The Disappearance Was the Point
From courtrooms to corporate offices, a quiet machinery is learning how to vanish people. Now the rest of us must decide: Will we watch this regime consolidate power — or stop it from the inside?
Every Sunday, I write something longer. Not just a news recap or a hot take—but a deeper reckoning. A way of making sense of the week’s headlines through the longer lens of history, the law, and my own two decades on the frontlines of immigration and human rights work. These pieces are meant to be more than reflections. They’re fuel for the movement we’re building together. Thought pieces meant to sharpen our strategy, deepen our understanding, and prepare us—collectively—for the work ahead. If you’re joining Monday night’s Firewall organizing call, consider this your briefing. If you’re just arriving at this conversation, welcome. What follows is the truth as I’ve come to know it. Hard-won. Lived. And offered with urgency.
“Either America will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States.”
—W.E.B. Du Bois (1905)
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
—James Baldwin (1962)
The Echo from the Courtroom
I read the government’s sworn update on Saturday afternoon.
Kilmar Abrego García is alive.
That’s the extent of it. No timeline for return. No indication of movement. Just a line from a veteran State Department official confirming that Kilmar is “currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador” and is “alive and secure in that facility.” That’s the report. That’s the update.
They didn’t even try to hide it.
After Friday’s hearing, where the judge demanded daily updates on Kilmar’s status and ordered the government to “facilitate” his return, they handed in this affidavit like it was homework they didn’t care about.
No sign they’ve spoken to Kilmar.
No sign they’ve made a single meaningful request to get him out.
No sign they ever intended to.
They are using the Supreme Court’s language exactly the way I said they would. “Facilitate” does not mean “bring him back.” It means: pretend to try.
And now, thanks to the Court, pretending is enough.
This is the trick. This is the trapdoor. This is what happens when institutions hand authoritarian power a velvet glove.
It is one thing to argue over immigration policy. It is another thing entirely to disappear a man to a foreign prison in defiance of a federal court, and then write a two-paragraph declaration pretending that your hands are tied.
This isn’t bureaucracy. It’s betrayal.
If you felt sick reading The Trapdoor Verdict, you were right. If you thought: this isn’t just about Kilmar, this is about whether the rule of law still exists —
You were right.
And now the mask is off. The ruling was a green light. The daily updates are theater. The government has no intention of bringing him back.
They’re trying to run out the clock.
We’re not going to let them.
The Machine That Was Always Meant to Do This
“We will send a clear message to the world that we are enforcing our laws, and we will not allow people to pour into the U.S. undetected, undocumented, unchecked.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to hear at a Trump rally, maybe shouted from a podium draped in flags and fury. But that line came from then-Senator Barack Obama in 2006.
Years later, as President, that same politician ordered his own Homeland Security officials to impose mandatory detention against families and children fleeing violence in Central America. I remember that policy — designed to deter refugees from seeking protection in the United States — quite well. I represented many of those children and terrified mothers who were being called threats to our national security — by Barack Obama. Almost as deafening was the silence from top Democrats who were too afraid to contradict their leader.
The more things change…
Here's another one:
“People are driving across that border with tons, tons…of everything from byproducts for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin, and it’s all coming up through corrupt Mexico.”
That was Joe Biden, campaigning for president in 2008.
The rhetoric remains the same. Only the pitch alternates.
And that’s the point. What’s happening to Kilmar didn’t begin with Trump. It didn’t even begin with MAGA. The engine was already built. Trump just figured out how to strip off the casing, rev the motor, and aim it straight at the heart of dissent.
Contrary to popular belief, the immigration system is not “broken” — it’s a well-oiled machine that was always meant to do this.
It was built to vanish people. Quietly. Bureaucratically. Beneath layers of “process” and “protocol.” First it was asylum seekers. Then families. Then children. Then citizens. And every time we told ourselves: this is an exception. This is temporary. This is not who we are.
But it is.
When I walk into courtrooms across this country, I see judges rubber-stamping removal orders in three-minute hearings. I see prosecutors arguing against due process like it’s an inconvenience. I see ICE agents wielding discretionary power like a weapon, locking people away for years without trial, without bond, without charge.
These aren’t bugs in the system. They are features.
The truth is, the immigration enforcement apparatus in this country has always existed just a few degrees off from authoritarianism. All it took was a president with no shame and a court with no spine to close the gap.
