By Anthony Arroyo, Des Moines
ICE is a continuation of America’s oldest tradition: state-sanctioned violence against people of color, especially Latinos. It grows out of a history that has always needed someone to be labeled alien, invader, criminal, deportable. Language becomes a weapon. Once a group is reduced to a threat, their humanity becomes optional.
For decades, the United States depended on Mexican labor. It invited workers when it needed cheap hands and disposable bodies. It allowed people to work but not to belong. It radicalized labor while criminalizing the laborer. The system was designed so people could be used, exhausted, and then erased. Not welcomed. Not protected. Just tolerated until they weren’t.
My dad’s name is Raul.
Raul is from a small mountain town in Oaxaca, Mexico. He truly came from nothing. When he was 10, his father died. He became the only man left in the house. Childhood ended early. Survival started early. He stopped going to school in 9th grade because survival doesn’t wait for diplomas.
At 17, in 1996, he came to the United States. Not because he wanted to break laws. Because he wanted a future. Because poverty and grief and responsibility don’t leave you many choices.
He crossed the border many times. His stories are terrifying even though he tells them with a joking tone. Getting caught by Border Patrol. Lying about his name. Cutting his fingers so they couldn’t take his prints. Being handed off from coyotes to cartels to be transported. Packing into the back of a semi truck to cross. Working fields in Tijuana for months just to save enough money to try again. His life before 25 was harder than most people will ever understand. Survival was the priority. Fighting for a better life was the goal.
He filed for his papers in 1997. Got his green card in 2000. Became a citizen in 2005. I joke with him that his life got boring after that. But what that really means is for the first time, he could finally breathe.
Raul is one of the most special people I know. He’s my dad and we’ve had our growing pains as father and son but the older I got the more I understood him. He smiles brighter than most and laughs a lot. Even after everything he’s been through, he carved out his version of the American Dream. He worked multiple jobs and the ones I remember were from being a cook at Fazolis, Applebees, Country Kitchen, doing random side jobs on the weekend, and being at the same construction company for over two decades. He built his own concrete business. He always has a side project going at home. He creates. He provides. He shows up to do the work even when no one is looking.
My dad came to this country undocumented. He worked hard. He was taken advantage of because of his status. The system benefited from his fear and his silence, even after he was documented. And some of you still think he doesn’t deserve to be here.
That’s the cruelty of ICE logic. It ignores history. It ignores labor. It ignores sacrifice. It ignores the reality that this country was built on people like my dad — invited into spaces when useful, disposed of when inconvenient.
If you think my dad doesn’t belong here, then you don’t understand what America actually is. You don’t deserve him. And you don’t deserve the millions like him who carried this country on their backs while being told they were less than.
ICE isn’t about safety. It’s about power and control. It’s about deciding whose life is disposable. My dad’s life was never disposable. Neither is anyone else’s.
