There aren’t any other words to describe the humanitarian consequences of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign launched after he took over the Oval office in January 2025.
It is terrorism legitimated by a country in the grips of a fascistic mindset: At all costs seeking to rule through total government control by a dictator imposing an extreme nationalism, envisioned by Mr. Trump as white supremacist. And of course doing so with a personal army (ICE cops) who are daily using militarized, secretive and violent conduct to destroy the basic American principle of individual rights.
This last May I delivered a talk at a meeting of a local Rotary Club, representing this public education non-profit, and titling it ICE Kidnappings and the New York Stock Exchange. My goal was to highlight the link between Trump’s architecture of inhumanity and violence against innocent workers and families, and the billions of dollars being earned by investors in companies like GeoGroup and CoreCivic. Boosted by sweet deals these mega corporations make with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, these private prison companies are well funded for the post-arrest detention of non-citizen residents and workers, most without any record of criminal conduct. Who are they? Persons who were working and racially profiled with a stamp of approval by the Supreme Court. People like your neighbor down the street, your baby’s nanny, or the man who cuts grass and blows leaves, or the person who wipes down your sedan at the car wash, or the kitchen staff in your favorite diner, or one of the crew installing roofs in your neighborhood or working on that construction site you often drive by.
Failure to normalize one’s immigration status is not a crime. But as Dr. Aviva Chomsky argues in her classic study Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, not being a citizen, being a person of color from another country even with legal refugee status, is now deemed a crime by Mr. Trump and his enablers of this system of injustice.
The most disturbing aspect of Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign of terrorism and violence, is the loss of innocent lives of persons arrested and detained. In 2025 there were at least 35 deaths attributed to the madness of the anti-immigrant campaign of persons arrested, and detained in either a government or private facility managed and operated by a private prison company whose shares are available to investors and their brokers.
As of today the number of deaths of innocent people in ICE custody is reaching 30 according to research findings.
Overwhelmed is the feeling accompanied by this information. So dear reader, consider the words on responsibility below, if you are overwhelmed by knowing that people’s lives are being destroyed by this government’s attack on non-citizen immigrants and refugees.
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the word’s grief.
Do justly now.
Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now.
You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” (Pirkei Avot 2:16)
Elvia Arriola, Board Member and Founder of Women on the Border.