Chicago's Mujeres Latinas en Acción has been supporting and uplifting women for over 50 years
The mission is to empower Latinas by providing services that reflect their values and culture.
"Mujeres Latinas en Acción started after the Civil Rights movement, during the farmworkers' fight in California and the western part of the country — as well as being a result of the women's movement here in this country," said Linda Tortolero, president and chief executive officer of Mujeres Latinas en Acción.
The organization also advocates for issues that make a difference in women's lives.
Mujeres supports domestic violence and sexual assault victims, and also offers programs that focus on parenting, education, and women's business development. All of it was recently celebrated in a documentary, "Mujeres Latinas en Acción: A Story 50 Years in the Making."
Tortolero said when Mujeres was founded in 1973, the founders noticed a lot of runaway youth in the community — and domestic violence in their homes.
She said such issues still prevalent in Pilsen today.
"Not all programs are equipped to provide culturally specific, culturally responsive approaches to how Latinas and their families experience domestic violence," Tortolero said.
Mujeres Latinas en Acción said a majority of their clients experience sexual assault inside of their home.
"The study shows that the person that cause harm is their partner, is the stepdad, is the grandparent," said Rocio Lozano, sexual assault program director at Mujeres.
Lozano points to the critical nature of the sexual assault program's work.
"Most of the time, the clients don't recognize that they are experiencing sexual violence," she said.
877-863-6338, and the 24-Hour Chicago Rape Crisis Hotline at 888-293-2080.
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Hamilton Spectator
21-07-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Trump administration releases FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family's opposition
The Trump administration has released records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate's family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. In a lengthy statement released Monday, King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father's assassination has been a 'captivating public curiosity for decades.' But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter, urging that 'these files must be viewed within their full historical context.' The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. It was not immediately clear Monday whether the documents would shed any new light on King's life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder. 'As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met — an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,' they wrote. 'We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief.' They also repeated the family's long-held contention that James Earl Ray , the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all. Bernice King was 5-years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10. A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure 'unprecedented' and said many of the records had been digitized for the first time to make it possible. She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue. Release is 'transparency' to some, a 'distraction' for others Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy's and King's 1968 assassinations. The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April. The announcement from Gabbard's office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King's children on various topics — including the FBI files. Alveda King said she was 'grateful to President Trump' for his 'transparency.' Separately Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi's social media account featured a picture of the attorney general with Alveda King in her office. Besides fulfilling Trump's executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for the president as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration's handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump's first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement Monday. Some civil rights activists were not so sparing. 'Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,' said the Rev. Al Sharpton. 'It's a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base.' Records mean a new trove of research material The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date. Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King's family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement. It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover's bureau wiretapped King's telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him. 'He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),' the King children said in their statement. 'The intent of the government's COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King's reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement,' they continued. 'These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.' The Kings said they 'support transparency and historical accountability' but 'object to any attacks on our father's legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods.' Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat. King's children still don't accept the original explanation of assassination King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice. Ray plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. Members of King's family, and others, have long questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. Coretta Scott King for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it 'found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.' In their latest statement, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up, pointing to a 1999 civil case in which a Memphis jury in a wrongful death case concluded that Martin Luther King Jr. had been the target of a conspiracy. 'As we review these newly released files,' the Kings said, 'we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted.' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. 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Boston Globe
27-06-2025
- Boston Globe
Ten years after tragedy, a historic Black church lives on
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 26 episode of the 'Say More' podcast. James Dao: I'm Jim Dao. Welcome to 'Say More.' Kevin Sack is a longtime reporter who spent much of his award-winning career writing investigative and long-term narrative pieces for The New York Times. Then in 2015, he helped cover one of the most horrific massacres in recent US history, the killing of nine parishioners who were attending Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The story launched Sack on what would turn into a 10 year project to document the history of Mother Emanuel, one of the oldest and most influential black churches in America. The book, which is out now, explores stories of the enslaved and emancipated black people who created and sustained the church against all odds in a bastion of the confederacy. It is also an extraordinarily detailed history of black Charleston from before the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. The book also grapples with eternal questions of forgiveness and resilience a decade after this terrible tragedy. I'll just note here that Kevin and I are old friends from our days at the New York Times. Kevin Sack, welcome to 'Say More.' So your book opens almost exactly a decade ago on June 17th, 2015, with a mass shooting at a church. Tell us about that church and what happened that night. Kevin Sack: The church is Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. It is the oldest AME church in the Southern United States, and has a remarkable history that goes back over 200 years. Now, it was first started in around 1817-1818 after really a subversive act, a withdrawal of thousands of African American Methodist from white-controlled, white-governed Methodist churches in Charleston to form something known as the African Church, which was somewhat short-lived. Then it reformed as Emanuel in 1865 when AME missionaries followed Union troops into Charleston as the Civil War was closing and started this church back up. It's called Mother Emanuel because it then seeded churches all over South Carolina and eventually the South. On the night of June 17th, 2015, 14 individuals, most of them adults but several children, were at Bible study. It was a Wednesday night. That's when bible study always takes place. This night, the Bible study was delayed by an hour or so because there had been a business meeting beforehand called a quarterly conference. Because it's going late, a lot of folks actually left before the Bible study. This could have been a much more horrific incident, but 14 remained, most of them in the fellowship hall itself, where the Bible study was taking place. At some point, the door opens up and a man named Dylann Roof, 21 years old, walks in. He's got a waist pack around his midsection. And, he's invited in, welcomed by the ministers and takes a seat. He is handed a study guide and a Bible and sits silently for roughly 45 minutes through the Bible study until everyone's eyes are closed in benediction, at which point he unzips the waist pack, removes a Glock and starts firing somewhat indiscriminately. He starts with the pastor, shoots him multiple times and then proceeds to walk around the room as old church ladies are diving under tables and assassinates them one by one. There winds up being several survivors. One of them, Polly Sheppard, is confronted by the killer. She's under a table and she looks up and sees the barrel of his gun. Pointing at her face, she's praying. He asks her if he has shot her yet. She answers 'No' and he says, 'Well, I'm going to leave you here to tell the story.' The other adult survivor in the room was Felicia Sanders, who was there with her granddaughter and her son. Her son was in his mid twenties, a recent college graduate. He's already been shot, and she is hugging the granddaughter so tightly under the table that she thinks she might suffocate the child. Dao: Wow. These were eventually categorized as hate crimes. Do I have that right? Sack: That's right. Dao: This person, Dylann Roof, self-described as a white supremacist and quite proud of that. Sack: Correct. This was his intent. He made it exceedingly clear, both as he was firing and in his initial interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after he was arrested the next day, that his purpose was to incite racial strife. What he really wanted was to incite some sort of race