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Public Safety for Whom? The Mandate to End ICE’s Terror
Congress has the mandate to abolish ICE and must avoid squandering public trust by trampling on the will of the people.
Nov 10, 2026
The blue tsunami of Tuesday’s midterm elections signals the advent of the end of President Donald Trump’s despotic choke hold on our democracy and an unequivocal repudiation of his regime, characterized by economic deprivation we naively call an unaffordability crisis, a war unauthorized by Congress, and xenophobic violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Of the top concerns midterm voters trafficked to the polls, democracy and immigration rounded out the top three, according to CNN exit polls, not just the question of personal and collective economics. Accented by the cratering support from Latino voters garnered two years ago, the political massacre the Republicans sustained signals a mandate for the new Congress to end ICE terror on our streets.
Since the activation of Trump’s long-promised deportation machine, federal bullets have ripped through the flesh of at least 24 human beings, ending the lives of at least three US citizens and three noncitizens. Unconscionably, over 52 people have died in our nation’s immigration detention centers. At the expense of the true promise of public safety, ICE, now coordinating with approximately 2,000 local and state law enforcement agencies due to section 287(g), snakes its way through our streets, airports, school parking lots, and grocery stores under a now grossly unpopular presidential mandate to squelch “migrant crime”—a criminological category equally as hyperbolic and racist as Black-on-Black crime. Despite the dramatic claims and overblown press conferences, by all metrics, immigrants—documented or otherwise—actually participate in criminal activity at lower rates than US-born citizens. Facts notwithstanding, the anti-crime saviorism increasingly targets noncitizens without criminal convictions.
According to the United States Department of Homeland Security, in a year of staggering numbers of immigrant detainments, August alone accounted for more than 50,000 ICE arrests—the highest single monthly total on record. On average, 2,000 people a day are currently sucked into this black hole of menacing uncertainty and predictably substandard accommodations for months and months. Last month, agency leadership deputized their agents to increase immigration arrests to 3,000 daily arrests nationwide.
Only 23 years old, ICE is a creature of post-9/11 panic and collective grief. We managed, though imperfectly, for two centuries without it and can again.
The normalization of the mass detainment and deportation of our undocumented neighbors exists alongside this republic’s heritage of racialized policing and punishment, namely the overpolicing and hyper-incarceration of Black lives and the egregious overfunding of local police departments, jails, and state prisons. Mass deportations are to the immigration system what mass incarcerations are to the criminal legal system. The detention center, prison, and jail, and police, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection may as well be one. In fact, in many cities throughout the United States, they are one. We must end this expansion of Blue power and Blue privilege. As white privilege is not about individual white people, Blue privilege refers to the systems, logics, and patterns that insulate a culture of law enforcement violence and unaccountability, not individual law enforcement officers. It’s an unearned, advantaged way of being. Blue privilege dupes those of us without it into believing the police state is normal, necessary, and unchangeable.
Our criminal legal system draws oxygen from the disproportionate over-surveillance and custodial control over Black, brown, and poor bodies—documented and undocumented alike. In fact, immigration detention centers and public and private prisons rhyme politically and economically in our nation, warring to reckon with a seemingly inconvenient truth of its decreasing demographic whiteness. Fueled by police and ICE zealotry, both systems reflect two branches of a single meta-system of retributive whiteness. The popular notion of crimmigration—the violent intersection of our white supremacist criminal legal system and the immigration system—disabuses us of the fiction of national innocence about the structural violence by which we “thingify” and demonize a plethora of distinct non-white communities unwelcomed into the narrow definitions of Americanness. As I say in Outing Blue Privilege, we are living through a war on the image of God as law-and-order enthusiasm empties homes of parents and breadwinners, the media amplifies the criminalization of certain races and the racialization of certain crimes, and the predominance of police firepower indiscriminately walls Black flesh into poverty-racked neighborhoods drained of opportunities.
The unprecedented surge in arrests extends the specter of Blue power—law enforcement resources, personnel, sovereignty—all too familiar to descendants of chattel slaves and those who share our many shades of melanin. The Southern police forces originally emerged as slave patrols designed to surveil and contain Black bodies, preventing them from running off to freedom or congregating for unsanctioned purposes. In 1838, the first professionalized US police department started in Boston to control poor Irish immigrants. According to the same logics, the Midwest constabulary formed to intimidate Indigenous Americans into a unique form of segregation. Odiously, the originating anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-poor ethos of our policing systems keeps these histories alive in ICE—the wealthiest law enforcement agency in US history.
