ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- The ICE raids are about race. They're fueled by racism. And they're supported by racists.

Pro-MAGA Americans can deny these ugly truths all they want, but it won't make them any less true.

By the way, the last thing the immigration crackdown is about is law and order. The Trump administration isn't even on speaking terms with that concept. How could it be with President Donald Trump dishing out pardons to the rich and powerful if the scofflaws buy cryptocurrency from the Trump crime family? Besides, what does a quaint concept like "law and order" mean when federal immigration agents -- and those who impersonate them -- are violating the Constitution?

As the saying goes, the fish rots from the head. Trump set the tone way back in June 2015 when he -- as part of his formal announcement that he was running for president -- maligned Mexican migrants as rapists, criminals and drug traffickers.

Later, once he was elected president, he would eventually pardon individuals who fit in all those categories.

And there is another reason why Americans were bound to get here. An immigration crackdown including mass deportations that makes America white again is one of the few campaign promises that Trump seems to have delivered on. The president reneged on his pledges to reduce inflation, lower gas prices, return tariff revenue to voters, stay out of foreign wars, lower the national debt, help farmers and end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

All of that went out the window. But, hey, at least the great immigrant purge is right on schedule.

That suits just fine those who want the ICE raids to turn back the demographic clock and return white people to the top of the heap.

Consider the elderly white male and Facebook "friend" who, shortly after the raids started, wrote a post approving of them and expressing his hope that, if they continue, we could return to the good ol' days when "you didn't have to push 1 for English."

Good luck, pal. We're not going back there until you and yours are willing to do your own chores.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration's immigration enforcement agenda has become a witch's brew of the unlawful, the untruthful, the unfocused and the unhinged. And, as it boils, it emits a foul odor that is distinctively un-American.

It's no wonder that, according to a recent poll by The Economist/YouGov, the confidence that Americans have in ICE has melted away. Among respondents, 11% have only a little confidence in ICE and 42% have no confidence at all. A distinct minority -- only 22% -- of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in ICE.

That last figure is disturbing. But it sounds about white. A perusal of social media shows that ICE raids -- which began in Los Angeles in June 2025 -- are the ultimate racial Rorschach test. To a large degree, what you see depends on what color you are.

The stench has worsened since it came to light recently that federal immigration agents who were marauding through Los Angeles last year used racial slurs as they hunted for suspected undocumented immigrants (read: anyone who looked Latino).

We know this because the taxpayers who funded the hunt finally got a look at text messages that were exchanged between the agents, which were included in a new court filing by plaintiffs who are asking a federal judge to stop agents from racial profiling.

Agents casually used words like "wet" (shorthand for wetback) and "tonks" (referring to the sound of a flashlight or another blunt object cracking a migrant's skull) as they went about the highly sophisticated "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" process of deciding who to approach, pull over, question and arrest in the sweep.

The filings are part of a case that has become notorious among the countless legal challenges to the Trump crackdown -- Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem. Lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the raids, arguing that agents continued an "ongoing campaign of suspicionless and discriminatory detentive stops" throughout Central California -- even after last year's showy and high-profile raids in Los Angeles tapered off.

Overseeing the case is U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, who has heroically tried to untangle the government's web of abuses, shortcuts and deceptions. She ordered months of discovery, including body camera footage and depositions of agents -- precisely the kind of evidence that the Trump administration doesn't want us to see.

Every day, more and more of that wrongdoing is in plain view. And, as Americans, we can't afford to look away.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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