From Borders to Chains
How the MAGA Regime’s Immigration Crackdown Threatens Us All
"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept."
— Angela Davis
“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”
— Bayard Rustin
The Line Between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ Is Thinner Than You Think
It began not with sirens, but with silence.
A graduate student at the University of Minnesota—brilliant, focused, full of promise — was taken. No charges. No warning. No explanation. Just... gone. One day studying in the library. The next, in an ICE detention center.
His classmates ask questions no one will answer. His professors stumble over words they can’t make sense of. And somewhere in that quiet dread, every international student wonders:
Am I next?
That question doesn’t stay on campus. It travels. It moves through factory floors and fields, through kitchens and courtrooms and classrooms, through mushroom farms in Pennsylvania where nine men were pulled from their shifts and swallowed by silence.
It brushes past a mother brushing her child’s hair for school — wondering if today is the day they come.
This is not just about immigrants.
It is about power. It is about precedent. It is about how far a nation will go when no one dares to stop it.
The Crackdowns Are Here. The Targets Just Keep Expanding
This week, truth did not arrive quietly.
ICE raided a mushroom farm in Avondale, Pennsylvania. Nine workers detained. No names. No charges. Just another van, another silence, another hole torn in a community.
In Florida, lawmakers are debating a bill to allow 14-year-olds to work overnight shifts — on school nights. They call it a solution to a labor shortage. But the truth is simpler and more brutal: deport the adults, exploit the children. They will work while their classmates sleep. Because that’s what power does when it sees bodies, not lives.
In Minneapolis, that student still sits behind bars. His university issued a statement: “We are actively working to gather more details.” The governor said it’s unacceptable. But statements aren’t freedom. And “unacceptable” doesn’t unlock a cell.
And then there is FEMA. Where disaster aid — lifesaving, urgent — was paused. Because undocumented people might be helped. Imagine your house in ruins, your family displaced, and your government’s first thought is: how do we keep help away from the wrong people?
This is what the crackdown looks like. Arrests in classrooms. Kids worked through the night. Aid withheld during catastrophe.
And still, they say this is about law and order?
No. This is about domination.
This Isn’t Law Enforcement. It’s Infrastructure for Authoritarianism.
Bureaucracy can be a blunt weapon. Just ask anyone who's been kidnapped by ICE without reason or release.
These crackdowns — surgical, targeted, quiet — aren’t isolated acts. They are rehearsals.
They are trial runs for a system that wants more than your silence. It wants your obedience. It wants your surrender.
And every immigration raid is practice.
Every border checkpoint is conditioning.
Every arrest, a reminder: if we can do this to them, imagine what we can do to you.
That’s why Trump’s casual musings about a third term matter. When a man says he might “find a way” around the Constitution, believe him. Tyrants do not always march. Sometimes they joke first. They test the water. They watch you laugh. And then, they act.
This isn’t about a border. It’s about a blueprint.
And Still, They Expect Us to Stay Quiet
They wrap it all in language.
They call it “policy.” “Enforcement.” “Protecting taxpayers.” “Labor solutions.”
They want you to nod along. To scroll. To say it’s not your problem.
But that silence? That shrug? That’s the foundation they’re building on.
Every time we let them take a student, a worker, a parent, a child—and say nothing—we’re giving them permission to keep going. And they will. They always do.
Until the knock is on your door.
That is why we’ve created The Firewall. Not just a newsletter. Not just a protest. A movement. A resistance. A reminder that we are not helpless. That we are not alone. That we still have a say in what kind of nation we will be.
Tonight, we hold our first organizing call.
Not because we’re afraid of what’s coming. But because we know it’s already here.
And we still have time.
Historical Parallels: Lessons from Anti-Colonial Struggles
Fanon knew this moment.
He saw how colonial powers ruled by turning neighbor against neighbor. By naming one group “citizens” and the other “threats.” He wrote: “The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.” The MAGA regime writes new standards every day — citizenship, speech, skin.
Mandela knew this moment too. “Government violence,” he said, “can do only one thing — and that is to breed counter-violence.” He didn’t mean riots. He meant resistance. The resistance that rises when the law no longer protects but persecutes.
Edward Said taught us to watch the language. To see how the stories we tell about “them” justify the violence we inflict. Every time we say “illegal,” we strip someone of their story. Their dignity. Their rights. And then we wonder why they disappear so easily.
And Gandhi knew the antidote. Not just marches or slogans — but mass, principled refusal to participate in evil. “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
The cycle is moving. It’s our turn now.
The Slippery Slope: Erosion of Civil Liberties for All
Every tool they build for immigrants — they will one day use on citizens.
Don’t believe me?
Ask the Muslim American who was watched.
The Black teenager who was stopped.
The protester who was beaten.
ICE is just the proving ground.
And now, with “buffer zones” along the border — military-style camps where due process evaporates — they are testing a legal black hole. And you’d be a fool to think it will stay at the border.
Where you suspend rights for one group, you prepare to erase them for all.
The Role of Professional Communities in Resistance
This is not just a moral crisis.
It is a professional one.
What will you do in your role? In your institution? With your training, your voice, your place in the system?
When journalists turn their eyes away, when lawyers stay silent, when teachers self-censor — authoritarianism walks through the front door.
But we’ve seen the alternative.
In South Africa, teachers, nurses, and clerics stood shoulder to shoulder with those they served.
In Chile, medical professionals broke ranks to expose torture.
In Selma, it was local professionals — shopkeepers, barbers, church leaders — who held the line.
What’s your line?
And who will you hold it with?
Call to Action: Building The Firewall
That’s what we’re building now.
Not slogans. Not saviors. A structure. A shield. A sanctuary.
We call it The Firewall.
Tonight, we begin.
Join us at 6pm Central / 7pm Eastern today, Monday, March 31st.
Bring your profession. Bring your purpose. Bring your will.
We will break into sectors. We will listen. We will plan.
You don’t need to have all the answers.
You just need to show up.
Because the next chapter of this story is being written now.
And you deserve a pen.
The Time to Act Is Now
The chains are not coming.
They’re already here.
But they are not yet locked.
And we still have time to break them.
This is not just about immigrants. It never was. It is about the kind of people we choose to be. The kind of nation we are still becoming.
They want us silent.
But we are speaking.
They want us scattered.
But we are gathering.
They want us afraid.
But we are rising.
We call it The Firewall.
And it begins tonight.
We’ll see you there.
Glad to have found like-minded people from around the country in the call Jonathan organized tonight. Hoping we can do some collective good!