By: Ricardo Abud
When the pages of history are written about this period, Trump's second term will be remembered not only for his mass deportation policies, but for the psychological and social damage he left in his wake— HIS PRIVATE HOLOCAUST . With a stated goal of deporting one million immigrants per year, his administration brutally redefined what it means to be an immigrant in the United States.
In the cold corridors of detention centers, where the echoes of children's cries bounce off concrete walls, the darkest chapter in American history is being written. Not with ink, but with emotional blood; not with words, but with the deafening silence of a nation that seems to have lost its heart.
Each number is a universe of pain. Each deportation, a family torn apart. Each child separated, a childhood murdered. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tears a father from the arms of his five-year-old son, it is not simply enforcing immigration policy; it is carrying out an act of psychological torture that will resonate in that child's soul until the day they die.
Stephen Miller, the architect of this nightmare, built an industrial machine of human suffering. Three thousand deportations a day aren't numbers on a spreadsheet; they're three thousand screams of terror, three thousand families who wake up every morning not knowing if this will be the day their world crumbles forever.
This punitive approach to immigration does not exist in a vacuum. It fuels and reinforces white supremacist narratives that portray immigrants as invaders rather than human beings seeking a better life. "America First" rhetoric becomes a justification for systematic dehumanization.
Public support for these policies, particularly among adults over 50, reveals deep generational divides about what it means to be an American. The normalization of cruelty has become a hallmark of this period, where compassion is seen as weakness and humanity as a luxury the nation cannot afford.
The efficiency with which ICE executes these separations is obscene. Like butchers in a slaughterhouse, they process human lives with the cold-bloodedness of someone discarding cattle. Agents burst into homes at 4 a.m., dragging parents from their beds as their young children scream from the stairs, unable to understand why Mom or Dad are being hauled away like criminals.
There are no more sanctuaries. Churches, where immigrant mothers once prayed for the safety of their families, are now hunting grounds for ICE agents. Hospitals, where sick children seek healing, have become death traps where a medical emergency can end in permanent separation.
Schools, those temples of hope where immigrant children dreamed of becoming doctors, teachers, or engineers, are now chambers of anxiety where every bell can mean that ICE has come for their parents. Teachers report children crying uncontrollably, wetting themselves in fear, and developing stuttering and nightmares that wake them up screaming in the middle of the night.
What's happening isn't just immigration policy. It's emotional genocide . An entire generation of American children—because yes, they are American citizens—is being systematically traumatized by their own government. These children, who should one day lead this country, are growing up with a clear message: your value as a human being depends on the color of your skin and where your parents were born.
Eight-year-old María, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, hasn't spoken since ICE took her father three months ago. Her teacher says she sits in the corner of the classroom, drawing the same picture over and over: a man behind bars with tears streaming down her face. Her mother, working three jobs to stay afloat, comes home to find her daughter huddled in the closet, waiting for ICE to come for her too.
ICE's methods aren't just cruel; they're sadistic. Separating babies from their nursing mothers isn't an operational necessity; it's deliberate torture. Telling a four-year-old that "maybe" they'll see their father again is premeditated psychological cruelty. Sending deported parents to countries they haven't seen in decades while their U.S. citizen children are orphaned in government custody is an act of institutional barbarism .
ICE agents have been trained to dehumanize. Their manuals teach them to ignore pleas, to turn a deaf ear to cries, to harden their hearts in the face of human suffering. They have become soldiers in a war against compassion, enforcers of a policy that confuses cruelty with strength.
This isn't just an anti-immigrant policy. It's white supremacy in its purest and most poisonous form, devouring not only its victims but the very nation it purports to protect. Every Latino child separated from their parents is a reminder that in the United States, some children matter more than others. Some children deserve to be comforted, others ignored.
The America that once prided itself on being a beacon of hope for the world has become a slaughterhouse of dreams, where the Statue of Liberty should lay down her torch in shame. Emma Lazarus's lines, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," now sound like a cruel taunt, a broken promise etched in bronze while flesh-and-blood politicians preach hate.
The damage being inflicted will last for generations. The children separated from their parents today will grow up to be adults unable to fully trust, carrying in their souls the wounds of a childhood shattered by the politics of terror. Their own children will inherit that trauma, that ancestral fear that is passed on like an emotional virus from generation to generation.
Child therapists report heartbreaking cases: children who can't sleep without checking that all the doors are closed, who hide food under their beds because they fear there won't be any adults to feed them, who draw pictures of families where someone is always missing: a father, a mother, an older sibling who has been deported.
What's most devastating isn't just what's happening to these families, but what's happening to the soul of America. A nation that can normalize children's suffering, that can make cruelty popular, that can turn compassion into weakness, is a nation that has lost its fundamental humanity.
Americans who support these policies are not only complicit in suffering; they are participating in the moral suicide of their own nation. Every "like" on a post celebrating a deportation, every clap at a rally when Trump promises more family separations, every vote in favor of cruelty is another nail in the coffin of American decency.
But amid this absolute darkness, there are lights that refuse to go out. Teachers who hug crying children and promise them they are safe at school. Doctors who risk their careers to treat undocumented immigrants. American families who open their homes to children separated from their parents. Lawyers who work tirelessly to reunite broken families.
These people are true patriots. They understand that the true America is not found in the cruel policies of fellow immigrant Donald Trump (FAMILY, WIDOW, AND CURRENT WIFE) , but in acts of compassion. Not in separation, but in reunion. Not in fear, but in love.
