Javier Hidalgo: An open letter to JD Vance on Father’s Day
By Javier Hidalgo
Dear Vice President Vance,
In the vision that you and your boss are establishing for the future of our country, how long will non-white children like ours be safe?
This may sound callous to you, but I’m asking this question in earnest. Like you, I am a father to non-white children, and every year around Father’s Day, I reflect on what it means for them to grow up as brown children in the United States. That’s especially true right now, as ICE raids proliferate and the threat of a militarized society nationwide hovers over us.
Like you, I also serve in a role that is designed to serve and protect the people in this country – though, admittedly, mine is not quite as high profile. I’m the director of legal services at RAICES, an immigrant rights organization that provides quality legal services to immigrants and their families in the state of Texas. Through this work, I have witnessed firsthand the deep harm our country has inflicted on kids and families who aren’t white. It’s actually why I became an immigration attorney in the first place: to make sure children who look like mine can grow up in a country where they can thrive and be safe. I want that for your children, too.
In your colleagues’ vision for America, people who look like they might be an immigrant – non-white kids like yours and mine – are inherently suspicious and lesser-than. They might be racially profiled by authorities or falsely labeled as “alien” or “criminal.” It doesn’t matter if they were actually born here or if they’ve done anything wrong: the threats are multiplying and uncontained.
From the executive order effectively making the U.S. inaccessible to anyone who does not speak English, to the ICE officers who have mistakenly detained U.S. citizens from Puerto Rico, to the 11-year-old girl in Texas who tragically died by suicide after relentless bullying over her family’s immigration status — the victims of your administration are many. Now, the Department of Education is encouraging colleagues and students to rat each other out for discussing diversity and racial equity, and kindergarten teachers are anxiously planning for the day federal authorities charge into their classroom and abduct five-year-olds.
Can you remember the days when we proudly called the U.S. a “melting pot” and a beacon of freedom and opportunity?
I’m not naive. I know that the violent and inhumane treatment of people who do not fit this country’s definition of whiteness is a shameful part of our national legacy. But I am also very much a believer in the freedoms that our laws and constitution — if we can sustain them — are intended to protect; they should give us reason to be hopeful of where we can go as a nation.
The bottom line is this: Your personal privilege can only protect you for so long when our government is stoking a culture of hatred and fear of the other. I know this because our country has been here before.
My colleagues at RAICES and I were on the frontlines of the fight against the first Trump Administration’s cruel zero-tolerance policy. Every single day, I’m haunted by what I saw during that time and how quickly our government was able to strip away the rights of kids who look like my own, causing harm that will endure for generations. The horrific images of kids in cold cells, covered in aluminum blankets, and the sounds of their cries echoing in immigration prisons are permanently etched in my mind.
Along with the help of people throughout the country who share our vision for a just and inclusive nation, we successfully pushed back against Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. But many families still remain separated, and Trump’s attacks against immigrants have continued with renewed vigor and vitriol in the first couple of months of his second term.
Like every parent I know, including every immigrant parent I meet, I want my children to grow up in a safe, prosperous community where they can thrive, no matter the color of their skin or where their family is from. I want the U.S. to maintain its role as a place of refuge, where the opportunity to achieve the American Dream exists, no matter where you were born. This isn’t just what is promised on the inscription on a certain statue in New York; it’s a promise enshrined in the very laws this administration seeks to eviscerate.
A father’s primal instinct to protect his child is universal, which makes your full-throated support for policies that will harm children who look like ours so confounding. Discriminatory policies don’t exist in a vacuum, and you will be unable to control the extent of the impact on people. That’s the risk inherent in opening Pandora’s Box of bigotry.
Mr. Vice President, our non-white children will not be saved by our privilege. None of us will be safer if we continue to turn against each other, if our nation’s leaders teach us to fear instead of welcome. I think that is something we can both agree is worthy of an elegy.
Javier Hidalgo is the Legal Director at the not-for-profit RAICES, the largest immigration legal services agency in Texas. In his role, he oversees trauma-informed programs in support of individuals, family units, and unaccompanied children both in and recently released from government custody, as well as impact litigation in pursuit of positive systemic change in federal immigration policy.
