Two brown skinned, baseball cap clad, Texan fathers of three drove to work on the morning of July 7. One of them never came home, and the other is my father. As I read “For 35 Years, Undocumented, and Chasing the American Dream” I couldn’t help but feel shaken because of the resemblances between the late Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and my dad.
One notable difference is that my dad is a U.S. Citizen and Mr. Salgado was not. However, the writer mentions that during the fatal encounter, he wasn’t the target of the operation, so the question of his legal status was not present. This detail, and the ever increasing death toll at the hands of ICE, amplified my fear that deadly encounters could befall any Mexican-American.
In the land of the free, no community should fear being unjustly targeted by a government agency. In both Mr. Salgado’s community and my own, 1 in 4 residents are foreign born. It is undeniable that we find strength in our diversity and rely heavily on undocumented labor forces.
As stories like these become more prevalent, my fear that my family could become targets for a federal law enforcement agency increases. My frustration grows with every passing death as I bear witness to the inaction by the federal government to regulate ICE.
Ronaldo, Mr. Salgado’s eldest son watched his father bleed out through the pixels on his screen. Tomorrow afternoon, when my father returns from work, I will feel blessed that he got home safely, but angry that I had to be concerned.