war. Dao: Did you ever talk to him or have any sort of significant contact with him and did you learn anything more about him as a person? Sack: Yeah, well, I covered his trial which was immensely frustrating for those of us who had hoped that it might provide some insight into who he was and how he had developed his white supremacist views. And it was deeply unsatisfying in that way because Roof, you may remember, wound up hijacking his own defense. He was intent on demonstrating that he was purposeful that night, that this had been premeditated and planned, that he wanted it to be known that he was a zealot, not a lunatic. And so he took over his own defense for the explicit purpose of denying his own lawyers the opportunity to present psychiatric evidence that might persuade even a single juror that he did not deserve the death penalty. In addition to watching the trial and getting some sense of him there, we also exchanged a few letters. He was on death row at this point, as he remains in Terre Haute, Indiana, at a federal penitentiary. He's now one of three federal death row inmates along with the Boston Marathon bomber and the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh. In these letters, I was seeking very specific answers to specific questions about the timeline of the evening, about his preparation, about what he understood about Emanuel and its history going in. I think he saw the exchange more as an opportunity to exert power in a new relationship. There was lots of antagonistic banter back and forth. He did acknowledge once again that he was utterly remorseless. Dao: I wanted to get you to talk a little bit about the church's pastor, Clementa Pinckney, who did die. He sounded extraordinary and charismatic, both as a minister and a politician. Sack: He was a remarkable prodigy, both in the church and in politics. He was called to preach at age 13 while walking through his childhood chapel in Ridgeland, South Carolina. He says he literally heard the voice of God calling him to preach, needless to say, took it quite seriously and acted upon it. He was known as a kid for wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase to middle school. He was that much about business even at that age. Then he winds up running for and winning office to the state legislature. He became the youngest African American to ever win election to South Carolina's legislature. And at the time of the shooting, he was serving his fourth term in the state senate as a Democrat in Republican, South Carolina. Therefore, he didn't have huge influence in the general assembly, but certainly advocated with great vigor for his district, which was one of the most poverty stricken in the state. Dao: I'm gonna ask you to now jump back in time. This is a very old church, dates back to the heart of the Confederacy when Charleston was a key center for the slave trade. The fact that free men and women, as well as I think slave parishioners could pull together the beginnings of this church back in that pre-war era is kind of a miracle in a way. Sack: It was just an incredibly bold act for the times, which again was around 1817 or 1818 when they withdrew from white Methodist churches and formed their own congregation. The leadership of that effort was from free people of color, but the enslaved were the majority of the membership. And, so yes, when the church forms the white population of Charleston, the white leadership of Charleston instantly sees it as a threat. There are mass arrests and jailings. The church's leaders are jailed and do some time. Then in 1822, there was an insurrection plot in Charleston. It's come to be known as the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy, named for the free person of color, a carpenter who actually had bought his way out of slavery after hitting the lottery. And Vesey, extensively organizes this plot. It's uncovered before it happens, and scores of men are arrested. Thirty five wind up being led to the gallows after trial and hung and almost half of those, I think 17 of the 35 wind up having some sort of association with the church. So in my view, it almost felt like the church itself was on trial and that they were really the target of the investigation that the authorities initiated. Because I think the place was seen as such a threat in the aftermath of all this. A month after the trials end, the church is dismantled board by board under order of the authorities and the leaders of the church are exiled under threat of criminal prosecution. Dao: Wow. So my sense is that the Denmark Vesey affair really kind of set the church back. It was harshly repressed for years and then you have the Civil War which then is an opening, right? The church can really sort of emerge during Reconstruction. Is it then sort of like a steady path of growth toward the civil rights movement? And the church as you came to know it in 2015? Sack: Yeah, I think it's very much a two steps forward, one step back kind of progress. And when you look at the church's history over time, it is very much one of suppression and repression followed by resistance. We see that all the way through 2015 when this white supremacist walks in the door and takes out the church's leadership and response. There has been resistance of various kinds both communal in terms of the way that the city responded and within the church