Hispanic Fanatic

As I’ve mentioned, I lived in the great city of Minneapolis for seven years. During my time there, I became friends with a guy I will call Jordan. I’m not using his real name for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Jordan and I spent a lot of time together, sipping our Surly Furious beers, pondering if winter would ever end, and being all open-minded and tolerant of others. You know — radical insurgent stuff.

In any case, Jordan recently texted me about what’s happening in Minneapolis, a city where heavily armed thugs are assaulting people, stomping on the Constitution, and unleashing terror on a populace best known for politeness.

With his permission, I am excerpting some of Jordan’s texts here:

This is simple retribution and punishment against the people of MN for not falling in line and helping this asshole become a king. It’s clear anyone undocumented is scared, but I know a scientist with a green card who is scared to leave her home. I’ve got work colleagues who are US citizens scared shitless and not coming into work. It’s literally affecting everyone. The damage they are doing here is absolutely crazy. They are not following laws and intentionally roughing people up.no matter what you’re doing.

They are here to send a message. Detain people for hours and release them without charges. Smashing car windows when people don’t move fast enough. They’re on the freeway pulling people over. Schools are in chaos. 

Restaurants are closed due to fear of staffing and customer safety. Because if ICE shows up, they mess with everybody no matter who you are. They rammed into a guy’s car because they said he was not a citizen but then drove away, leaving him with a damaged car. It’s all tactics to put the fear into everyone that anyone at any time can be harmed, detained, or have property damaged.

Also, we’ve got right-wing extremists calling in pipe bomb threats at Hennepin County buildings. ICE doesn’t care. 

One good and sad story is that a Mexican restaurant had workers too scared to come in, so the owner asked for volunteers to cook in the kitchen before all the food spoiled to make for their workers, and over 100 people signed up, and they had to turn away volunteers. 

I don’t know, we’re sad, we’re angry and we’re scared.

Yes, it’s a lot to take in.

Also, Jordan is probably pissed at me because he’s a Vikings fan, and the pseudonym I choose for him is inspired by Jordan Love, the Green Bay Packers quarterback. Ha, that was a good one.

Sports rivalries aside, I want Jordan to know that we support Minneapolis — and by “we” I mean the majority of Americans who are aghast at the Gestapo-lite marching through uptown. 

The city is taking a hit on behalf of the entire country right now, and for their perseverance, we own them our gratitude and respect.

I haven’t said much about Venezuela because I’ve been busy processing the fact that armed government militias are shooting women in the face and getting away with it. And when I’m not dwelling on that grotesquerie, I’m obsessing about the fact that millions of Americans are ok with this development, actively support it in many cases, and insist that a country where governmentalized thugs can murder people who disrespect them is just fine.

Yeah, it’s a lot to ponder.

In any case, the US invaded Venezuela a couple of weeks ago.

This was to stop the flow of drugs, or seize the oil, or end repression, or.. well, who even knows anymore? Certainly not the guy who authorized the incursion. 

Hell, just “a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country ‘uninvestable,’ undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention.”

This shifting of reasons and mess of contradictions was not enough to dissuade an acquaintance of mine, a Latino conservative who plastered my social media with proclamations of how great it was that we bombed Venezuela and captured Maduro.

This acquaintance ended his rhapsodizing with the declaration “I hope we take care of Cuba next.”

I’ve said it before: There is never enough warfare for conservatives.

I wonder if people like this remember the Iraq War, where we overthrew a vicious dictator and then were shocked when the people of that country were not grateful. We were even more surprised when we discovered that rebuilding a country is not as easy as eliminating a second-rate despot.

Even more relevant, I wonder if they know anything about US military intervention in Latin America, which has almost always culminated in violence, death, and suffering for the inhabitants, and never freedom and easy living for the nation we invaded.

Why do they clamor for more of the same, insisting that this time, under the auspices of a volatile ignoramus, it will be different?

