When federal immigration agents pounded on the door of his Minneapolis home, the oldest son in a family of 10 knew he had to move his siblings to a safer place.
Their mother, a 41-year-old Indigenous Ecuadorian office cleaner without a known criminal record besides minor traffic offenses, had been detained in early January because she entered the country illegally. Her eldest children feared they would be next, leaving behind their 5-month-old brother and six other children under 16 years old.
“The immigration agents were knocking on our door very late at night, and that’s when I became afraid,” said the 20-year-old son, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear additional family members could face deportation. “I’m afraid that I’ll be taken and my brothers and sisters will be in the hands of the government.”
“Being on the front line and what I have experienced and seen, I wish I would’ve never voted for him,” Martinez said. “What he’s doing, it’s not Christian. It’s not my beliefs.”
Whoops
Those are the people you are going to have to stand with to stop this. Get used to it.
Besides the obvious it’s also heartwarming to see an example of a change of heart. Someone who realized they were on the wrong side of their own moral code and switched to helping the victims.
Kids decades from now will read “The Diary of Ana Francisco”.
It feels like a good time to remind people that resistance isn’t just being in the streets. Historically, a lot of it has been sheltering and hiding people deemed undesirables by the state for their safety.