So no, Kilmar’s case isn’t an aberration. It’s not a glitch. It’s the logical conclusion of a system we’ve let harden around us for decades. A system that has always been about disappearing the inconvenient — especially when it can be done legally.
And when the targets expand — when it’s no longer just immigrants, but journalists, political opponents, tech workers, union organizers, activists — this system won’t need to be reinvented. It’ll already be humming.
Which is why we can’t rely on politicians to dismantle it. They built it.
If we want something different — something human, something democratic — we’ll have to build that ourselves.
From the ground up.
Together.
If They Can Move Us Like Packages…
The director of ICE stood at a podium last week and said the quiet part out loud.
“We ought to be able to deport people like Amazon delivers packages.”
It wasn’t a gaffe. It was a mission statement. This is the regime’s aspiration — an infrastructure of removal that’s frictionless, impersonal, and absolute. No trials. No names. No delays. Just scan, sort, and ship.
And the truth is, they’re getting closer every day.
But if they can do that — if they can design a system that mobilizes with algorithmic precision to erase people — then we can build one just as fast, just as targeted, and far more righteous to protect them.
Not a one-size-fits-all march. Not an open letter lost in the void. I’m talking about a different kind of machine — one powered by all of us, across every field, moving in sync.
Imagine it: a pediatrician in Phoenix, a coder in Austin, a union rep in Toledo, a law student in New York. Each plugged into a shared rhythm. Each able to act — quickly, specifically, from wherever they are. Not in chaos, but with coordination. Not reacting, but anticipating.
We’ve already seen the outlines. Tech workers forcing companies to drop government contracts. Professors organizing campus refusals. Doctors refusing to collaborate with surveillance programs. We just need to stitch those firebursts into something coherent. Repeatable. Scalable.
A system that moves pressure — real pressure — to exactly the right place, at exactly the right moment. That shows up in the inboxes of university presidents, in the Slack channels of Silicon Valley, in the back rooms of law firms, in the meeting notes of hospital boards. The kind of presence that can’t be ignored because it’s coming from inside the house.
We don’t need to outmatch their firepower. We just need to move smarter. Faster. With purpose.
We already have the talent. The knowledge. The infrastructure. It’s sitting in our inboxes, our calendars, our group chats. What we need now is connection. Coordination. And a shared commitment to act — not just as citizens, but as professionals. As people embedded inside the very institutions they’re trying to turn.
We’re not trying to save democracy with hashtags. We’re trying to build a muscle. One that knows how to move, when to move, and where to strike. One that doesn’t wait around for permission.
If they’ve built the Amazon Prime of authoritarianism, then it’s time we start building the resistance that can move just as fast.
Before they finish scanning the next label.
The Real Firewall: Built From Within
Every week, I hear the same quiet question in different forms: But what can I actually do?
Sometimes it comes from a nurse. Or a software engineer. Or a public school teacher. Sometimes it comes with guilt — like the person asking already believes the answer should involve getting arrested or quitting their job to go full-time activist.
But that’s not the kind of resistance we need right now. Or at least, not the only kind.
What we need is far more disruptive. And far more dangerous to the regime.
We need people exactly where they are — inside companies, inside schools, inside hospitals, inside government agencies — refusing to let those institutions become instruments of repression. Not alone. Not randomly. But together, strategically, in coordination with others who carry influence in those same spaces.
That’s what The Firewall means. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a living network of people committed to inoculating the circles they move in from complicity and collapse. From letting the fire spread. From becoming the next rubber stamp on a document that disappears someone’s father. Or bans a student protest. Or suppresses a study. Or signs a contract with ICE.
There is no neutral ground. If your workplace is pretending otherwise, that is your battleground.
You don’t need to be an expert in immigration law. You don’t need to know what to say — at first. What you need is the willingness to refuse. To speak. To reach out to someone else and ask: Can we do this together?
Because that’s how every real movement starts. Not in a blaze of glory. But in a moment of connection between two people who realize they are not alone.
If they want to turn every institution into a weapon, then every institution becomes a front line. And every professional inside becomes a potential firewall — if they choose to act.
No one is coming to save us from the outside. Not the courts. Not the candidates. And certainly not the cable news hosts.