and within the hearts of members, including any number who found a way to forgive this remorseless killer. And I argue in the book that that in itself is a form of resistance. Dao: We're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back with Kevin Sack. Kevin, you just mentioned the theme of forgiveness. As you know, I was an editor on the National Desk of the New York Times at the time of the Mother Emanuel shootings and I remember being shocked when at a nationally televised bail hearing for Dylann Roof, several relatives of the victims said they forgave him for his despicable violence. Tell us about your reaction to that stunning moment of grace and what did you learn about why those families said what they said? Sack: It really drove this whole exploration to some extent, what happened in the courtroom that day. Because yes, these five family members got up and expressed forgiveness of one form or another. They weren't all identical. Some went further than others. And in fact, even the night before, there had been a memorial service for one of the victims, Sharonda Singleton, and afterwards her son, Chris Singleton, an incredibly impressive young man, was asked by a British TV reporter how he was feeling. And he's standing next to his sister Camryn at the moment, and he says that there's nothing but love from our family right now, and we've already forgiven him. Now, none of the folks that spoke the next day had heard that or seen that, they didn't even know they were gonna be asked to speak at this bond hearing or afforded an opportunity by the judge to make a comment or two. And when I've interviewed all of them, they will tell you that it was utterly unpremeditated, unplanned, spontaneous. They describe it in mystical terms. It was 'God talking.' They were merely the vessels. Like everybody, I think I was simultaneously awestruck and befuddled by this. It seemed like the purest expression of Christianity that any of us had ever seen, much less imagined. I wanted to know where it came from. I thought about it and spoke to theologians and pastors. It occurred to me that what was really going on here was a form of release, because when you think about it, how else can you avoid being eaten alive from the insides by the fury and the rage and the insult? And so in that way, it seemed to me that forgiveness really was its own form of resistance. It was a way to reclaim agency by people who had been robbed of it, by this killer. The one thing that could not be taken from them was their ability to forgive. Dao: Talk a moment about the opposite view that you encountered in reporting out and researching this book. Clearly there were people within the church, within families you pointed out, and certainly within the African American community around the country who were sort of shocked by this and maybe not pleased, I guess would be fair to say. Could you describe that? Sack: Yeah, there are plenty of folks, including some of our brightest writers who asked in columns and essays immediately after this happened. 'Why is it always on black people to forgive? Why is it on them? They're not the problem here.' There certainly are family members who do not in any way forgive and would like to see Roof executed. And there are others who are frank about them being on a journey. And that path to forgiveness is not necessarily a direct one or an immediate one. They'll tell you that it sure would've helped a lot if he had shown some remorse. But it's very difficult for many people, and I think I'm one of them, to relate to that kind of grant of forgiveness for somebody who's not asking for it. Dao: So obviously you spent a lot of time in Charleston and then eventually moved there. You live there now. Could you talk a little bit about how the City of Charleston grappled with this in the aftermath and is it over this yet or is it still continuing to really shape that city now? Sack: Yeah, I don't think it'll ever get over it. It was a defining moment for the city in any number of ways, and what's happened in the last decade has been really interesting on a number of fronts. There were a variety of symbolic, but I would argue extremely meaningful, gestures made. In the aftermath of the shootings, the one that everybody remembers is the Confederate flag, that had flown either above or outside the state capitol in Columbia, South Carolina since the early 1960s as a direct affront to the quarter of the state's population that's African American, that finally came down. It took the assassination of a state senator to make it happen, but the Republican governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, at the time, and the Republican dominated legislature did finally move to bring the flag down. I think that mattered. It also mattered that the statue of John C. Calhoun, the great slavery defender, which had towered over Marion Square, Charleston Central Plaza for generations, again, as very much as a felt insult to those who walked beneath it, that was brought down by order of the mayor and the city council. On the fifth anniversary of the shootings, the city issued a resolution, apologizing for its role in slavery. Forty-six percent of all enslaved Africans who disembarked in North America, did so in the Port of Charleston. And interestingly, it was not a unanimous vote. There was considerable dissent. There are