02/13/2025
I came home last night and wept.
Stunned and sad and wrung out.
It is happening here, she said.
Here in bucolic New Hampshire.
ICE agents sweeping in. With masks and guns and tactical gear.
Rounding up refugees and immigrants.
Putting them in panel vans and carting them away.
To prisons.
Without warrants. Without cause.
Except maybe because of their brown skin. Or their accent.
Or because they were on a smoking break outside a Mexican restaurant.
Documented. Undocumented. We’ll sort that out. Later. Maybe. Someday. In prison. Or in court. Or maybe not.
Families town apart.
Terrorized.
Even those with visas, those with their documents in order, are terrified to go to the grocery store.
For fear that they won’t come home.
This is happening, friends.
You want to avert your eyes. You want to pretend it’s not happening, but it is.
In my back yard.
In yours too.
Huddled in the relative safety of a church sanctuary, I listened in disbelief as this representative from an immigrants and refugees alliance - with over thirty years of experience - described a landscape frightening and foreign even to her.
In some areas of the country, construction has come to a halt, restaurants have shuttered, landscape companies have closed, and fields are empty.
Because people are afraid to go to work. Or are being disappeared.
The Spanish-American philosopher, poet, and essayist, George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
What is happening now has happened before.
The rounding up of people. The forced disappearances. The fear of stepping outside. The terror of a knock at the door.
This is how it begins.
In the early years of N**i Germany, before the world understood the horror, the SS was already at work.
What started as Hitler’s personal guard became an instrument of terror.
They arrested political opponents. Silenced dissenters. Rounded up Jews, trade unionists, intellectuals. They patrolled the streets. Enforced racial purity laws. Raided homes. Filled prisons. Always with legal justification. Always with the veneer of order.
Ordinary people watched as neighbors vanished. Some justified it. Some whispered their disapproval. Most looked away.
And so it escalated.
Now, here, in our own time, the pattern repeats.
Look.
See.
Name it.
Call it out.
Speak about it. Write about it. Say the words others are too afraid to say.
Call your representatives. Flood their offices with letters, emails, and phone calls. Tell them you see what’s happening. Tell them you will not stand by.
Advocate. Show up. Stand with those who are being hunted.
Donate if you can. Support organizations working on the ground. Help immigrant communities in whatever way you’re able. A meal. A ride. A safe place to rest.
Do something.
But whatever you do—
Don’t avert your eyes.
