There is nothing like living outside of your native country to make you reflect on the meaning of its actions, especially if your native country happens to be the United States of America.
Living in Mexico, of course, makes you an automatic representative of your country. This is not a fair position to be in, but it is the story of immigrants everywhere. For the most part, I benefit from my country of origin: whereas plenty of people in the U.S. might look down on an immigrant from Mexico, here it is the opposite. Most people expect me to be cool and interesting, and maybe a little sneaky, scary or both.
We may all be individuals, but the human brain only has so much capacity to think of people as individuals. Gather too many foreign individuals into the same place, and the borders between us blur and blend until we are collectively “others.”
Proud and ashamed
Many things about the U.S. make me very, very proud to be from there: like jazz music, the advancement of civil rights and feminism. First in flight. Customer service agents who are mostly empowered to actually help you. Clean public restrooms with toilet paper, for free!
Other aspects of my home country, however, make me feel deeply, deeply ashamed. A less-than-stellar record when it comes to genocide and enslavement, for example. And oh, Lord, influential religious leaders who would love to send us back to those “good old days.” Deliver us!
When it comes to current events, our treatment of immigrants is at the top of my list right now.
In case you have been protecting your peace more than I have and have abstained from the news, here is a sad summary: Donald Trump returned to office with as much of a mandate as you could suppose to reduce the “out of control” immigration in the U.S.
The killing of innocents and deportation of US citizens
More Latinos in the U.S. than ever voted for him. Strangely, they seemed to believe his promise that he would only target and deport “the criminals” among them. Who would not get behind that?
As it turns out, there are a lot fewer “immigrant criminals” than most people thought. So, unfortunately for the law-abiders, the net was pretty much immediately cast much, much wider to meet detention quotas set by the administration. It caught mothers and fathers taking their children to school. It caught lots and lots of people here legally, papers be damned. It caught those who were brought as children and have known no other life than that of an American.
On top of the generalized horror of being torn from one’s life, there is the very suspicious fact that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been extremely cagey, caught in lies more than once. It is a fight every time a local official wants to enter a (privately run) detention facility. Those who have come out of them have described the places as unfit for human beings. Rotting food, freezing temperatures and medical needs that are ignored. It is not hard to imagine how over 50 people have died since detentions were ramped up upon Trump’s return, some by suicide. Seventeen of these deaths have been of Mexican nationals (14 in custody, three during “operations”).
A lack of institutional control
Then, of course, there are the vehicle stops and shootings under extremely suspicious circumstances. One of the latest, of course, was that of a Mexican national, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who turned out not to even be ICE’s target. ICE’s story is that he tried to “weaponize his vehicle” against them. Witnesses say it was quite the opposite. The feds had to be blocked from deporting the witnesses. Weird behavior from an institution that has nothing to hide, right?
In short, things are truly out of control.
The U.S. and Mexico are supposed to be allies. What is going on here?
‘A general lack of accountability’
The main thing that is going on, I believe, is that the wrong people are in charge. Unhappy people voted them in, believing their lies about what the source of their unhappiness actually stemmed from. A threadbare social safety net paired with barely-there labor laws that are happy to let people simply fall through the net and onto the concrete pavement? Nah, that cannot be it … transgender people and immigrants, that is who is hurting you!
Social media — what was supposed to bring us together — and a general lack of accountability to the truth that the internet age has wrought have been excellent at getting people all riled up for stupid reasons.
The U.S. is really pushing it with Mexico right now.
Can Mexico do anything about it?
I personally think that is doubtful, but who knows? I have been wrong before. But if ICE cannot even be held accountable for its on-camera killings of U.S. citizens, who is going to put a boot on its neck over immigrant killings?
And when the offending country has been essentially in charge of international justice for decades, it is hard to tap the brakes. After all, who do you go to for help when the police themselves are corrupt?
Mexico, of course, understands this conundrum in a literal sense. But Mexico also does not claim to be the distributor of justice for the world, either.
Of all the words I might use to describe Mexicans, “proud” would be in the top five. While it seems that a few insults here and there will always be tolerated because of the particular power dynamic the two countries have, you cannot just start letting its citizens die and not even apologize for it.
Mexico files criminal complaints
Claudia Sheinbaum, thankfully, is not letting this go. Criminal complaints, cease-and-desist letters to the private companies in charge of detention, the United Nations. They are going at it from all angles.
The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs is “filing a criminal complaint against whoever is responsible.”
But, gosh. “Whoever is responsible.” Hmm. There is our first issue right there.
Would that be the president, for insisting that as many immigrants be tossed out of the U.S. as possible? Stephen Miller, the architect of the whole thing? Agency heads? Those who hire and “train” (or don’t) ICE officers? The private companies who feel no need to provide adequate living conditions? The offending/negligent immigration officers themselves? It truly is a long list of candidates.
The known reality, of course, is that in the end, it is unlikely anyone will be held to account. I mean, we cannot even get the U.S. to acknowledge that it dropped a bomb on an Iranian girls’ school, killing hundreds of children. Sanctity of life, indeed.
‘The twin monsters of incompetence and cruelty’
How are we supposed to get anyone who has been given “free rein” to carry out the president’s signature plan to play fair?
One of the biggest crimes that humans commit against each other is allowing the twin monsters of incompetence and cruelty to go on … and right now, those twin monsters have the full backing of the U.S. federal government.
This is what happens when you remove the shackles of accountability from institutions filled with the kinds of people who see the world as a fight between those who hunt and those who get hunted.
And many people who work in ICE fancy themselves hunters; they like to prey on people who are running or scared, or just trying to stay out of trouble’s way. They are hunted by the same types of people who used to catch (and torture) runaway slaves. They sniff out fear and relish the capture.
So here we are, many of us, living in a country that has welcomed us in ways that the U.S. would not dream of welcoming our neighbors. It is a strange and sad position to be in. It is also worth remembering that the tables could always turn.
We are the “others” here, after all.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.
