I Am an Immigrant

This is a statement as it first appeared on Monday, January 26, 2026.

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I am an immigrant. My life, like the lives of millions, is shaped by borders I did not draw and by systems that decide who is welcomed, who is tolerated, and who is excluded. I know what it means to move through institutions that see head count before stories, demographics before people.

Because of that, I cannot remain silent about the violence carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has become an institution that evokes fear rather than safety, violence rather than protection. Its practices, which include family separation, community raids, and detention conditions that violate basic human dignity, are not isolated incidents. They have become the unsurprising outcomes of a system built on criminalization rather than care.

The human cost of this system is not abstract. In Minnesota this January, a federal immigration enforcement campaign known as Operation Metro Surge has sparked outrage and grief.

On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and community member, was fatally shot by an ICE agent during an enforcement operation, an act ruled a homicide by local authorities.

Just weeks later, on January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse and U.S. citizen, was killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis during the same federal operation. Eyewitness video and local officials have challenged the federal narrative that Pretti posed a threat, underscoring deep questions about the use of lethal force.

On January 20, 2026, just a few days before, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschooler in the Columbia Heights Public Schools district, was detained by ICE agents as he arrived home from school. According to school officials, federal agents took Liam and, in a tactic described by the superintendent as using a child as “bait” to lure others from the house, directed him to knock on the front door. Liam and his father were then transported to a detention facility in Texas despite having an active asylum claim and no removal order.

Reports also indicate that several other students from the same district have been detained in recent weeks, heightening fear among children and parents as federal agents conduct enforcement near schools, bus stops, and community centers. Children, it seems, are not safe from the violence perpetrated by the American government.

To condemn ICE and similar enforcement practices is not to condemn the individuals who work within those systems; it is to condemn the mandate that instructs them to harm. It is to reject a framework that treats migration as a threat instead of a human reality. It is to insist that no government agency should operate without accountability, transparency, or respect for human rights.

I believe in borders that do not break families. I believe in policies that recognize migration as a story of survival, aspiration, and belonging. I believe in systems that honour the dignity of every person, regardless of where they were born.

Yet, as I witness these horrors in the United States, I am compelled to say clearly: Canada is not immune. Under Mark Carney’s political influence, proposed immigration measures such as Bills C-2 and C-12 risk importing a punitive logic disturbingly similar to the one playing out in Minnesota.

Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, grants sweeping new powers to border and immigration authorities in the name of security. While it expands inspection authority and information-sharing among federal agencies, it also tightens asylum eligibility, accelerates removals, and constrains procedural safeguards, raising serious concerns about due process and the protection of vulnerable refugees.

Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, further concentrates discretion within the executive. It authorizes immigration ministers to suspend or cancel applications without clear justification and restricts new submissions under broadly defined “public interest” claims. Critics warn these measures will disproportionately harm immigrants and refugees while undermining Canada’s commitments to human rights and inclusion.

Particularly alarming is the retroactive application of these rules. Denying asylum to individuals who have lived in Canada for over a year, regardless of worsening conditions in their countries of origin, reveals a profound disregard for individual circumstances. These provisions disproportionately affect women, survivors of violence, and other marginalized communities, effectively closing the door on those seeking safety and stability.

This approach reflects a broader political strategy that uses immigration control as a tool of exclusion rather than protection. It substitutes suspicion for solidarity and enforcement for care. In doing so, it betrays Canada’s professed values of justice, inclusion, and compassion. It demands rigorous critique and resistance from those committed to immigrant rights.

The institutionalization of brutality did not begin with ICE, nor is it confined to the United States. But the real human toll, lives ended, families torn apart, children detained, shows where such logics lead when left unchecked. Canada must choose a different path before fear becomes policy and punishment becomes routine.

I am an immigrant. And because I am an immigrant, I refuse to accept a world where violence is normalized for those seeking a new life by crossing national borders.