Being in the Wrong Place While Brown

We must declare: Enough!

We are done asking for permission to exist.

For too long, being brown in America has been treated like a condition to be cured — something to defend, to prove, to justify. We are told that borders protect, that agents serve, that violence keeps peace. But what kind of peace strips mothers from children and terrorizes citizens born under the same flag it claims to defend?

For generations, brown bodies in America have navigated a gauntlet of suspicion, where our skin, our surnames, our very presence serve as warrants for interrogation. We are U.S. citizens—born here, raised here, taxed here—yet ICE agents treat us as invaders in our own land. They call it enforcement. We call it state-sanctioned hostility.

This administration has weaponized our skin tone as a pretext for control. The Trump administration, reelected and emboldened, has unleashed a machinery of cruelty that detains the documented, terrorizes the citizenry, and fractures families under the banner of "security." Being brown is now probable cause. Existing while Latino is now a crime.

Let’s name the violence. Javier Ramirez, a California citizen, flashed his U.S. passport on June 12, 2025—agents screamed "Get him. He's Mexican!" and hauled him away anyway. Julian Cardenas suffered worse: dragged through a shattered car window in San Pedro, head slammed into concrete, neck knelt upon, denied medical care or family for three agonizing days. Mubashir, a Somali-American in Minneapolis, tackled into snow during his lunch break in December, head locked and handcuffed, parched and untreated even after fingerprints proved his citizenship. Elzon Lemus, yanked from his car in New York for "looking Hispanic." Chanthila Souvannarath, deported to Laos despite a federal court order, his U.S. citizenship via parental naturalization ignored. These are not outliers. These are the faces of systemic assault. The tally that shames a nation.

ProPublica documents over 170 U.S. citizens detained by ICE since January 2025 alone—more than 20 held for days without lawyers or kin, nearly 20 American children caged alongside. Congressional probes in December confirm the mistreatment: dragging, kicking, racial profiling of Tribal members in Arizona and New Mexico, Somali communities in Minnesota. Total ICE detentions hit record highs—61,226 by August 23—but citizens like us vanish into the count, untracked by a government that claims no responsibility. The Senate's Homeland Security report decries "Unchecked Authority," yet the raids multiply. And yet, here we are — millions strong, hands cracked from work that sustains this land. Nearly one in five Americans is Hispanic now. We build the homes, harvest the food, teach the kids, heal the sick, fill the ranks, and still — we are questioned for belonging. When will it be enough? When will we be enough?

This administration's policies don't miss; they target. Raids sweep barrios from Chicago apartments to borderlands, separating U.S.-born kids from parents, medical neglect starving detainees in shadows. We, the Hispanic and Latino heart of this country, feel the fury boil over—the overwhelming rage of watching brothers and sisters, citizens all, brutalized for the sin of brownness. The violence is too much. The indifference, eternal. But fury without focus is futile. We channel it into revolt.

We are not calling for destruction — we are calling for reckoning.

We rise not with fists, but with unbreakable unity. Ostentatious, unapologetic, flooding streets and screens with our truth. No more whispers. We declare war on silence.

Organize relentlessly. Form colonia blocs, in every city along the Rio Grande. Coalitions of the colored, the citizen, the contributor—making ICE's shadow impossible to cast alone.

Document ferociously. Film every stop, every sneer. Turn phones into weapons, stories into statutes. Our testimonies topple towers of denial.

Vote like thunder. One in five is power. Flood polls in 2026 midterms, 2028 generals—bury neglect in ballots. No abstention. No excuse.

Protect without pause. Neighborhood watches, legal hotlines, mutual aid funds. When the state fails, we shield our own—fiercely, familially.

Create without end. Use art as armor: slam poetry in plazas, murals on checkpoints, podcasts pulsing with our pulse. Embrace your culture and joy.

This revolt calls attention—peaceful parades shutting highways, flash mobs at detention centers, Spanglish symphonies drowning out dehumanization. We stand with migrants not despite our papers, but because our papers prove the lie: no border divides humanity. Solidarity spans statuses. We are the same brown under the same boot.

The line is crossed. The fury has peaked. But we are not victims; we are vanguards. This administration sought to shrink us; we expand. From South Texas soil to the national spine, we rewrite the narrative. Being in the wrong place while brown? No. America is in the wrong era of blindness—and we are the light it fears.

We will not vanish. We will not cower. We will not comply.

One unbreakable will.

Rise. Revolt. Restore.

The brown wave breaks now. Brown skin is no longer our individual burden — it is America’s collective shame. And we are rewriting the story, one voice, one street, one act of resistance at a time.

@Janie

@alvarezjanie

Copyright © 2025 Janie Alvarez for FRONTeras.

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