When they come for you
What's your deportable offense?
You might think I would be worried. After all, my 2015 year-in-review was titled "Year of the Arsonist," the arsonist being Mr. Trump. It was illustrated by a photo of the 1933 Reichstag fire.
I have been no kinder since. Thus you might wonder when I will be dragged off to a torture prison in El Salvador.
Why would our bold, world-straddling ruler be concerned with an obscure scribbler? He recently slighted the country of Lesotho, which he said no one ever heard of. (He routinely assumes that everyone else is as ignorant as he.) I heard of it, which officially makes me nobody.
Still, I'm the sort of person who gets shot in a movie for not keeping my head down. Trump may have started with Venezuelans, but sooner or later he'll move on to disrespectful gringos.
I am probably safe as long as famous people like Rachel Maddow are not being purged; but at any moment, any of us could become desaparecido at the whim of Trump's zealots.
Making people disappear for disagreeing with a wannabe tyrant would be a blatant violation of the First Amendment. But constitutional niceties are not a concern for this lawless regime.
There is something that makes some people determined to control others. I know trans women in Nairobi who have been arrested for wearing women's clothes. I cannot believe Donald wants to be outdone by the president of Kenya.
You may counter that what someone chooses to wear is no conceivable threat to anyone. I am sorry, but if you think Trump can be persuaded with facts and reason, you must think Greenland belongs to Denmark, and Canada is an independent country. By the time you come to your senses, I may have been given a free ride across the Gulf of America.
Lesotho is a lovely country. This does not matter to Trump, who thinks anything he doesn't know is either irrelevant or a shit hole. Please excuse my vulgarity, but I am discussing high matters of state.
I doubt that Trump could find El Salvador on a map any more than he could find Lesotho. Which I guess is fine with him, since he has no interest in getting back any of the people he ordered abducted and removed from our blessed land of liberty. I have no tattoos at all, incidentally, but that would likely be taken as proof that I am concealing my sinister intentions.
Were you aware, by the way, that it was a deportable offense to have a tattoo? Trump invents entire laws out of his fevered brain, just as he declassifies documents by thinking about them.
He apparently thinks his 2024 election victory allows him to blame everything on Kamala Harris. That makes no sense; but who am I to have an opinion?
As a former federal employee who took an oath to defend the Constitution, I appear to have a clearer understanding on that subject than members of Trump's cabinet. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said we don't want legal immigrants writing op-eds critical of the president. He deems it appropriate for masked men to abduct people off the street and drag them to prison with no due process.
Trump often hurls charges of treason at his Democratic opponents. But he has also directed the charge at Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official in his first administration, for criticizing him, and ordered the DOJ to investigate him.
Former Trump defense lawyer Alina Habba, now acting U.S. attorney of New Jersey, has threatened Gov. Phil Murphy over immigration enforcement.
This is getting scary.
Large crowds gathered in cities across the country on April 5 to protest what this administration is doing. The sight of hard-won rights and earned benefits being snatched away has mobilized the public and given the lie to Trump's absurd claim that his 49.8% popular vote plurality gave him a sweeping mandate for the wreckage now underway.
Americans are witnessing a truly sinister attack on our nation from within — in service of oligarchs — and they don't like it. The habit of speaking our minds is too ingrained to be snuffed out so easily.
I understand the talk about fleeing overseas, and do not fault others who make that choice. Many, however, do not have that option. As for me, I cannot surrender freedoms for which generations have fought. Indeed, millions of Americans getting their backs up and refusing to bow to tyranny may be all that can save our republic.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].
Copyright © 2025 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.