Masked men, with or without uniforms, with or without warrants, using excessive force and detaining people at random from the streets.
Immigrants in the United States have effectively been outlawed.
Last week, we were confronted with the killing of Renee Good, a woman who was present as a legal observer during ICE raids. She was shot and killed, a bullet to her face. A doctor on the scene who tried to help her was prevented from reaching her. Her three children are left without their mother.
The propaganda machine of the Republican Party quickly went into motion. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, immediately referred to Good as a “domestic terrorist.”
The statements made by J.D. Vance sent chills down my spine. “Officers acting in line with their orders enjoy absolute immunity.”
Absolute immunity. The law no longer prevails; Trump’s orders do. This is fascism. We can no longer deny it.
In the Netherlands and across Europe, we are not the United States. Thank goodness. But here, too, we see migrants and minorities being systematically dehumanized.
They are turned into scapegoats, and the tone is hardening. In the Netherlands as well, politicians speak of “criminalizing assistance to undocumented people,” “replacement theories,” and “remigration.”
Let us remain aware of this growing societal hardening. And let us defend the rights and freedoms of minorities as if they were our own. An attack on the freedom of one is an attack on the freedom of us all.