Is This Our New Normal?

Is Minneapolis our new normal? Only time will tell. 

I am grateful the United States has seen a de-escalation of aggression and violence on the part of ICE officers toward immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. I chose not to write about the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti until now because I needed my mind to settle. Right after both U.S. citizens were killed by ICE officers in broad daylight, anger and fear were the two emotions that followed me around without a break. The anger stemmed from the evolution of the role of law enforcement duties of ICE, CBP, FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshalls, etc.

I have never experienced a surge like this, and I have been practicing immigration law for over twenty years. It was surreal to not only receive calls from clients who were afraid of being racially profiled by ICE officers, but U.S. citizen friends were also calling me to ask if they should carry their U.S. passport? The follow up question was “will having a U.S. passport even protect me, or will I be treated with derision and sarcasm?”

I too have seen videos posted of U.S. citizens talking about the treatment they experienced from ICE officials and in immigration detention facilities. The U.S. citizens who were arrested and detained were often of Latinx or African American heritage. The U.S. citizens being detained told the men arresting and detaining them that they were U.S. citizens. This phrase was met with mocking comments and more aggressive behavior when ICE officials handcuffed them and put them into a vehicle.

Flock cameras are increasingly being used across the U.S. as a means of finding information about a particular driver/vehicle. The cameras read the license plate and give them the name of the owner. If your last name is Latino, or “foreign,” which means any last name other than Smith, Jones, or Clark, be very careful. You are in danger of being pulled over if an ICE officer is using Flock camera technology as he is driving behind you.

Even worse, ICE officials admitted in federal court that they are purposefully raiding apartment complexes known to have a Latinx clientele. In a case heard in district court in Eugene, Oregon by Judge Ann Aiken, the ICE official testified that 1-2 days of surveillance usually occurs before a targeted raid. During this time, the ICE officer may be taking photos of all license plates of cars parked overnight at that apartment building. 

Once license plates are run through the Flock camera database and a last name pops up that is not Smith, Jones or Clark, a raid is planned. The third day is usually the raid itself. ICE divisions within a state are given quotas they must meet, which accounts for why they still arrest and detain U.S. citizens. It does not matter that the U.S. citizen is released a day or two later, since that day’s “quota” was met.

In testimony in Judge Aiken’s court, the ICE official referred to the area as “target rich.” The de-humanization of a person begins with a phrase like “target rich.” Language like this is just one reason people feel fear. The fear comes from not knowing a person’s identity or even agency affiliation since the mask shows only his eyes. The fear comes when several officers jump out of a car to confront a person who has pulled over as directed. The fear comes because the driver of the car does not know if his window will be broken before he can even open his car door when ordered to do so. The fear comes because many of us know that compliance with the orders of an ICE officer is not a guarantee that anyone will survive such an encounter. That fear and uncertainty is eating away at U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.

There are bright spots, here and there, in the aftermath of Minneapolis. President Trump demoted Gregory Bovino from Commander of nationwide immigration surges and sent him back to El Centro, CA to fade into oblivion. The new man of the hour, Border Czar Tom Homan, announced that DHS was withdrawing ICE officers from Minneapolis, starting Friday, February 12, 2026.

However, because so many ICE officers and other law enforcement officers were sent to Minneapolis in the surge, Minneapolis still is grappling with a larger than normal amount of ICE officers. Children are still scared to wait for the bus for fear their parents will be detained if they stand with the kids at the bus stop. Parents are afraid for their children to go to school where parents cannot protect them from an ICE raid. Principals are overtaxed from driving children home from school if ICE is sighted nearby. Principals are also tired from locating legal resources for parents who have a relative who has been detained, from conducting food distribution events for families who are afraid to go to the grocery store and from comforting students, staff, and parents who want school to be a safe space for a child to learn. Just existing with this fear is overwhelming whole communities.

The other bright spot was the order written by the Honorable Fred Biery of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. In a short, fiery two pages, he described the behavior of government officials as “ill-conceived and incompetently implemented” in the arrest and detention of Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son Liam. His order quoted Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence along with two bible verses. The order also found that due process had not occurred, so he ordered father and son to be released from a Texas Detention Center. To underscore the seriousness of this issue, he included a photo of Liam standing next to a vehicle, with a blue bunny hat on his head, below his signature line. I have never seen a judge do this, but it was a perfect reminder that the imposition of cruelty knows no bounds.

