It happened in broad daylight, on the 3700 block of Whittier Boulevard in Los Angeles. A white sedan slowly turned into the street, two children in the back seat, a woman in the passenger seat. Seconds later, a light blue van rammed the vehicle from the front, another car blocked the rear. Doors flew open, men with drawn weapons jumped out, smoke rose - chemical, biting. The driver raised his hands. He surrendered. But witnesses say he was dragged out.
It is an image that burns itself into memory. Not just because of its brutality. But because it contains what America under Donald Trump has once again become - a country that does not declare a state of emergency, but lives in one. Officially, it was a “targeted operation.” The arrest of a “violent rioter,” according to the Department of Homeland Security. The man had punched a CBP officer, wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin on X. Not an accident. Not an overreaction. But a “targeted arrest.” With children in the back seat. In a residential neighborhood. Los Angeles has been under pressure for days. ICE raids, protests, tear gas, curfews. The streets feel like the end stage of a democracy on borrowed time. What is happening here is not an isolated incident. It is method. The border is everywhere now. The uniforms, the vocabulary, the fear. In San Antonio, people disappear from their homes, in Fresno migrants are picked up in parking lots, in Chicago unmarked vehicles patrol without court orders. The rule of law is on hold.
Donald Trump has made the ICE regime the spearhead of his second presidency. His rhetoric is martial, and so are his measures. Deportations without hearings. Home searches without judicial approval. DNA tests on children. Mass arrests at train stations. And now - targeted “ram arrests” on open streets. The message is clear - and it reaches far beyond the United States. Because what happens in Los Angeles does not stay in Los Angeles. The spirit of this policy spreads. France denies asylum to minors. The United Kingdom builds refugee camps in Rwanda. Italy lets ships circle at sea. Germany debates border fences. The rhetoric travels - and with it the legitimization of violence. When the world’s largest democracy hunts people like animals, how are smaller ones supposed to act differently?
And yet there is resistance. In the streets. In hearts. In words. The protests against the ICE raids in California do not subside. Lawyers speak of human rights violations, of shock through intimidation. Activists invoke the welfare of children, the Geneva Conventions, humanity. But they face a government that sees its opponents not as citizens, but as enemies. What remains is the image of a father being arrested with his hands raised, in front of his children. Because a state has decided that any offense can be declared a threat. That any face is a danger. That violence is not an aberration, but a tool. America’s breath has grown leaden. And the world holds its breath. Or joins in.
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