemingly incompetent millionaires and Wall Street billionaires, began to worry voters. What does it mean when Rick Perry is the most shovel-ready guy in the room? And a waiver to have a non-civilian run the Department of Defense was certainly cause for concern. Then his dark inauguration address, where he painted a bleak picture of a ruined nation (actually in a bright economic recovery) brought a chill to all but the most gung-ho Trumpists. His “America first” refrain brought to mind for many another nationalist in Europe about 84 years ago. The silver lining was that Trump was coming in to record low approval ratings. The tide was already turning against him.

Friday’s executive order stopped cold immigration to the US from seven Muslim nations where no terrorists have actually come from. It excluded all the nations the 9/11 attackers came from (like Saudi Arabia and Egypt) and where Trump has significant business dealings. This meant that Syrian families escaping the hell in Aleppo are to be turned back, much like how we turned away Jews fleeing Hitler in the 1930s. Is this who we are as a nation?

That question is important.

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One of the people detained at JFK Airport (in handcuffs) was an Iraqi named Hameed Khalid Darweesh. He worked for the US government in Iraq for ten years as a translator at great risk to himself and his family. He was promised that for this sacrifice he would be granted a visa to emigrate to the United States. That was before Donald Trump arrived and killed all those agreements with our allies in the Muslim world. He reneged on America’s deal with Darweesh like he’s reneged on so many deals he’s made in the business world. But this betrayal has global impacts. Who in the Middle East will want to work with us now? (Is Trump for Russia and ISIS?) I think of the great shame America carries for all its broken treaties with Native Americans. How will history rank the shame we will inherit from the Trump Administration? Is this who we are as a nation?

It’s clear that the grown-ups have been kicked out of the White House. This executive order was probably the work of alt-right guru Steve Bannon and not any sane people in the State Department. Trump’s dismantling of the National Security Council was labeled as “stone cold crazy” by former National Security Advisor Susan Rice. His promotion of torture as an effective way to fight terrorism (when all evidence shows the contrary) rattled even his hand-picked generals. Besides the fact that all of this makes us less safe, is this who we are as a nation? This chaos?

The seeds of Civil War II

Just like Brits who regretted Brexit immediately after voting for it, there are scores of Americans who have had second thoughts about their vote for this madman. They were there with the millions who participated in the Women’s March and they were also some in the airports Saturday night demanding the release of immigrants who had followed all the rules. The civil rights movement was greatly energized by whites marching arm in arm with blacks in the 1960s. The anti-Trump movement to restore America is going to require conservatives joining progressives to try to make America great again. We will need our Republican brothers and sisters in this struggle.

The danger is in the fact-free environment that Trump and his alt-right cronies have fostered. There’s a certain chunk of the population that is easily manipulated by pressing a few racist buttons. They were the chumps that thought President Obama wasn’t legitimately American because Trump said so and they are the chumps that think crime by “illegal aliens” is a significant threat, despite the actual facts. Trump has said that he will publish a weekly list of crimes by “aliens” (which would include legal resident aliens, like my wife), stoking the fear mongering, negating the legitimate fact that most offenses in this country are committed by white male citizens. Facts don’t matter when fear of “the other” rules the day. This how fascism works.

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As more Americans come out to defy the unconstitutional and unAmerican actions of Donald Trump, how will his loyal cult respond to the assault on their Dear Leader’s campaign to remake America in his image? The great hope is that we can convince them that he is bat-shit crazy and a danger to the core values all of us share, even the guy who only listens to Lee Greenwood records. But there are a bunch of Trumpies that are even more bat-shit crazy than our celebrity president and they have a lot of guns. They live in Trump’s land of wacky conspiracy theories and think “real America” is closer to the empty wilderness of Wyoming than the world millions of citizens on the east and west coasts live in. And they are ready to fight with God and his orange son on their side.

Trump has divided this country in a way that makes national unity now seem like a far off dream. All he needs is one terrorist attack (real or contrived) or one heinous crime by an immigrant (real or contrived) to take the next step in his clampdown. He’s already floated the idea of immigrants turning over their social media accounts to the Feds, as well as just “closing up” the internet. No wonder Amazon has sold out of George Orwell’s 1984. We are living in a dystopia.

