Our neighbors’ rights continue to erode
When our neighbors’ rights are taken away, you can be sure that those taking these rights away will soon, or eventually, turn their attention to the next groups of people with whom they take issue. Sooner or later this attention will turn to you, or to some or many of the people whom you hold dear. As our (or any group’s) rights are eroded, those in power will find increasingly easy any decision to strip additional rights away.
Eventually, those rights are sufficiently diminished so that the affected persons no longer count as persons. This can be easily observed in how our current US government treats people who are suspected by ICE or detained by ICE for whatever infraction that ICE deems critical. ICE is permitted to detain and kill people whom they deem “illegal,” by whatever definition this designation is assigned. The Trump administration insists that these action and the people committing these actions cannot be held to account. ICE is also allowed to harass, detain, or kill people who are protesting these detentions or killings. The Trump administration is doing this without judicial warrants, and the affected people have no recourse to these actions. If you are the next person taken or killed, well, perhaps that’s too bad.
Let’s compile a list of the ways our neighbors’, or our, rights are being eroded. Perhaps I’ll continue to add to this list with subsequent posts. Resources listed below provide links to news sources that you can consider in the context of this list.
- ICE continues to kill people at an alarming rate, per the recent shooting of a Houston man. Ten people have been fatally shot since January 2025. Fifty-two people have died in ICE custody in the first 500 days of this US administration, and there are many more incidents of ICE firing at vehicles, often at US citizens. If your group, or people, suddenly becomes the next targeted group of people by this administration, this is the treatment we can expect to receive.
- The Trump administration is actively undermining and looking for ways to deport legal immigrants, particularly brown ones. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone who was a Trump supporter/voter say, “Immigrants should be here legally, as my ancestors were forced to do.” This isn’t the intent of the Trump administration. Clearly, they do not want to have brown people here. We only had to observe Trump’s (and Vance’s) rhetoric about the Haitian community (legal immigrants) in Springfield, OH to understand their intent. If we are trying to expel legal immigrants, why do you, or any of us, consider your or our rights safe?
- Marco Rubio is now the de facto viceroy of Venezuela. If you don’t understand the meaning of viceroy, just consider the British Imperialism era and how the British Empire exploited the people and resources of her colonies. This is what the US is now doing in Venezuela. So, now our nearby international neighbors have lost their rights. I ask you to consider, how would you feel if suddenly your rights as a US citizen disappeared because some other country was controlling our resources and disbursing money and resources within the US in whatever manner this foreign country deemed appropriate? This is what’s happening now in Venezuela at our hands.
- Similarly, our neighbors in Iran have lost their rights as citizens of a sovereign nation. We came and blew it up. For what? To impose tariffs on all traffic that navigates the Strait of Hormuz as Trump is now proposing. How do you imagine any person from any country in the world might now view the US? The view from their perspective is not warm and comfy.
- The healthcare rights for women in many Republican-controlled states have eroded since the repeal of Roe v Wade, and anti-abortion advocates do not believe this is adequate. They want to make abortions illegal everywhere in the US. Consider the consequences! Idaho has lost 1 in 3 obstetricians after its abortion ban. The sepsis rate in Texas for women hospitalized during second-trimester pregnancy loss almost doubled after Texas’ new restrictive abortion laws. This because healthcare providers are constrained by any potential misstep with these laws, facing uncertain liabilities including imprisonment. The rights of women everywhere in the US are now at risk, perhaps less so in Democrat-controlled states, but the creep continues to creep.
Resources
How the Trump administration is undermining legal immigrants, an article in The Guardian
How Marco Rubio is Running Venezuela from Afar, a New York Times article
Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared, a ProPublica article
Idaho Lost 1 in # Obstetricians After Its Abortion Ban, a Mother Jones article