“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Leviticus 19:33-34
What happened to Marisa and her daughters in Oklahoma City is nothing short of outrageous. Imagine waking up to a bunch of armed federal agents busting down your door, dragging you and your kids outside in the pouring rain-barely dressed-while they tear your house apart. And for what? The people they were looking for didn’t even live there anymore. Marisa and her family had just moved in. She told the agents they were U.S. citizens, but they didn’t care. They took their phones, their laptops, even their life savings, then left them standing there with nothing. No apology, no explanation, no way to get their stuff back. That’s not law enforcement; that’s intimidation, plain and simple.
A search warrant isn’t supposed to be a blank check for agents to do whatever the hell they want. It’s supposed to be specific. If you’re going to storm into someone’s home, you’d better be damn sure you’ve got the right people. But these agents didn’t bother. Maybe they were in a hurry, maybe they just didn’t care, or maybe they saw a Hispanic family and figured close enough. Either way, it’s a disgrace. This is how innocent people get traumatized, and how trust in the system gets shattered.
Why did it go down like this? Honestly, it reeks of a system that’s lost any sense of restraint. Maybe it’s pressure from the top to make big, flashy arrests. Maybe it’s a culture where agents think they’ll never be held accountable, so they cut corners and ignore the rules. Or maybe it’s just plain old prejudice, with agents assuming anyone with brown skin must be the suspect. Whatever the reason, it’s a sign that something is seriously broken.
The fallout from this kind of raid is bigger than just one family. It sends a message to every minority family in the country: you’re not safe, even if you’re a citizen, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. That’s how you breed fear and resentment. That’s how you push a country closer to authoritarianism, where the government can do whatever it wants and the rest of us are just supposed to take it. We can’t let this slide. The people responsible need to be held to account, and the system needs to change-before this becomes the new normal.
Right-wing media has been pouring gasoline on these kinds of federal raids for years, hyping up fears about “illegals” and “criminals” supposedly overrunning the country. They cheerlead for aggressive ICE tactics, frame every botched raid as a necessary evil, and treat stories like Marisa’s as either collateral damage or, worse, as justified because of who the victims are. When the targets are brown, immigrant, or have a “foreign-sounding” name, the narrative is that law enforcement is just doing its job-never mind the facts or the actual names on the warrant. This kind of coverage doesn’t just excuse government overreach; it encourages it, giving agencies political cover to act with impunity and ignore basic standards of justice.
Ask yourself a direct question: if the family in Oklahoma City had been white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant-your stereotypical “WASP” nuclear family-this story would have played out very differently, both on the ground and in the media. Picture federal agents busting down the door of a well-off suburban family, dragging them out in their underwear, stealing their phones and life savings, and leaving them in the rain. The outrage would be immediate and deafening. Fox News would be running wall-to-wall coverage about “government tyranny” and “jackbooted thugs.” Right-wing pundits would be demanding resignations, congressional hearings, and lawsuits. The family would be on every morning show, and politicians would trip over themselves to apologize and promise justice.
But when it happens to a Hispanic family, the story barely makes a ripple outside local news and left-leaning outlets. The right-wing media either ignores it, downplays it, or spins it as a regrettable but understandable mistake in the “war on illegal immigration.” There’s a deep double standard at play, and it’s not subtle. The system is rigged to treat minority families as suspects first and citizens second-if at all. When the government screws up, the victims are expected to just take it, and the media machine shrugs its shoulders or, worse, blames the victims for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This isn’t just about one raid gone wrong. It’s about a culture that’s been shaped by years of fearmongering and scapegoating, where the suffering of minorities is either invisible or, to some, a sign the system is “working.”
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