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The demagoguery has proven Trump cares more about his ego than the survival of the nation. From his obsession with the crowd size at his coronation to his inability to get off of unsecured communication platforms like Twitter (Does anybody remember Hillary’s emails?) and now to this gift-wrapped present he just handed ISIS, it’s clear he could give a rat’s ass about national security. Let’s just hope the NSA was smart enough to give him fake launch codes for our nuclear arsenal. Trump is rapist Alex in A Clockwork Orange who will lead his moronic droogs into a war against the rest of us just to prove his hands aren’t that small.

It gets personal

This is just beginning. Out of this weekend’s chaos came the message that people from these seven Muslim nations with green cards shouldn’t expect to be admitted back into the country if they leave. That means, if your mother in Somalia is sick, you can’t visit her because the Trump kakistocracy thinks you might be a terrorist instead of a concerned child. And if you are student from Iran studying at an American university, you better hide in your dorm room for the next four years. (Again, no terrorist attacks in the United States have been committed by anybody from these countries.) Trump has stated his list of seven countries could be widened and what nation does he hold the most disdain for? Mexico.

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There are over one million lawful permanent residents in the US, known as green card holders, and 13% are from Mexico. That includes my wife who got her green card in 2010. We enjoy our trips to Mexico to see her family and immerse our daughter in her Latin heritage. I also teach a summer college course on a beautiful Mexican island each summer. If Trump widens his enemy nation list, that could all change. It’s already changing.

Reports are coming in of plainclothes ICE agents lurking in court houses looking for any potential “illegal” they can detain. Across America, immigrant communities from Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya are in lockdown, off the streets, for fear that Trump’s gestapo will come knocking; afraid to leave the house, let alone the country. Many of these people went through the absolute extreme of human suffering to find sanctuary here in the land of the free. Additionally, Latino immigrants are now being told by bosses not to complain about working conditions or pay or be reported to ICE. Middle-eastern immigrant kids are being told by bullies (and some teachers) that their parents are terrorists and are going to be kicked out of the country. Trump’s crackdown on “sanctuary cities” has already violated the 10th Amendment (see Printz v. United States, 1997), but the wave of fear will have countless casualties before the issue is re-argued before his stacked Supreme Court. This is not America.

The good news is the freedom-loving world has condemned Trump’s fascistic chaos. The images of refugee children dying to escape actual carnage (not Congressman John Lewis’s wonderful 5th district in Atlanta) are forever burned in our memories. Real American Christians are strong in the opposition along with every other demographic who wants to stand up to this insanity, this anti-American obscenity. Unfortunately, this call to the defense of basic human decency is happening as his cult rips the country into bits. Is this who we are as a nation?

Americans cannot wait until this lunatic destroys our great nation. He must be condemned and removed now. For the sake of all that is sacred to us.

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Mr. Trump, kiss my anchor baby.

~ Randy Blazak ~ 9 Comments

September 25, 2015

Since the traffic to my blog this week has increased by 8321.6% (true), I feel obligated to lob another brain grenade at America’s favorite gameshow host and his intellectually challenged followers. Hundreds of thousands of folks have been kind enough to read and share the previous Trump essays, “Donald Trump is the new face of white supremacy” and “Trump Part 2 – This is what fascism looks like,” so I thought I’d tackle another issue related to Trump and my family. And I figure I shouldn’t wait because it seems like the Trump bubble is starting to deflate. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking by myself and pathological liar Carly Fiorina.

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I’m not going to go after his great lack any specific policies. All we know is that, whatever the issue, he has people (Can we meet them?) looking into it and that he’s going to hire (Does he mean appoint, subject to Congressional confirmation?) amazing people and that he’s going to fix the problem so fast your head is gonna spin. It reminds me of when I ran for President of Student Council in seventh grade. I had no platform, just the slogan, “Randy B. for presidency! Make Woodridge Elementary great again!”

And this post is not about his pseudo-fascist claim that he is going to round up 11 million undocumented people on his first day in office. He hasn’t explained how he’s going to do this but I have a suspicion he’s been watching Schindler’s List for ideas. Welcome to the Trump police state. Any man, woman and child who looks “illegal” gets tossed over the Texas fence. (Don’t worry illegal Russians, you’re safe.) He also hasn’t said who is going to do all the work those 11 million undocumented folks do, whether it’s working in strawberry fields or in his hotels. (The answer is his plan would destroy the American economy and it just ain’t gonna happen as much as Trumpie racists wish it would.)

