When ‘dangerous criminals’ becomes ‘grab anyone available’

I have the luxury of being able to block out the news a lot. When my attention does turn toward it, I feel dissonance.

Of particular horror was reading about a 25-year-old disabled U.S. Veteran taken while at work on a farm. He was held for three days by ICE officials without any charges against him.

The massive change in U.S. immigration policy has been sold as a public-safety intervention: rapists, criminals, gang members, the ones who threaten our safety.
In practice, it’s producing mass interior sweeps that disproportionately detain non-criminal working people: gardeners, housekeepers, hotel workers, mothers walking their kids to school.
It’s a mismatch that weakens both justice and security.

Agents under pressure to meet numbers go where the resistance is low. That’s how an operation intended for dangerous offenders slides into street-level sweeps of peaceful workers.
We were told the raids were about violent criminals. The people taken were gardeners and nannies.

Adding to the Incongruence are masked men in unmarked cars; no warrant shown, no badge to see, grabbing people off the sidewalk and zip-tying them. From the curb it looks less like law enforcement and more like a kidnapping.
When enforcement hides behind masks and unmarked cars, no one can tell whether they’re witnessing justice or a crime.

Some of those taken turn out to be citizens. Others are legal residents, long-time contributors to our country.  When they’re released days later, the damage is already done: jobs lost, children terrified, the quiet trust between neighbors fractured.

Public rhetoric keeps saying we’re after the criminals.
The data say otherwise: ≈70% of the people ICE detains as of Sept 2025 have no criminal record.
The numbers don’t lie.

If the goal is safety, this isn’t it.
Safety wears a name tag. It shows a warrant. It doesn’t hide its face.
Safety goes after the people spreading crime and illegal drugs, the real criminals here illegally.
Yes, that takes more work to find them, but isn’t that the goal of all this money and manpower?
To get the bad guys, not the nannies and farmworkers.

I understand we need a better immigration system.
But this unjust practice of unidentified people grabbing others off the street is as close to fascism as I’ve ever seen in my life.
If the goal is public safety, secrecy and sweep tactics are the wrong tools.

Maybe the money spent on this terror would be better spent on immigration overhaul?