Perhaps they would like to know that repression in Venezuela has actually intensified since we kidnapped Maduro, and there is no indication that life will be better for anyone any place where US troops are active.

And speaking of Maduro and how it relates to ICE thugs shooting people in American streets, keep in mind that the “worst thing that Maduro did is just what Trump is beginning to do: killing civilians and blaming them for their own deaths.”

Conservative who agree with Trump that mocking federal officials is grounds for immediate execution should note that the Maduro regime “claimed that the people they murdered were resisting government authority, and that the men who pulled the trigger had been provoked by those whom they murdered.”

Yes, we can either believe our own eyes and intuition, or we can embrace the “conspiracy story that Trump and his advisors are telling: that all evil has to do with immigrants and drugs, and that everyone who wants democracy and human rights in the United States is somehow part of a giant invisible immigration/drug/antifa conspiracy directed from abroad.”

Your call.

I had hoped that my first post of 2026 would be full of joy and chockablock with optimism.

Yeah, not so much.

What should we focus on first? How about the fact that ICE thugs are now shooting people in the face for not complying with their shrieked, random, contradictory orders fast enough? Or that the government demands that we reject evidence we see with our own eyes? Or that poorly trained neo-fascists have proven that they are willing to murder white women in broad daylight, so we can just imagine what they are capable of when they drag Latino men off to some dark cell?

Well, we can address all of that, plus the fact that even under the most extreme version of devil’s advocate, the trigger-happy ICE goon in Minneapolis was reckless and incompetent, and more likely guilty of at least manslaughter, if not outright murder.

Keep in mind that the gunfire in Minneapolis, a city I lived in for seven years, is not some stray occurrence or freak accident. Rather it is “the logical result of Trumpism and MAGA extremism, both in theory and in practice” because “a fatal encounter was all but inevitable” once you unleash armed hoodlums under the auspices of authority who serve no purpose other than to terrorize and provoke.

And the guy who Republicans insist will unite this nation is displaying an “indifference to facts, to due process, to the dignity of the deceased, and to basic human decency” that is beyond grotesque. The White House has made “ostentatiously dishonest statements that they knew would be contradicted by the video evidence available to anyone with eyes to see it,” proving once more that the “federal government now speaks with the voice of the right-wing smear machine: partisan, dishonest, and devoted to vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public.” 

And all this has happened in the first week of what will likely be another miserable year.

But wait, I haven’t even gotten to the invasion of Venezuela yet. I suppose that will have to wait until next week’s post… unless something even more horrific happens before then, which let’s face it, is always possible.

Damn, this is an abysmal start to 2026.

Whenever you hear someone brush off the existential crisis that this administration is inflicting on America with the words “It’s just politics” (or variations on this phrase), you are dealing with someone who feels they are immune. And to fair, most of the people who say this are unlikely to be grabbed on the street by masked thugs and whisked off to an impoverished country.

These people are usually white.

I had a friend inform me that I had no need to be concerned about ICE raids here in Los Angeles because I am obviously not a member of MS-13, so I would not be detained.

What a relief that was!

Granted, when I recently attended a Dodgers post-season game, a different friend asked if I was concerned about being swooped up and thrown into the back of an unmarked van. I told him that, yeah, it had crossed my mind, but the odds were in my favor with 50,000 people (half them Latino) surrounding me.

This second friend was closer to the truth of my situation, because obviously, this is not a great time to be brown in America.

You see, our pals at the most pliable U.S. Supreme Court in history have “allowed the Trump administration to use racial profiling in its militarized immigration raids.” The conservative justices have “effectively compelled all Latinos ‘to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely’ at risk of indefinite detention.”

The Trump Administration can now “target people because of their appearance and how they speak, as well as where they were found and what kind of work they do,” meaning that “to move freely in this country, it may become increasingly important to look white.” 

But what about the viewpoint of my naive friend, who said I had nothing to worry about because I’m not an undocumented gang member? Well, he should know that at least 170 U.S. citizens “have been held by immigration agents,” with many of those detained getting “kicked, dragged, and detained for days.”

