Letter to the editor: Hiding the neighbor's kids

First published in the Brunswick Beacon, 10.23.25

On Sept. 19, Rev. David Black, wearing his minister’s collar, prayed with his arms raised to heaven at an ICE facility in Chicago. “I invited them to repent,” Black said. An ICE agent shot Black in the head with a pepper ball. Video of the shooting went viral.

At 1 a.m. on Sept. 30, armed federal agents rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters onto a Chicago apartment building. They stormed through the building, kicked down doors and lobbed flash bang grenades. Residents described how agents zip-tied screaming children ripped from their parents’ arms.

One man heard a knock on his door. It was a mother and her 7-year-old daughter, begging for help. “I didn’t want them to take her,” he said. “I gave her my bedroom, and told her, ‘Just stay there, stay quiet.’” He opened his door, he said, and ICE agents shouted at him to “shut my door, get the f--k inside, and don’t open my door again.”

TV news has shocking images we never thought we’d see in America. Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump last year, has seen enough. “I did not ever anticipate seeing that on TV on a regular basis,” said Rogan on his Oct. 9 podcast, “No one with a heart is going to go along with that.”

“I really thought they were just going to go after the criminals,” Rogan added. “But if you’ve been here for 25 years, you have a family, your kids go to school, you speak the language, you’re a contributing member of the community, and then all of a sudden, you ship them to a country where they haven’t been since they were four, you’re not going to get any reasonable people to wanna go along with that.”

Rogan’s guest and frequent collaborator Duncan Trussell said it shows that “once authoritarianism starts creeping in, it makes some inroads, which it’s definitely making right now.”

Are you OK with this?

Michael Rush

Leland