I live in an area where people ask you where you’re from and if you actually live in the neighborhood. They may assume you don’t speak English, like they have with my wife.
ICE has already gone through the town nextdoor, and I’m waiting for our turn. I’m light-skinned, but my wife and kids are dark with Mayan features. I fear that all anyone has to do to terrorize my family is call a hotline. We have all our citizenship documentation, but that doesn’t matter anymore.
I keep waiting for the day when I’m going to have to defend my family, but I might not even be around when things take place. What if they come take my wife while she’s at work? What if she goes shopping and never comes back?
I have nothing without my family. I have nothing.
If you think you might be aware of when they will come, consider clearing out for a few days. From what I have been reading, ICE cruises a neighborhood for 1 - 3 days, often first thing in the morning, before actually coming through with deportation sweeps. They think they are slick, but they stick out like a sore thumb to anyone paying attention because they will literally drive through the same area on the same streets multiple times in an hour.
This is no guarantee of having any kind of prelude, especially if you are in a state which has signed onto the mutual cooperation agreement with ICE, but if you have no better ideas, then seeing SUVs you’re not used to seeing in your town would be a great time to visit somewhere else, even for just three days or however long you may think they are likely to remain. Family in another state, some national park, or even just some fucking motel on a highway somewhere else. A large, tightly packed older city can also be good, because they’re easy to hide in.
It seems like ICE has two basic prongs to making their arrests: 1) those they have singled out beforehand and find individually going off of reports they have already generated, and 2) those they sweep up for the crime of existing when they show up. Getting out of town temporarily removes you from the second, and also makes it much harder for them to complete the first if you’re already on some kind of list you know nothing about. But either way, clear out as best you can for as long as you can.
Pack now so you can leave at any moment, then time it the best you can. Do everything as stealthily as you can, hit an ATM before you leave and then use cash wherever you can, and absolutely turn off your phones when you go, staying off social media when you do turn them on. If you can trade cars for a week with family that you trust, that’s even better because of Flock.
You probably can’t do all of this, but do what you can, it’s ALL worth the effort. It’s not that they can’t find you if they try hard enough, it’s that breaking all their tracking wherever and whenever you can makes it more difficult. These are not shoe leather on the street boys, these are sit on my fat ass and have reports handed to me while eating another donut boys. At this point, staying offline is half the battle, because they can’t go door to door, they’re too afraid someone will shoot them, and rightly so. Note that California, Illinois and New York have some of the lowest gun ownership numbers in the entire US: that’s not by accident.
I hope some of this helps. And in the meantime, please know that if there was any way we could help you directly I’d be DMing you with an offer of a place to hide out, but we are in a tiny place with health issues and no spare room at all. I hope that someone who actually does have the room to host you contacts you with an invitation. Because these are not normal times: this whole thing is insane, and it is flatly evil. Your life is worth as much as mine, your family is equally as precious, and it is outrageous that any of this is being done in my name as your countryman. I wish you every blessing.