December 31, 2025
A Gazette Editorial
They’re an American man, woman or child. They’ve been here for their whole life or maybe their family has lived here for generations. They have a job or they’re unemployed, they’re rich or they’re poor. They have no HS Diploma or they have a Post Graduate Degree. They’ve never been in trouble, they got a speeding ticket a decade ago, or they’ve been a blessing to their community.
It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now is they’re a 2nd Class Citizen. They’re liable to be profiled because, in the subjective opinion of a heavily armed person wearing a full face mask and claiming to be a government employee, they don’t seem American. Maybe it’s their skin color, or the language they’re overheard speaking that made them a target. Or maybe they were speaking perfect American English, but with a perceived accent. Or they were just going about their business, taking the kids to school, or grocery shopping. The government has targeted them. Our government. Our fellow citizens.
Stopped by the anti-immigration police, they’re ordered to prove they’re here legally. Sometimes these “show me your papers” stops end badly. The identification they carry is dismissed as fake by the ICE officers. They’re taken into custody, even while crying out, “I’m a citizen!!!”
George Retes is an American citizen and an Iraq War veteran. In the YouTube video above, he describes how ICE detained him for three days. His is just one horror story, but because Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh gave ICE a green light to profile people, tens of millions of Americans can be targeted by ICE based on their physical appearance, accent, or line of work. In order to hopefully avoid being taken into custody or maybe even disappeared completely, Americans are taking their passport along when they pick up their children from school or do their grocery shopping. Since when is this OK? A government that today makes people who look or talk a certain way subject to being taken because an officer has a quota to meet, can take anyone tomorrow. Don’t think that the 2nd Class citizen is always going to be somebody else. If we grant the government this power, it can be turned against anyone. And History tells us that it WILL be.
The Gazette encourages readers to call or write their Senators and Representative. Let them know that in these United States we won’t tolerate 2nd Class citizenship, and demand the immediate end of so-called “Kavanaugh Stops” and ethnic profiling by Federal law enforcement.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” ~ Justice Sonia Sotomayor
photo via @DEANEWYORKDiv
