When All You Want Is Dish Soap - And End Up in Handcuffs

Chicago, East 106th Street. A gray morning, one of thousands like it in this city. Inside Walgreens, it smells of cardboard, disinfectant, and cheap shampoo. People pick up prescriptions, children run through the aisles, somewhere soft pop music plays. And then, within seconds, reality flips. An older white ICE agent grabs a Black man, throws him to the ground, and yells at him for "running." No ID, no explanation, no warrant - just a moment that shows how thin the line has become between the state and arbitrariness. A woman shouts desperately: "He's a U.S. citizen! He's American! He's my brother-in-law!" But no one listens.

The store manager closes the doors. "Because of everything with ICE," he says quietly. Customers are asked to leave, the shopping trip becomes an evacuation. "This is crazy," murmurs a woman who only wanted to buy dish soap. "He said they closed because of some ICE stuff. I just wanted dish soap." This is America in 2025. A country where even a trip to Walgreens is political. A country ruled by fear - not of terror, but of the neighbor. Where skin color and movement are enough to make someone a "suspect."

ICE calls it "Operation Integrity," a term that could hardly be more cynical. The agents are supposedly meant to arrest "illegals with violent potential." In reality, it often takes nothing but chance, skin color, and being in the wrong place. Since Trump expanded his "zero tolerance" offensive, more and more people without any immigration background are being targeted - citizens, workers, retirees. Simply because they "don’t fit." The scene in Chicago is no exception. It represents an atmosphere in which authorities no longer differentiate but administer - people, fear, power. The boundaries between law and abuse blur. And the public has grown used to the outrageous.

That a man who just wanted to buy dish soap ends up on the floor is no accident. It is the logical result of a policy built on dehumanization for years. A system that categorizes people - "legal" or "illegal," "real" or "foreign" - until no one is safe anymore. And as the scene unfolds inside the store, one wonders who has really lost control: those who flee or those who hunt. Perhaps that is the true definition of the new America - a country where the simplest need, to buy a bottle of dish soap, becomes a test of whether you were born in the right body.

East 106th Street. A store, an agent, a man on the ground. And a woman shouting: "He's American!" - as if that even needed to be said.