Walking while brown in Trump's America
I say his name: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and pray you don't have to say mine soon.
The other day, while working in the office, I needed to clear my head. The easiest way for me to do that is to go on a quick walk. It was only a few steps outside before I stopped dead in my tracks. I forgot my wallet at my desk. The wallet containing my drivers license, the only form of identification I’d have on my person if I got swept up by whatever people that do the sweeping nowadays. I backtracked and scooped up my wallet…but I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since. That little moment of panic. Of hesitation. Of negotiating with myself on whether I was overreacting or not. And the ultimate realization that I’m a brown man in Trump’s America and there’s a chance, god I don’t know what that chance is, but we know that it’s there because it’s already happened, that someone that looks like me can be kidnapped off the streets by their own government. It’s a chilling, ominous thought and one that I believe has ramifications for us all, whether or not you look like me. Let’s talk about it.
I’ve been hesitant to write this. We are at the beginning of the endgame when it comes to this administration’s mask-off into dictatorship. They are moving through the ranks of our most marginalized. Queer communities. Undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. I’m not quite sure where in the list of “First they came for…” we are at but I feel close enough that its effecting my day-to-day. (And yes, I know that this sentiment is grappling with the point of the poem in the first place.) I’m weighing the importance of using my platform to speak on these atrocities against the more-and-more real possibility that said platform could be used for reprisals. Grad students’ visas are being revoked here in Iowa. ICE agents are kidnapping 19-year-olds with no criminal records and sending them to “prisons” in El Salvador without anything resembling due-process. (According to Snopes: "60 Minutes" checked CBS's list of detainees sent to CECOT against criminal records both in the U.S. and abroad. They could not find criminal records for 179 of the 238 men (75%) sent to the mega-prison.) It doesn’t take much imagination to see how these fascists will start targeting us brown folks that speak up. So yeah, I’ve been wavering a bit on writing this. I think of my wife and daughter and what they would do if I were gone. I think about all of the advocates I have, all the noise that they could make. How our most supreme courts and officials could receive their words and call for my return…and how none of that would matter…that I would be left to rot. But then I read this take and my blood boiled.
“It occurs to me that the more we talk about Juan Garcia Abrego being mistakenly sent to a hell hole prison in El Salvador, the more Trump wins – for two reasons. It forces those who care about such things into a position of defending a guy who might not be the most upstanding person. And the more the media talks about Abrego, the less attention paid to all the other horrible things Trump is doing, like crashing a once robust economy. So, for Trump, this case is a win-win.”
Now this take is coming from someone that I follow and have extreme respect for. They are one of the voices that I look to to parse out just what in the hell is going on in our state and country. But this is a rare and particularly egregious misstep. The most glaring reason being that he got the wrong person. Juan Garcia Abrego is a former head of the Mexican cartel now serving life in person. He is not Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year old deported in error without any criminal convictions on his record. Listen, we all get things wrong sometimes but it definitely makes me feel a certain type of way when a journalist I admire does the tired-ass “can’t tell two brown people apart” thing, especially when they conflate the criminal record of one for the other and use it to whine about people losing money. Jesus Christ. It’s the one’s that you trust that cut you the deepest.
But let’s gloss over that snafu eh? Because even without that I’m betting their point still stands. It’s just one person and it “distracts from all the other horrible things Trump is doing.” But I disagree. I believe that we all need to stand up and pay attention. To gloss over this would be the equivalent of glossing over the murder of George Floyd. I’d advocate that we actually do the opposite. That we nip this particularly egregious dalliance with dictatorship in the bud, while we still can. That we do what these senior citizens did to the walking husk that is Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley in a recent town hall. Watch it. It’s beautiful.
It filled my heart to see the throng of Q-tips giving it to the President pro tempore of the United States Senate (barf). I imagine he must have thought that he was going into a safe space. A coworker noted how this might be the only demographic that Grassley and co may actually care about. That their rage might be the only anger that gets through to them. Probably not. But it’s fun to see them rage against the (rickety almost 100 year old) machine nonetheless.
Okay, jokes aside, let’s close this up with some more of my reality.
That’s my sleeve. I love it. I also know it would be the first thing Kristi Noem would pose against in a photo-op. The other day my wife and I were on a walk and a man with somewhere to go passed us by. “He was walking agressive,” my wife remarked. I joked, to some people it looks like I walk agressive all the time. “What do you mean? You have a stroll.” But I have what I call “Resting Mexican Face.” To some people, I look like a mad, tattooed brown man. And more and more, that seems like all the justification one needs. So maybe talking about this fiasco will give this regime a win, but I can’t afford to be complacent to the atrocity of Kilmar Abrego Garcia1’s kidnapping and illegal detention on foreign soil. Because I see the short leap it takes to get to me.
Seriously though. Remember and say his name. Skip the Abrego if you have to. Kilmar Garcia. Here’s the device I used to remember it: Kilmar like Kill March. Garcia like Jerry Garcia. That’s it. Kilmar Garcia. You’re already better than saying “that El Salvadorian guy” and leaps ahead of confusing him with a former head of the Mexican cartel.
As i began to read this post, I was taken back to our move from San Diego to North Carolina in 2010. That route took us through Arizona, which at the time was stopping "suspicious" looking folx and requiring them to prove citizenship. We managed to set a route that mostly bypassed the state, except for a tiny bit in the Northwest that had to cross over the Arizona border. We spent a lot of energy thinking about what could go wrong on that brief bit of desert road. We ended up hiding our passports deep in our bags, but making copies of every kind of ID that might establish our status as citizens. That trip, my first to cross the US was filled with anxiety, but we did take the opportunity to listen to Zinn's "The Peoples History of the United States" while driving through so much of the southern US.