Dear Chicago,
So my thoughts have been on you a lot lately. You’re my second hometown, after all — I lived there for nearly 15 years, between college and afterward, before moving back to the East Coast. You are — as much as I truly love Baltimore — my favorite city in the United States.
I was very wrong for something I did right after the election, and I truly apologize. Watching what’s happening now with these ICE raids and patrols in and around a place I love breaks my heart — for real.
Here’s why I’m apologizing: days after it became clear that Trump had won the election, and the exit poll crosstabs started coming out, I saw the high plurality of Latino voters — particularly Latino men — who had probably pushed him over the finish line.
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In anger, I lashed out with a Facebook post that contained nothing but the ICE toll-free tip line phone number.
My implication and suggestion were clear: I wanted to punish the Latino community by encouraging people to inform on immigrants. Because I — and most other left-leaning people — knew the administration, despite its persistent lies that it would deport only the “bad ones,” would indiscriminately grab abuelos and abuelas, tíos and tías off the streets. Let’s help!
We knew the feds wouldn’t distinguish between “good” immigrants who had been here productively for 10 or 20 years and “bad” immigrants who might have just crossed the border. There was no way they could deport 11 million people, as they said they wanted to do, without removing every brown “illegal,” because there are nowhere near that many immigrant criminals in the country. You could only remove that many people if you planned to remove them all. I couldn’t see how anyone could miss that obvious point.
Watching what’s happening now with these ICE raids and patrols in and around a place I love breaks my heart — for real.
So these indiscriminate takings would cause pain to a larger community that, in my mind, had done something deeply self-destructive — something that hurt all of us with its selfishness: voting for an unstable, vindictive misanthrope with autocratic leanings just to save 59 cents on a carton of eggs. Bigger picture, people!
This mess would teach them a lesson not soon forgotten.
Many of my Facebook friends and associates saw the post. Most laughed about it, like a form of gallows humor. I know of one person, for sure, who actually used it to report an immigrant.
Deportations would rip families apart. They would disrupt communities and make some people leave on their own accord. I was advocating aiding that process in the most callous, hurtful way possible — because I was mad that a megalomaniac was (re)elected.
I was wrong to do that. It was selfish on my part. I’m sorry — truly sorry.
If you’re not angered by all of this, something is wrong with you.
Things are so much worse now than the already awful situations I imagined in those first days.
It’s clear that the administration‘s actions are not just indiscriminately taking Latinos off the streets, but they are terrorizing everyone not just immigrants but citizens, Black, White, Latin, whatever: raids, rappelling from helicopters, and jump-outs, and chases, and literally stalking the streets in vehicle convoys, in full tactical gear and masks grabbing kids, the elderly, anyone with brown skin, immigrant or not…
It’s almost as if the administration collectively watched every dystopian future movie produced about the 2000s and decided act out some of the worst scenes for real. (And given this president’s past as a TV personality, literally in this moment, it just dawned on me that those scenes may really, in fact, be the inspiration for what’s going on!)
What’s worse, a significant plurality of Americans see no problem with what’s happening. That’s what’s even more amazing to me. Regardless of which side of the political aisle you sit on, if you’re not disturbed by what you’re seeing — the use of the military, heavy-handed “civilian” law enforcement not just in Chicago but in D.C., Los Angeles, and Memphis — if you’re not angered by all of this, something is wrong with you.
Just like there was something wrong with me in that moment when I suggested that we — the people in my circle — enable this bull—-.
I am ashamed and sorry. Forgive me. Please.
Tony Armstrong is a social commentator, satirist, and essayist. He currently lives in Dallas, Texas, but reps his twin hometowns — Baltimore and Chicago — hard.