In Solidarity

I am not working today, in solidarity with the National Shutdown and victims of ICE violence. I decided to use some of this time to elucidate why I am choosing to take part.

ICE has recently killed a few US citizens including Alex Pretti, Renee Good, and Keith Porter Jr. This alone is terrifying and tragic, and deserves a national response. I’m heartened to see the country respond to these murders with outrage; it means we still value safety and human life.

Although this national shutdown was spurred by some of the most visible abuses of ICE authority, I feel it is important to be clear that the murders of US citizens are not the only reasons I am resisting ICE. The activities of ICE this past year have been outrageous and inhumane, and I am appalled by their choice to terrorize the US population, both citizens and non-citizens alike.

The Trump administration has made it a priority to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. I reject the assertion that undocumented immigrants are a threat to our nation. People who fear (or want to stoke fear of) undocumented immigrants will frequently cite isolated cases who are both undocumented and violent criminals. I don’t deny that such people exist, but it is blatantly incorrect to claim that a significant portion of undocumented people in the US are criminals in any way beyond immigration law. The truth is that undocumented people in the US are simply humans, and deserve to be treated as such. Herding them into concentration camps where they face significant threats to their health and life is not humane treatment, no matter what crimes they may have committed. Using children as bait is not humane treatment, nor sound policing practice. Ripping families apart for the sake of immigration status is not humane treatment.

Those who support ICE activity must believe that the alleged offenses of undocumented immigrants warrant the violent and disproportionate response from the federal government. They must believe that undocumented immigrants pose a significant national threat to security, and that a significant military response is the only viable option to restore peace and order. To this I ask: where is the proof? Violent crime rates have been falling in most urban areas for years. What justification is there to suggest that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately contributing to crime in the US, violent or otherwise?

Alternatively, opponents of undocumented immigrants might believe that immigrants are avoiding taxes, which justifies the acts of cruelty committed against them. You know who else doesn’t pay taxes? Amazon, Nike, and FedEx. Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk’s net worth is likely greater than all combined undocumented immigrants detained by ICE in 2025¹. If he can avoid taxes with no repercussions, surely undocumented immigrants can be left to live in peace.

A final hypothesis is that supporters of ICE believe that the simple act of existing as an undocumented immigrant is a sufficiently heinous crime as to justify detention, violence, and deportation. I have no rebuttal, other than to ask: why? It seems to be a willfully ahistorical view of political timescales to suggest that being an undocumented immigrant in 2026 deserves detention and the threat of death, whereas being an undocumented settler in the 1700s deserved praise, legitimacy, and wealth.

ICE’s actions have been nothing short of cruel, vicious, and terrorizing. Their goal has ostensibly been to sow fear throughout the US, both for undocumented and documented residents alike. They are hurting people in unjustifiable ways. This must end. A national shutdown is a start. We must continue to resist federal terror enacted by ICE.

¹Elon Musk’s net worth is currently placed at $776 billion USD. The median income for a US household in 2022 was $193,000 USD. It’s a little hard to get accurate statistics on how many people are detained by ICE in any given period of time, and ICE’s own statistics seem to lag (for example, they show only 66,886 detentions in Fiscal Year 2025 compared to 277,913 detentions in Fiscal Year 2024), and there appear to be different ways of counting ICE detentions. Let’s round up from FY2024 and assume around 300,000 people were detained in 2025. If we generously assume that every detained person has the median household net worth (an unlikely assumption given that being undocumented comes with significant financial challenges), that would place the total “net worth detained by ICE” (NWDBI) at around $57.9 billion USD, at least 10x lower than Elon Musk’s net worth.