So immigration status is no guarantee. All that matters is how dark your skin is.

These developments imply that I should walk around with my passport in case some overzealous ICE goon decides I look far too swarthy to be walking in a respectable neighborhood. Just the fact that I have to consider this shows you how far this nation has plummeted in its promises to its citizens.

And I assure you that I take it very personally indeed.

If you’re confident that ICE will never grab you off the street, throw you into a van, and whisk you off to some filthy basement before kicking you out of the country without so much as formal charges, well congratulations on being white, because that is the best protection against such a fate.

And even that is not 100%, because ICE is now grabbing white people as well, which is an inevitable consequence of handing unchecked power to thugs and fascists who want all the power of governmental force with none of the responsibility to actually protect anyone.

Our favorite band of homegrown authoritarians “has opened a new phase in its immigration agenda, one that goes well beyond the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.” They are harassing academics, grabbing citizens for looking swarthy, and “targeting legal immigrants who have expressed views that the government believes threaten national security and undermine foreign policy.”

Basically, they are going after anyone who annoys them, under the pretense of kicking hardened criminals out of the country. 

So now we have mothers getting abducted in front of their kids, masked men who refuse to show ID as they manhandle people who may or may not be undocumented, and armored vehicles rolling down city streets.

Meanwhile, whole communities feel terrorized, most Americans are aghast at what their government has become, and crops in the fields “are rotting at peak harvest time.”

But don’t worry about that last issue. You see, the opening of concentration camps in America means that, in all likelihood, undocumented people will soon be taken to these camps, where they will either toil as “slaves to government projects” or be “offered to American companies on special terms: a one-time payment to the government, for example, with no need for wages or benefits.”

In the latter case, “detained people will be offered back to the companies for which they were just working,” and their imprisonment “will be presented as a purge or a legalization for which companies should be grateful.” Indeed, our American il duce “has already said that this is the idea, calling it ‘owner responsibility.’”

If this does not bring to mind images of black slaves suffering in the fields of the antebellum South, then you have no grasp of history.

It also exposes the hypocrisy of conservatives who say they want to deport all undocumented people, but really just want them to keep doing what they’re doing, but under even more barbaric conditions, so the economy doesn’t collapse.

And if there aren’t enough undocumented people to perform this slave labor, what then? 

Hey, was that ICE agent who is rolling past your house looking at you? It was probably just your imagination.

Probably.

Yes, I went on vacation while the world burned.

Before you get too judgmental, keep in mind that I rarely take time off, and I had booked this trip months in advance. So there was no way I could have known that the same week I planned to go abroad, the administration’s Gestapo-lite thugs would lay siege to my city of LA, or that the threat of ICE detaining me at the airport would become a distinct possibility. 

Nor could have I predicted that as I snagged a margarita in a foreign land, our illustrious commander in chief would embroil us in a war for vague, ricocheting reasons that grow more disturbing and contradictory by the hour.

In short, I picked a bad week to relax.

But of course, there are no good weeks in Trump’s America, and there is never a decent time to kick back while fascists prance around our nation’s cities.

Having said that, I enjoyed my sojourn to Mexico. I hadn’t been there in 40 years, and it was good to be back.

I highly recommend the country, even though Americans have been led to believe that it is just a sepia-toned wasteland of tattooed gangsters who will murder you for pure amusement. In my experience, it is a vibrant, verdant place where Mexicans work way too hard to keep Americans happy.

On our trip, my son and I swam in the underwater cave that the Mayans believed was the entrance to the underworld, and it was impossible not to feel the weight of history and belief and nature in that beautifully spooky cavern.

The next day, while we marveled at Chichen Itza, an American family joined our tour. The family’s sullen teenagers came to life when the tour guide explained how the Mayan astronomers — sans computers or advanced telescopes — made calculations that were within seconds of our modern observations.