Bearing Witness

The phrase “bearing witness” has been used many times since Inauguration Day 2025. For some, bearing witness means providing evidence or testimony about something, often to support or prove a claim. It can also mean sharing personal experiences, particularly traumatic ones, with those around you. In my life, bearing witness often means acknowledging and validating experiences or events, in an effort to show that something is true. The Bible even explains the phrase as a Jewish legal principle, namely that uncorroborated testimony does not count as truth. In John 5:31-32, it is written, “If I bear witness about myself, my witness is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the witness which he witnesses about me is true.” 

Elie Wiesel, in his famous novel about the trauma inflicted by the Holocaust, Night, described the vital reason being witness is necessary. He said, “for the dead and the living, we must bear witness,” implying not does it validate an event occurred, but it can also lead to healing trauma. Members of 12-step recovery programs share stories not to validate pain, but to process an experience though words, actions, and physical presence. Sharing trauma with others opens up a space where there once was none. Bearing witness also demonstrates that one understands the often-repeated warning-that those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are bound to repeat those mistakes.

At funerals, we share stories of the deceased, knowing that a person is never truly forgotten when others keep their memories alive. As an immigration attorney for 25+ years, I have had to bear witness to young children being separated from their parents at the border, to horrific conditions inside federally-funded immigration detention centers, to working with four political appointees in four years serving as Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and more recently, to watching my community on the Oregon coast come together to voice their opposition to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility from being built in Newport, Oregon.

As a country, we have a front row seat to thousands of people across the nation who are bearing witness daily to immigration enforcement across the United States. Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, Washington DC., New Orleans, and Los Angeles residents have had to bear witness merely because they live in large cities that mostly voted against the current president. 

As we go through our day, we must ask ourselves, “how will I bear witness today and what will I tell my children about my actions during this period in history?” For books will be written, and movies made, about the actions of so many people in the United States who were not afraid to stand up and bear witness.

When Bad Means Better

Bad Bunny is the star of the Super Bowl’s Half-Time show. He recently won 3 Grammys Awards. Regardless of whether you like his music, you know him. He’s EVERYWHERE. He is touring and selling out stadiums; except he is NOT touring in the United States and Canada. Why? Because he is afraid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers will target his fans, wait in the venue’s parking lot, to intimidate and threaten people going to a concert. 

He was born Puerto Rico, which makes him an American. He has chosen to exercise his First Amendment Right to free speech and expressly stated that he will not tour in the U.S. to keep his fans safe. He is choosing to forego millions of dollars in ticket sales to keep people safe. People like the mailman, your first-grade teacher, the cashier at Fred Meyer, the bank teller at Wells Fargo, everyday people are being targeted solely based on the color of their skin. Bad Bunny knows this, understands the government could surge ICE officers to every one of the concert venues he would perform at, and so he chose to protect people. Fear is an awful thing. It eats away at your courage, your confidence, your feeling of safety and security. As a man with brown skin, Bad Bunny knows what it means to be targeted and is rising above.

I do not feel fear when I get into my car to drive to work, or when I go to the post office, or when I go to the Pines Dine. There are many people in Lincoln County, Oregon, though, who are not going to work, who are afraid to drive their kids to school, who do not feel safe going to buy groceries. It is not because ICE raids are occurring on the Oregon coast, or because we have experienced the violence occurring in Minneapolis. Breaking the driver’s side window of a car to physically pull a person out of a car is unnecessary violence. Pounding on the door of an apartment at 2 am because ICE suspects a person living there does not have lawful status is unnecessary violence. Detaining a father and son and then asking that five-year-old son to knock on the door so his mother would open the door is unnecessary violence. We see the photos, we watch the videos, we see the protests and tear gas. What is the goal of the surges, the camouflage, the masks, the lack of identification of agency worn by the men who are using violence to intimidate immigrants?

The goal is fear and intimidation-fear of the other, fear of someone who may be different from you. Some people are upset that Bad Bunny’s half-time show will be mostly sung in Spanish. Why? Because some folks will not understand the lyrics or the cultural references. In the half-time show, he sang about the Americas. He starts by naming Chile, Argentina, and makes his way through the South American countries, then the Central American countries and finishes with the U.S. and Canada. By naming all the countries considered to be in the Americas, he creates space for all of us to consider the bigger picture. 

We live in a country where most of the land settled by Native Americans has been taken from them and given to white English settlers. The U.S. is known as a country of immigrants because everyone, but Native Americans came from somewhere else. We live in a country which celebrates diversity and has been a shining beacon of hope to so many people who believe in the American Dream. 