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This post is about Trump’s obsession with anchor babies. And not his bizarre belief that he can magically change the Constitution to rewrite the 14th Amendment. (He claims he has “many scholars” that agree with him. Wrong.) It’s about this repeated refrain that people come to America just to have babies and then “we have to spend the next 80 years taking care of them.” It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, but his sub-moronic hat-wearing base loves it. (Hey, those hats are only $23.95 and may or may not be made in China or Mexico.)

I’ll start with a story. I was in a Jiffy Lube in Metairie, Louisiana a few years ago, on my way to Atlanta. The Prius needed an oil change and I was stuck in the waiting area with a couple of good ol’ boys (AKA white gentlemen). Since I was white, they started in on the racist crap, complaining about how Obama was letting in all these “illegals.” I pointed out that illegal immigration has actually decreased under Obama and deportations have increased. I got a look like, who is this fact-talking stranger? Then their fallback position was, “Well, they live here and don’t pay no taxes.” To which I said, “You’ve got sales tax in this state, right?” They nodded. “Then every time they buy something, they pay taxes. You’ve got property tax in this state, right?” They nodded. “Then every time they pay rent, they pay taxes.” The good old boys then started talking about the weather. You gotta shut this bullshit down every time.

The truth is that undocumented immigrants pay all sorts of taxes, including income tax. If you are working on a fake Social Security number, you are paying into a fund you will never be able to withdraw from. These funds go to what the Social Security Administration calls the “suspense file,” and you old white Conservatives should thank those “illegals,” because they are helping to keep SSI afloat. A study released this year by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants paid more than $11.8 billion in state and local taxes last year. And that doesn’t even include fees and federal taxes. But the “I’m not a racist but…” crowd that rallies around Trump can’t be bothered with facts and figures. Brown people are ripping them off! Off with their heads!

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What Trump and his rabid flock deny is that every immigrant, undocumented and otherwise, has a personal story to tell. I’ve written about the families that come to America to provide for their children, not traffic drugs. Some, like my wife, walked across the border in the middle of the night. Even more arrived on airplanes with visas and stayed after their visa expired. (Trump’s fantasy wall won’t help there.) The Donald’s racist comments about them have brought these people to the front of the American story. (And if you don’t understand how racist those comments are, you are also racist. But there’s help for you, I promise.) These “killers and rapists” have started to tell their stories. And their children have started to tell their stories. They are not a burden on you “legal” Americans. They are making this country strong and profitable. Most are doing the work you whiners won’t do, for pay and in conditions you never would accept. They are working twice as hard as you and getting less for it. Sometimes nothing at all. (Just Google: Wage theft.) There are millions of stories, like the one 28-year-old Adriana Almanza went on YouTube to tell. Here’s your anchor baby and you and your demographic don’t have to “take care of” her. She will take care of you.

My wife and child are on Trump’s hit list but they are not a drain on your pocketbook. Trump’s corporate welfare friends in the finance industry are, but I promise you my Mexican family is not. My “illegal” wife worked hard to earn a green card and through her I have met many other hard working people who do not yet have papers and live in fear of deportation by Obama’s ICE. Trump would deport them all on “Day 1,” but they are more important to the health of this great country than he is. Our daughter, who Trump might call an “anchor baby,” is an American citizen because she was born here. I am willing to wager that Trump’s children got more unearned handouts than she ever will.

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The reality is that Republicans (including many of my family and Facebook friends) are scared shitless that America is changing in a way that looks less like them and more like my bi-racial daughter. They want to scapegoat an easy target the way that desperate dominant groups have always done when they feel their dominance slipping a tiny bit. The want to “restore” America to an imagined time when straight white males were the unchallenged authority. Sorry, old white guys, you can ride that sinking ship to the bottom of the ocean or join us at the fiesta. The stories of our immigrant friends prove the American dream is alive and well, pero el futuro es cafe.

Cozy41weeks

And just to be clear, I am not writing this as a PhD in sociology who has studied racism for over 25 years. This is not a policy blog. I am a father and husband who is angry and sad that his family has been devalued and dehumanized by a loud minority of Americans (not a “silent majority”) who are too ignorant and/or fearful to understand that this is a nation of immigrants and that’s what makes us great. We don’t need Donald Trump or his xenophobic mob to drag us into the past.

And if you are a Trump fan, just watch this music video to see the human side that Trump’s ignorant rhetoric covers up. Maybe it will reach your corazon.