This Time of Siege
A detailed look at Trump’s sweeping deportation policies. What are we witnessing?
You can’t do it, I squeak from inside.
You can’t make me feel at home here
in this time of siege for me and mine, mi raza.
Legalized suspicion of my legitimacy
is now a permanent resident in my gut.
— from “ICE Agents Storm My Porch” by Maria Melendez Kelson
Imagine you’re Syed Jamal. Fifty years old. Kansas chemistry instructor. You’re standing in your own front yard, about to take your daughter to school, when ICE swoops in to arrest you. Your wife tries to hug you before you’re whisked away and ICE threatens to cuff her, too, for interfering with an arrest. You sit in a jail some 160 miles away from your family. You have lived in the United States for close to 30 years.
That’s just one story from the frontlines of the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation policy, taking place right now, affecting scores of people and warranting barely a peep in our national conversation — with the exception of a few news stories bubbling to the forefront of our attention.
Context is important. Consider first that, yes, deportations increased under Barack Obama. But that was partly…
