This Isn’t a Warning. It’s a Reminder.

Mass deportations target more than bodies. They target memory, culture, and belonging—until there’s nothing left to pass on.

My great-grandfather immigrated from Mexico to California in the early 1900s to pick oranges. He worked the groves with his hands, his silence, and the unspoken understanding that he was useful—until he wasn’t.

In the 1940s, the U.S. launched the Bracero Program, inviting Mexican laborers like my great grandfather to fill the postwar workforce. The program promised protection and fair wages. But it often delivered exploitation—and, when no longer convenient, deportation.

Then came Operation Wetback. In 1954, the U.S. government forcibly removed more than a million people. Legal residents. U.S. citizens. Entire families. Rounded up, put on trucks, trains, boats—deported without hearings, without rights, without warning.

We weren’t taught this in school. But we lived the aftermath.

My grandparents, aunts, and uncles were discouraged from speaking Spanish. English was survival. So they passed it down like gold—while our culture was quietly stripped away.

My mother refused to stay quiet. As a teen, she walked out of her high school during the Chicano Power Movement, demanding better education and equal rights. My father marched with César Chávez, standing beside farmworkers during the grape boycott. He never ate another grape for the rest of his life.

Their resistance taught me something important: survival isn’t the absence of danger—it’s the presence of courage.

Years later, I worked with undocumented immigrants every day, line cooks, dishwashers, busboys, and janitors. They opened kitchens, closed them down, held two or three jobs, and kept entire businesses running. They loved their families fiercely and lived with quiet, constant fear.

They weren’t the threat. But they were always the target.

In recent weeks, Los Angeles has seen a rise in ICE sweeps. People are disappearing from their homes. Families are skipping work, hiding in place, staying silent.

The fear is back. But it never fully left.

This isn’t some far-off possibility we need to guard against. It’s a pattern. A playbook.
The U.S. has done this before. And we are doing it again.

The last few days news has played in the background ant our house—another story about ICE raids. My daughter cooed on my lap as I whispered Spanish words into her ear. Not fluent. Not perfect. But mine. And hers. A language passed down in fragments, reclaimed in lullabies. My grandmother was punished for speaking it. My parents were told not to teach it. And I refuse to let silence be her inheritance.

When she asks one day what we did, I want her to know:
We remembered.
We spoke.
We stood up.

This isn’t a warning. It’s a reminder. And I won’t let history repeat itself without a fight.

If this story resonates, share it. Remember it. Talk about it. Because forgetting is how it happens again.