One teen boy turned to the other and said, “Damn, those Mayans were crazy smart.”

Indeed they were, young man. 

But now I’m back in the USA, and instead of looking at ocean waves, tourists with six-pack abs, and plates of delicious food, I look at flickering images on my computer screen of monstrosity, inhumanity, and subjugation, courtesy of a corrupt administration filled with sycophants, goons, and thugs.

Clearly, I need a vacation from all this.

So I was at Union Station here in Los Angeles, waiting to board the Amtrak (more in a future post on what happened once I got on the train). Suddenly I noticed a commotion, and I saw people scurrying around. I checked my twitter feed, which confirmed that ICE was raiding the station.

They were looking for undocumented immigrants, who (if they subscribed to the same twitter feeds as me) already knew to leave the station.

I have no idea how many people ICE nabbed, but I imagine it wasn’t too successful of an operation. I mean, everybody — bored travelers, American citizens, legal residents, little kids, day laborers, you name it — knew what was going on. Let’s just say that the element of surprise was lacking.

But the heavy-handed raid got me thinking. I haven’t written about illegal immigration in some time, which is a relief to me because it’s such an overwhelming, frustrating topic. But it also means that I’ve missed commenting on some truly odd stories.

For example, there was John McCain’s claim that illegal immigrants had set fires in Arizona that were burning out of control. In related news, they apparently also stole his remote control.

And just remember, this guy was almost president.

Perhaps even the residents of Arizona have had enough of the immigrant bashing. After all, they recently recalled the architect of SB 1070. Upon hearing the news, I’m sure the guy muttered, “And after all I’ve done for the nutjobs of this state…”

Meanwhile, in another forward-thinking area of the country, Alabama, the nation’s most repressive anti-immigration law was going into effect. It will, of course, be the subject of myriad lawsuits. But long before the courts make a decision, it’s quite possible that the residents of Alabama will realize that they made a grievous mistake.

For proof of that, they can look to their good friends in Georgia, which also passed tough legislation against undocumented workers. However, now that state doesn’t have enough workers to bring its crops in. Yes, that’s right — U.S. citizens have not stepped in to fill the workers gap, and Georgia farmers are in a tizzy.

Why, it’s enough to make even Georgia Republicans rethink the wisdom of bashing the undocumented.

The continuing crusade against illegal immigration makes even less sense when we find out that U.S. Border Patrol agents, far from being overwhelmed by the dreaded Brown Invasion, are more likely to be pummeled into submission by a more vicious force: sheer tedium. It appears that “agents on the U.S.-Mexico border these days have to deal with a more mundane occupational reality: the boredom of guarding a frontier where illegal crossings have dipped to record low levels.”

Of course, I’m sure if they get too bored, the agents can always snag a little girl (even if she is a U.S. citizen) and kick her out of the country. Or they could take lessons from one our favorite individuals, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and just handcuff legal residents and citizens at will.

Speaking of Sherriff Joe, I’m just as excited as you to know that he has a new underwear line coming out. No, I’m not kidding. You can purchase of pair of pink boxers emblazoned with the phrase “Go Joe!” or even better, “Vamos Jose!”

I’m sure I speak for all the guys out there when I say that it’s not creepy at all to think of Sherriff Joe every time you put on your underwear — nope.

And nothing makes more of a slamming fashion statement than random phrases advocating a xenophobic political position, which I’m sure will impress any ladies who are fortunate enough to see their men strip down to bright pink intimate apparel that has a man’s name splayed across it.

It sounds perfect for a first date. As always, thanks, Sherriff Joe!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch.

Individuals like me who object to Arizona’s new anti-immigration law point out that it could lead to increased racial profiling.

“Nonsense,” backers of the law have responded. “All that’s covered in the law’s wording, which makes it clear that no Hispanic legal resident or citizen will ever, ever be harassed. So nyaa.”

It seems, however, that we don’t even have to look to Arizona for proof of how confusing it can be when we set out to round up the undocumented.

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