This Place, This Time
Across the country, we are witnessing a surge in federal immigration enforcement. Agents are detaining people at workplaces, courthouses, and even during wellness checks. Families are being torn apart with little regard for due process or human dignity.
The scenes are chaotic and heartbreaking. However, these anti-immigrant policies are not new. Even the feelings I’m experiencing now are familiar.
As an artist, I feel compelled to document this moment. Yet even sharing publicly gives me pause. I feel paranoid that my words or work could be weaponized. In an attempt at nihilistic optimism, I write this.
Through my decolonizing journey, I’ve learned to see through the fallacies that uphold colonial systems. Not every migration story is as “lucky” as my family’s. Within the model minority myth, we are portrayed as having done it “the right way.”
That is a lie. It is a “pick-me” propaganda mantra—a way for some of us to feel pride or superiority over others. But the truth is, there is no right way. There never was.
What I do know is this: as a first-generation daughter of immigrants, granddaughter of immigrants, and now wife of an immigrant, I have seen this truth proven again and again. This country is hostile, violent, and relentless. The immigrants who risk everything to build a life here are often the outliers in their home countries. They carry extraordinary grit, tenacity, and willpower — not just to survive, but to thrive.
Both of my grandparents had the courage to take the gamble and pursue their version of the so-called “American Dream.” They uprooted their families and raised them here in search of a better life. My parents met as a result of those choices. I am here because of that.
I see the impossible odds my family faced. They arrived and made a home in one of the poorest counties in the country. They sacrificed and built something out of nothing. Even my father’s decision to join the military was shaped by predatory recruitment targeting low-income Black and Brown communities.
As a veteran of the 82nd Airborne, disillusionment deepened this week when Trump gave a partisan speech at Fort Bragg, with young 82nd Airborne paratroopers standing and cheering behind him. That moment shattered the military’s supposed neutrality—its oath to the Constitution above party, above president.
Another myth collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Another truth that can no longer be unseen.
It feels like all the tethers are unraveling. Like many of you, I’ve seen this coming. I’ve felt it for years. And still, I grieve for my parents—for the version of so-called America they believed in, the one I have never known. Now they are being forced to see it through my eyes. It feels cruel. It feels necessary. And in a bittersweet way, it feels like a strange kind of validation. We are no longer living in two separate realities. The timelines have finally synced.
I wake up each morning with a pull toward despair, but I choose every single day to reach for hope. That fight resides in the immigrant mentality, in the hustle, in the belief that something better is possible and that, through sheer will, it can be made real and tangible. This belief was forged in my parents' and grandparents’ minds and passed down to me.
As a child, my father told me I would have to work twice as hard as my peers. Once, for being a minority. And again, because I am a woman. That was my burden to carry, and he was right. Life has often felt like an uphill battle. I push the weight forward, only to feel it fall back against me again. Hard. Relentless. At times, unjust.
So I write this in defiance. I write this again in what I call nihilistic optimism.
Since the beginning of this year, my senses have been painfully heightened. I often feel frozen in place, stuck in a state of analysis paralysis, replaying history and forecasting consequences. I am tired. I sometimes feel absurd for creating art at all these times.
I offer this not for sympathy, but in honesty. It is a mirror, and in that reflection, I recognize the privilege I hold. I know where I stand within the system, and the ways it still protects me.
I have tools that many are denied—language, access, education, and a platform. These are not badges, but responsibilities. These privileges don’t exempt me from harm, but they remind me not to confuse my pain with the erasure of others.
And so, I create because it keeps me present, accountable, and human.
It is how I hold space for the grief, the rage, and the contradictions that shape us. Through creation, I remember that survival is an act of resistance, but survival alone is not enough.
I want more than survival. I want us to thrive — for my community, our communities, and the Land itself to live without fear or the false walls that separate us. I want us to walk freely, without being measured or limited by systems designed to keep us small or invisible. I want us to feel the sun on our skin without suspicion, and I want our children to inherit a joy that is whole.
I know that may sound idealistic. But not more idealistic than the so-called “American Dream,” my grandparents and parents were sold.
I believe in the clarity that truth brings. I believe in naming things for what they are, even when it unsettles me, especially when it unsettles me.
I love my people. I love this land. Though it is not my homeland, it holds memories of my ancestors, our more-than-human kin, and the seeds, foods, and traditions that moved together across borderless plains, migrating up and down this route, long before colonization.
I love too deeply to stay silent. The fascist dream ends here. Fuck your borders. Fuck I.C.E. And Fuck Donald Trump too.
Free the land, free ourselves. From Palestine to Turtle Island, from Yanaguana to Boca Chica, where the same water reaches the shores of my homelands on the other side.
With you,