It’s on us. Here. Now.
So ask yourself — what room are you already in? What influence do you already carry? What can you say that others can’t? What can you refuse to sign, or delay, or block, or escalate?
And who else in your orbit might be ready to do the same?
Because I promise you, they’re there. They’re just waiting for someone to say it out loud first.
Be that someone.
Stories Wanted: What Are They Doing Where You Are?
We’ve all seen the headlines. But what about the footnotes?
What’s happening in the Slack channels and faculty lounges? What’s being whispered in the HR departments, the board meetings, the nurses’ stations, the Zoom chats that aren’t recorded?
This movement isn’t just about Kilmar. It’s about the quiet normalization of repression in the places we call work. The emails from leadership that say nothing while everything burns. The sudden change in policies. The contracts quietly renewed. The words that aren’t said anymore in classrooms, or trainings, or press statements.
So I want to ask you directly — what are they doing where you are?
Has your company resumed work with ICE? Has your university issued new protest rules under the guise of “safety”? Is your hospital honoring deportation holds or feeding data to government systems? Is your union being pressured into silence? Are you seeing your colleagues frozen by fear, or leaning into power, or unsure what to do next?
I need to hear about it. We all do.
Send me your story. You can do it anonymously. Or publicly, if you’re ready. Because what we’re building here isn’t just a newsletter — it’s a map. And every single report helps us draw the shape of this moment, trace the pattern of the machine, and find the cracks where we can still apply pressure.
You are not just a witness. You are a signal. Your story is a flare someone else might be waiting for — so they know they’re not alone.
Start where you are. Tell us what they’re doing. And let’s make sure they’re not doing it unopposed.
The Line We Draw
Kilmar is still in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. The government has confirmed as much, in the flat language of an affidavit. He is “alive and secure,” they say.
As if that’s justice. As if the job is done.
But we know better now.
We’ve seen the trapdoor. We’ve watched the legal shell game. We’ve heard the bipartisan silence. We’ve followed the breadcrumbs through the court filings, the press briefings, the smirking executive orders. We know what this is.
This is a test.
Not for the system. For us.
Because the truth is, the system already passed its test. It was designed to survive autocracy by absorbing it. To accommodate power. To carry out orders. To disappear people efficiently, then move on to the next.
The only thing it can’t absorb is mass refusal.
That’s the line we draw.
Right here. Right now.
In our workplaces, our institutions, our fields. In the small conversations. The acts of courage. The emails not sent. The policies contested. The moments where one person says, “Not this. Not here.”
That’s where the firewall begins.
W.E.B. Du Bois once wrote,
“A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.”
He was right. And if we needed one more reminder, Kilmar’s case gave it to us.
So let this be the moment we stop waiting to be protected. Let this be the moment we become the protectors. Of each other. Of the vulnerable. Of the principles we say we believe in.
Because what starts with immigrants never ends with immigrants.
And the only thing standing between this regime and total impunity is you.
Your voice. Your choice. Your refusal.
Draw the line.
Postscript: Join Us Now
This isn’t the end of the conversation. It’s the beginning of a new kind of coordination — quiet, intentional, rooted in trust and shared purpose.
If what you just read resonated, here’s how you can plug in right away:
✴︎ Tell us what’s happening where you are. Whether it’s a contract you were asked to sign, a meeting that raised red flags, or something you overheard and can’t shake — we’re listening. Use this link to send it securely or respond here in confidence.
✴︎ Pass this along to five people you trust. Not just anyone. The ones who ask good questions. Who’ve been looking for a way in. Bring them here.
✴︎ Come to the organizing call Monday night at 7pm ET / 6pm CT / 4pm PT. We’re not building a protest — we’re building a structure. Join the scaffolding.
✴︎ Pitch in for Kilmar’s family. A contribution today helps cover groceries and rent — but it also sends a message: we stand by our people.
✴︎ Sign and share the petition demanding Congress send a bipartisan delegation to El Salvador to bring Kilmar home. Your voice isn’t rhetoric — it’s pressure. And pressure, right now, is exactly what we need.
✴︎ Share this piece across platforms. Visibility matters. So does reach. You know where your voice carries weight — use it.
The Firewall doesn’t grow by shouting louder. It grows by showing up, linking arms, and refusing to be moved.
Let’s get to work.