Dangling the carrots of financial incentives in front of law enforcement institutions, our government invents reasons to dispatch Blue power to enforce social closures for immigrant communities, not unlike the ones we manufactured against Black people during the five-decade-long war on drugs. Despite the visually documented death of Renée Nicole Good and the climbing number of deaths and abuses at detention centers, nearly no ICE officer has been held accountable—a desert of meaningful oversight. The cardinal rule of any law-and-order regime: ICE merely investigates itself. James Baldwin excoriated, “This arrogant autonomy, which is guaranteed the police… by the most powerful forces in American life… creates a situation which is as close to anarchy as it already, visibly, is close to martial law.” That’s one of the public hazards of Blue privilege.
Under the detainment theatrics of our federal government, a father unsuspectingly disappears during a routine outing to purchase diapers in New Jersey, while a 19-year-old Babson College student unwarrantedly loses her freedom in Boston’s Logan Airport en route to celebrate one of America’s uniquely treasured traditions, Thanksgiving. Even if no other person is shot on our streets or dies in a cell, our spirits cry out for balm for the psychic wounds borne by those who have been, or have watched others be, tear-gassed, spat on, pushed to their hands and knees, flattened on the hood of a car, shoved to the bottom of stairwells, or starved, neglected, and brutalized in the care of the government. This is what public safety looks like under Blue privilege. It amounts to a tool that reserves safety for some publics, while doling out terror in the name of “justice” to other publics.
Desensitization threatens a far graver danger: the shriveling of our souls. Our very humanity is at stake if we cannot dare to build new practices that foster safety and flourishing for all. This mass panic, inordinate anxiety, immobilizing fear, looming outrage, and bewildering despondency teeming across the nation cannot signify anything we'd expect as public safety. Perhaps public safety is not enough after all. Only 23 years old, ICE is a creature of post-9/11 panic and collective grief. We managed, though imperfectly, for two centuries without it and can again. Viewed unfavorably by more voters than favorably in every poll this year, ICE was most certainly on the ballot. Congress has the mandate to end the terror and must avoid squandering public trust by trampling on the will of the people. The survival of our humanity requires ending ICE itself.
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Michigan Voters Repudiate Grotesque Islamophobia Aimed at Abdul El-Sayed
El-Sayed’s defeat of this sleazy prejudice is the most American thing in the world. I have gone blue in the face pointing out that the Founding Fathers explicitly recognized freedom of religion and conscience for Muslims, as well as for Jews, Catholics and others.
Nov 04, 2026
The ugly tactics of the Republican Party in Michigan, targeting Abdul El-Sayed for his Muslim faith, were not unprecedented in American history. Catholics, Jews and other minorities have been dragged through the mud for not being white Protestants. Bigots warned that Jack Kennedy would be a tool of the papacy. American Jews were accused of being greedy bankers and dangerous Communists, often in the same breath. Hatred doesn’t need to be logical or consistent. Indeed, the haze of hatred allows people to believe in dozens of impossible things before breakfast.
In the case of El-Sayed, this exemplary American citizen, born in Rochester Hills, raised by an Egyptian Muslim father and a white Christian step-mother, became a physician, taught medicine at Columbia University, and ran health services in Wayne County, Michigan. He was nevertheless configured by Donald Trump and Mike Rogers, both of whom have committed state terrorism against thousands of victims, as a terrorist sympathizer. Rogers who when he was a congressan was a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammad Morsi in Egypt, had the nerve to accuse El-Sayed of being a Muslim Brother or receiving support from them. Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists do not, however, support LGBTQ rights, as El-Sayed does. El-Sayed, a convinced capitalist, was accused of being a Communist, though Communists are typically atheists, so you can’t be both a Communist and a Muslim Brother. It is very like the contradictory charges launched at Jews by antisemites like Henry Ford, Elon Musk’s predecessor.
El-Sayed won a majority of Michigan Jews, who did not buy the GOP smear, perhaps having been sensitized to these sleazy tactics by seeing them deployed by Christian white nationalists against their own community. It has to be admitted, however, that right wing Zionists were among the prominent purveyors of bigoted talking points. The plummeting power of the latter, however, was clearly demonstrated by the bath their candidates took almost across the board. Attempts were made to imply that African-American support for El-Sayed in Detroit and Flint was lukewarm, but it was that vote that will put him over, and in majority-Black precincts he did better than Kamala Harris had.
El-Sayed’s defeat of this sleazy prejudice is the most American thing in the world. I have gone blue in the face pointing out that the Founding Fathers explicitly recognized freedom of religion and conscience for Muslims, as well as for Jews, Catholics and others.
As I previously wrote, the Founding Fathers explicitly mentioned Islam when they spoke of religious freedom. And quoted:
George Washington asked in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman that some craftsmen be hired for him: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, [sic] Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, [Muslims] Jews, or Christian of any Sect – or they may be Atheists …
In his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, RI, Washington pledged that the “Children of Abraham” would not be made afraid in the United States (implicitly contrasting the new nation’s liberties and personal security with the pogroms of the Old World). It should be noted that Arab Muslims consider themselves, as well, descendants of Abraham through Ishmael:
- The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.