History will not be kind to this period. Future textbooks will speak of this era as we now speak of slavery, Japanese concentration camps, family separations during the Great Depression, or tragedies like Alcatraz or the Boston Massacre , with nothing to envy of some Krakow extermination camp (Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp). Our grandchildren will ask, "Where were you when the children cried? What did you do when families were destroyed? How could you remain silent when cruelty became policy?"
And for too many Americans, the response will be a shameful silence. A recognition that they were on the wrong side of history, that they chose fear over love, that they allowed their country to become something they don't recognize.
The road back to humanity will be long and painful. It will require more than policy changes; it will require a transformation of the national soul. The United States will have to look in the mirror and recognize the monster it has become. It will have to apologize to every traumatized child, every shattered family, every mother who mourned a child torn from her arms.
But redemption is possible. Compassion can be reborn. Love can triumph over hate. But only if America has the courage to admit that it has lost its way, that it has betrayed its own values, that it has allowed fear to turn the nation of the free into a prison for the desperate.
Ironically, the anti-immigrant crusade is damaging vital economic sectors. The need to pause arrests at farms, hotels, and restaurants reveals the economic dependence on immigrant labor, even as it is demonized. This contradiction exposes the fundamental hypocrisy of policies that sacrifice economic prosperity on the altar of racial purity.
In the end, the price of this cruelty will not be paid only by immigrant families. It will be paid by the entire nation. Because a country that can normalize the suffering of innocent people, that can make psychological torture popular policy, that can turn family separation into a tool of power, is a country that has lost its soul.
The Donald Trump era, with its aggressive rhetoric and heavy-handed immigration policy, has profoundly marked not only American politics but also the social fabric of an entire nation. During his administration, ICE became the clearest symbol of a ruthless approach to immigration, which crossed the line of legality into openly inhumane practices.
Family separations, mass raids, prolonged detentions, and undignified prison conditions became the hallmarks of an institution that, in the name of national security, unleashed fear and anguish among entire migrant communities. Even young children were separated from their parents, many of whom were never reunited, leaving lifelong emotional scars.
Now, with Trump no longer in the White House, the country will face the bitter consequences of that policy. The images of caged children, broken families, and summary deportations will have left an indelible mark on the collective conscience. The migrant trauma will not easily disappear, and distrust of authorities has become a persistent pain for millions of people.
But migrants aren't the only ones who bear these wounds. The harshly polarized American public opinion will also be affected. The white supremacist rhetoric that gained strength under Trump, legitimizing xenophobia and the most blatant racism, will open dangerous rifts in society. Many Americans normalized supremacist ideas that had previously been marginalized, and many others felt morally devastated by seeing their country transformed into a place of persecution and cruelty.
ICE thus became the visible face of an institutional cruelty that violated basic principles of humanity and justice. It will go down in history as a shameful chapter, comparable to other dark times when the law became an instrument of repression and dehumanization.
The question today is whether the United States will be able to heal this wound. The collective trauma, distrust in institutions, and the resurgence of supremacist ideas will not be resolved solely with legislative changes. A cultural, educational, and moral effort will be required to rebuild values of respect, empathy, and human dignity.
The "after" Trump and ICE will not be easy. Migrant families will bear the consequences of separation. The children of migrants will grow up remembering the terror of raids and the tears of their parents. And American society will have to look in the mirror to decide whether to accept the legacy of hatred, or whether to dare to transform it into a real commitment to human rights.
Ultimately, history will judge this era not only by its policies, but by its humanity, or lack thereof. The challenge for new generations will be to prevent fear from once again becoming an excuse for cruelty, and to ensure that no future leader can, once again, turn the pain of the most vulnerable into a political weapon.
Note: Immigrant detention in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar business , and a significant portion of detention centers are operated by private companies. Firms like GEO Group and CoreCivic are major players in this industry, earning huge profits from government contracts to house detained migrants.
These companies operate under a "guaranteed bed" model, meaning the government pays them for a minimum number of occupied beds, regardless of whether the centers are full or not. This creates a perverse incentive to maintain a high number of detentions, since more detentions equal more revenue for these companies. The expansion of detention capacity, even in centers with a history of abuse or poor conditions, is a direct reflection of this business logic.
During the Trump administration (second term), the "zero tolerance" policy and the drastic increase in deportations led to an even greater demand for detention beds, which translated into greater profits for these private companies .
Concerns about conflicts of interest arise when high-level officials within ICE or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, have financial ties to these private companies. Although it has not been publicly confirmed that the "top deportation boss" is a shareholder in one of these companies, accusations of such conflicts of interest have been frequent among human rights organizations, researchers, and the media.
This is an area of constant scrutiny because it raises questions about whether detention and deportation policies are designed for national security and law enforcement, or whether they are influenced by the economic gain of a few. The fact that detention is a lucrative business can incentivize more punitive policies instead of seeking less costly and more humane alternatives.
One of the most prominent names associated with hardline immigration and deportation policies is Thomas Homan , the acting director of ICE. He has been a key figure in implementing the "zero tolerance" policy and a staunch advocate for mass deportations. While he is known for his strong stance, there is no widespread public information directly linking him as a shareholder in major immigration detention corporations. However, the interconnection between politics and money in this sector is a legitimate and widely documented concern.
The largely privatized immigration detention system in the United States remains a point of controversy due to the ethical implications and economic incentives it creates, beyond the identity of any specific individual in the leadership.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE EXCLUSIVE THAN BEING POOR.
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