two pieces of legislation put before the general assembly, and in Columbia, that have gone nowhere. One is a hate crimes law. South Carolina is now one of two states without a hate crimes law. It was one of five at the time of the shootings. Bills have been introduced every year and have gone nowhere. There was also legislation, and still is legislation, both on the federal level and the state level to close what became known as the Charleston Loophole, which was the short background check period for purchasing a weapon, which allowed Dylann Roof to buy his gun despite a prior drug arrest. So those things have gone nowhere. I'm regularly asked whether I think Charleston is a different place now than it was before, and I do think there was a Charleston before 2015 and a Charleston after 2015, much the same way that there was a New York before and after 9/11, and I would assume a Boston before and after the marathon bombing. And I think it's a softer place. I think it's more self-reflective about race in particular. And I think a lot of conversations have started, that would not have happened beforehand. I know that I've been part of many of them. Dao: So you made this transition from being a newspaper reporter to being a historian, from covering news stories to spending lots and lots of days in archives. And you've devoted 10 years to this project, which has a remarkable result. What do you think you've taken away from this experience? And how are you thinking about things going forward from here? Are you gonna remain a historian? Sack: It might be a slight overstatement to call me a historian at this point. I remain a journalist with an interest in history, but I've certainly gained a lot of respect and a certain amount of practice, I guess, at the historian's craft. It's very different from journalism. I mean, yes, I spent lots of time in musty archives going through old bound volumes and, I think that we, as journalists, need to do more of this. I recognize that we don't often have the time or resources or capability to do it, and that's where nonfiction writers and historians do and should step in. But it was remarkable to me, how much wrong history I found and yeah, obviously what happens is, it gets written and then it gets repeated and it eventually solidifies into fact, or perceived truth, whether it is actual truth or not. Dao: Kevin Sack is author of Listen to more 'Say More' episodes at Kara Mihm of the Globe staff contributed to this report. James Dao can be reached at
Atlantic
27-06-2025
- Atlantic
America Just Beat Up These Marines' Dad
The four men in jeans and tactical vests labeled Police: U.S. Border Patrol had Narciso Barranco surrounded. Their masks and hats concealed their faces, so that only their eyes were visible. When they'd approached him, he was doing landscape work outside of an IHOP in Santa Ana, California. Frightened, Barranco attempted to run away. By the time a bystander started filming, the agents had caught him and pinned him, face down, on the road. One crouches and begins to pummel him, repeatedly, in the head. You can hear Barranco moaning in pain. Eventually, the masked men drag him to his feet and try to shove him into an SUV. When Barranco resists, one agent takes a rod and wedges it under his neck, attempting to steer him into the vehicle as if prodding livestock. Barranco is the father of three sons, all of them United States Marines. The eldest brother is a veteran, and the younger men are on active duty. At any moment, the same president who sent an emboldened ICE after their father could also command them into battle. That president has described Latinos as 'criminals' and 'anchor babies,' but the Barrancos and so many like them, immigrants or the children of immigrants, are not 'invading' America; they're defending it. In 2015, 12 percent of active-duty service members identified as Hispanic. By 2023, that number had increased to 19.5 percent. In the Marine Corps, the proportion was closer to 28 percent. Latinas are more represented in the military than in the civilian workforce—21 percent of enlisted women compared with 18 percent of working women. (One explanation might be the military's guaranteed equal pay: In the civilian workforce, Latinas earn just 65 cents on the dollar compared with white men.) Communities of color have long been targets for military recruitment. When I went to public high school in Brooklyn in the '90s, recruitment officers used to visit classrooms. The military offers financial stability, a route to college. But for many Latinos, as for other immigrant groups, it offers more: a path to belonging, whether for citizens who have been treated as outsiders in their own nation, or for the undocumented. Immigrants who serve at least a year in any branch of the armed forces can become eligible for naturalized citizenship. In 1917, just before entering World War I, the United States passed the Jones-Shafroth Act, bestowing citizenship (but not a right to representation) on Puerto Ricans. This would have the effect of making them eligible for the draft when it was instituted a few months later. An estimated 18,000 to 20,000 Puerto Rican recruits were soon shipped off to fight in Europe. During World War II, approximately 15,000 Mexican nationals fought in American uniforms, many earning citizenship. This was in addition to the 500,000 American