The American Dream is for everyone–Black, Asian, Latinx, White, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim. The beauty of the Bill of Rights is that everyone is welcome. I believe that everyone in Lincoln County has a role to play and deserves the space to contribute their time and talent to making America a welcoming, productive, compassionate nation. Most Europeans speak two to three languages and yet here in the United States, some people feel threatened because the Super Bowl half-time performance was in Spanish? Those who speak different languages, celebrate different religions, eat different food, practice different customs, only enrich the beautiful tapestry that is America.

The Weight of our Words

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror
of their reality.” -Edgar Allan Poe

As a lawyer, I have always loved words that create a mood,  describe something perfectly or clarify an idea. There are words we read  daily in the newspaper, and somehow their meaning has shifted from  when we first learned the word during childhood. I remember at age 5 or  6, my mom told me not to use the word, “crap”, because it was a lazy  way of saying, “I don’t agree with that idea” or “I think what you are saying  is wrong”. She said words have the power to inspire, to uplift, to hurt and  to destroy. Rather than use a generic word like “crap”, she encouraged  me to ask myself what I was trying to convey with that word. As I write  legal briefs, letters to the Immigration Court or the U.S. Immigration and  Naturalization Services on behalf of clients, I carefully select my words,  conscious of their ability to uplift or desecrate. 

Sometimes, it is easy to pinpoint why a word’s meaning has  changed. Power can skew the meaning of any word, such as the word  “illegal”. The expression “illegal immigrant” is used by most media  sources, from newspapers to radio and tv. It can become part of the daily  lexicon which a person can absorb, accept and utilize unless they stop  and ask themselves why? Why do people use a phrase that demeans  someone, that assigns a person less value, which judges their existence  as wrong? 

Laws are created to engineer social behavior and to spell out what  line one must cross to do something “illegal”. Many religions purport to  teach a set of values, philosophies and beliefs. It can be easy for  someone to say it is illegal to lie, yet we see a plethora of actors,  politicians and influential people accuse others of lying while they are  lying themselves. It is easy for someone to say it is illegal to drive higher than the speed limit on the highway, and yet thousands of people receive speeding tickets each year in the US. 

I am not sure why it is acceptable to call someone “illegal”, without  knowing anything about their immigration history, or the law. Most  Americans agree that the person committing an illegal act should be  punished. Punishment looks different for different people. When a  person who owns a home, two cars, holds a steady job and has no  restrictions on their freedom is sent to jail for committing an “illegal” act,  being locked up is punishment. That person loses the freedom to come  and go as they choose, to eat food they have chosen to eat and to move  around with ease. However, an unhoused person living on the streets  who is convicted of an “illegal” act and sentenced to a year’s  incarceration may not see that as punishment. They may see it as a  chance to “reset”, to be given three meals a day, and a bed and  bathroom to use. For someone who sleeps in a tent in the woods year round, running water, heat and access to a toilet may not be  punishment. Many Americans might find working in a slaughterhouse or washing dirty dishes for 10 hours or changing the sheets of a hotel bed  as punishment, while a person from a war-torn country might be grateful  to be paid to work, no matter how physically exhausting the job may be. 

Entering the U.S. without inspection refers to a person crossing the  border into the U.S. without inspection or being formally admitted by an  immigration officer. INA 212 (a)(6)(A). This person is considered  “inadmissible” and cannot adjust their status to being a lawful  permanent resident from within the U.S. without specific exceptions.  This violation of “entering without inspection” is a civil infraction, not a  criminal offense. The person is charged with an immigration violation.  His/her case is decided by an immigration judge in a special Article III  court created by the Department of Justice. The act of entering the U.S.  without inspection does not make a person an “illegal immigrant”; it means that person is undocumented. Asking the U.S. government for  permission to enter the U.S. is the gold standard. However, U.S. law allows someone fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality,  political opinion or membership in a particular social group, to ask for  asylum at the border. Asking for asylum is permitted, it is not an illegal  act. In that case, the person is undocumented, but they are seeking a  legal manner of entry via asylum. With the rise in divisive rhetoric in  politics, immigrants shifted from being “undocumented” to being  “illegal”. Words are given power every time we use them, so next time  you read the phrase, “illegal immigrant”, ask yourself who benefits from  defining others as “illegal”.