Latinos of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent who enlisted and fought for their country, including my own grandfather. He was a decorated member of the 9th Infantry Division who fought in Tunisia, landed in Normandy, and was one of the first American soldiers to make it into Germany. He was proud of his role in history, but also of the lifelong friendships that he, a Puerto Rican man from Brooklyn, had with veterans from across the country. In one oral history, Armando Flores, a veteran of World War II, recounts a lieutenant scolding him in his early days of service: 'American soldiers stand at attention.' Rather than feeling chastened, Flores was stunned. ' Nobody had ever called me an American until that time.' Hispanic veterans came home to a country where signs were posted in Texas restaurant windows announcing: No Dogs Negroes Mexicans. Like their African American counterparts, many were the victims of redlining that prevented them from buying homes. Latino veterans created the American GI Forum to demand that benefits such as medical care and burial rights be available to Latino as well as white veterans. During the Vietnam War, Latinos were about 5 percent of the U.S. population, but they accounted for an estimated 20 percent of the 60,000 American casualties. This country has a long history of treating the veterans who have served it shoddily. And yet what's happening now—as Donald Trump's agents violently detain some Latinos in the streets as other Latinos serve their country in strikes against Iran—feels extreme. Johnathan Hernandez, a city councilman in Santa Ana, where Barranco was beaten, describes what's happening in his community as a kind of war itself. Santa Ana is 77 percent Hispanic. It has become a popular target for ICE. Hernandez told me that he is seeing 'a culture of fear, a culture of people not feeling safe, and people feeling under attack.' He said he worked to get the video posted on social media because no one knew who the man in it was, and he hoped that someone in the tight-knit community could identify him. 'Because of the fact that these agents are unidentified and they're taking people without due process, it means that you're leaving very little for a family to be able to put the pieces together and find their loved ones,' he said. A woman saw the video on Instagram and commented that it was her friends' father. Nearly 24 hours after the violent encounter, Barranco's eldest son, Alejandro, was able to finally make contact with his father, who said he still had not received medical care, and that he was hungry and thirsty. (The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Barranco had 'assaulted' agents with his string trimmer— sharing a video in which he can be seen turning toward the agents and briefly lifting it—and that he had declined medical care.) In interviews with news agencies, Alejandro said that he and his brothers 'feel hurt; we feel betrayed.' Their father taught them to 'respect this country, thank this country, and then that led us to join the Marine Corps and kind of give back to the country and be thankful,' he said. Alejandro was deployed to Kabul in 2021, when the U.S. was evacuating from Afghanistan. Had a Marine treated a detainee the way that the Border Patrol agents treated his father, he told MSNBC, it would have been considered a war crime. He also spoke with Task & Purpose, which covers the military. 'I don't believe that they followed their training,' he said about the agents. 'Repeatedly punching a man in the face while he's on the ground while he's been maced or pepper-sprayed, I don't believe that that was in their training.' (He also noted that the agents could be seen running with their weapons, which is 'a very unprofessional way of holding a firearm.') Many Latinos are sharing in the Barranco family's trauma. We are a highly diverse identity group, whose common bonds can feel tenuous at best. Forty-eight percent of the Latinos who voted in the 2024 election chose Trump—and many Latino members of the military, which tends to lean more conservative than the general population, were probably among them. And yet even some of those Trump voters, seeing on a daily basis the violence and haphazard cruelty with which the Trump administration is executing its mass-deportation agenda, must share my terror and anger. (ICE's recent actions have already led some of Trump's supporters to regret their vote.) How can any Latinos feel secure if 'looking' Hispanic or speaking Spanish or even going to Home Depot puts you at risk? How would you feel if you were deployed half a world away and wondering each day if your mother or father or sister or brother or wife might have been snatched up by ICE? This is a personal question for Latino soldiers, but it is a personnel question for the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, who have to worry about military morale as an essential dimension of combat power. The psychological toll of ICE raids isn't borne only by the new immigrants whom Trump calls 'invaders,' but also by many of the Americans tasked with protecting us from real foreign threats. In the barracks at Camp Pendleton where the younger Barranco brothers sleep, they must be struggling to focus on their mission while fearing for the safety of their father in the hands of the very government they are sworn to defend.