If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—-a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Washington underlined that in the new social experiment that is the United States, toleration is not merely the indulgence of one group of people by a dominant elite. It is a right, which requires only that the individual be an upright citizen of the new country, which “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Ben Franklin, the founding father of many important institutions in Philadelphia, a key diplomat and a framer of the US Constitution, wrote in his Autobiography concerning a non-denominational place of public preaching he helped found “so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” Here is the whole quote:
- And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner propos’d, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but sufficient sums were soon receiv’d to procure the ground and erect the building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad, about the size of Westminster Hall; and the work was carried on with such spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service
Not only did Ben Franklin not want to ban Muslims from coming to the United States, he wanted to invited them!
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
- that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right . . .
The idea of religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment was based on an act passed in 1786 by the Virginia state legislature that had been authored by Thomas Jefferson, and which said in part:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
One of the arguments raised against this act in the Virginia legislature was precisely that it would allow the free practice of Islam in the Commonwealth. Jefferson’s opponents tried to limit religious freedom to Christianity. Jefferson battled back and won.
James E. Hutson explains:
- Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.”
In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature “rejected by a great majority” an effort to limit the bill’s scope “in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan.”
Jefferson was ambassador in Paris in 1787 when the Constitution was being drafted, but he corresponded with Madison and strongly urged him to draft a bill of rights that would address religious liberty. Madison was influenced by the 1786 Virginia statute.
That is, the legislative history of the First Amendment demonstrates conclusively that it is rooted in Enlightenment conceptions of religion that saw Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism as all constituting “religions,” belief in which is a matter of conscience over which civil magistrates should have no control. So I would say that the Constitution implicitly recognizes Islam as a religion, even for an originalist who reads it through eighteenth-century eyes.
Here is Jefferson again: “The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”
Or: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
“As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
The treaty is important for showing the mindset of the fashioners of the American system.
The second Trump administration has been the most corrupt and crime-ridden in American history. The Trump family has made billions from nepotism and favoritism. He allowed Stephen Miller to reconfigure ICE to illegally assault and detain hundreds of American citizens, to murder American citizens in the street, to engage in racial profiling, and to parade cruelty and sadism before the public. The US military has been misused to murder Latin American and Caribbean fishermen. Trump has launched wars without seeking Congressional approval, which have severely weakened the country’s security posture. Trump has illegally tinkered with tariffs, a Congressional sphere of responsibility, even after the Supreme Court found against him. He has plunged the country into a severe energy crisis from which there is not obvious way to extract it. Trump has also arranged for his political allies to take over major US media, with the Ellisons of Oracle and Skydance fame getting their hands on the throats of CBS News, CNN and TikTok. This is the way that Turkiye’s Tayyip Erdogan tamed Turkish media, by having his cronies take over the major companies. In 2013 when there were street protests in Istanbul, CNN Turk showed documentaries on penguins. We can expect a similar gutting of investigative journalism in the US, with a concomitant nuking of democracy.
The blue tsunami is welcome, but Democrats have to restore the rule of law and reclaim the power of the purse. Trump administration officials who diverted congressionally mandated monies and declined to spend money on the things Congress mandated they be spent on, must be punished. The new big pro-Trump media monopolies have to be broken up. Comity is all very well, but we don’t need fascists to love us, we need them to fear us.
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Young Arab Americans Describe How Islamophobia Throughout Election Has Made Them Feel Unsafe
"I'm more in danger of going through a racist event, a dangerous event, than I was like five years back, especially in school and public places," said one young Michigander.
Nov 03, 2026
Lawmakers and political operatives from both sides of the aisle, with varying degrees of subtlety, have spent the 2026 midterms campaign insisting that Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, has endangered or threatened Jewish Americans with his campaign.
But young Arab Americans in Michigan this week said the pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments of President Donald Trump along with innuendo by some Democrats have made them feel unsafe in their own communities.
"Seeing us so misunderstood, it's really disheartening," a student named Mina Abdel-Khalek told Sam Robinson of The Michigan Chronicle on Monday. "Because I honestly don't know anyone who's as evil as we're painted out to be."
Aasiya Yaasiin added that "it's like going back in time."
"I'm more in danger of going through a racist event, a dangerous event, than I was like five years back, especially in school and public places," said Yaasiin.
El-Sayed supporters Aasiya Yaasiin, Mina Abdel-Khalek and Faduma Hassan say Islamophobic rhetoric in TV ads is making them feel less safe at school and in public. “It’s like going back in time. I’m more in danger of a racist event now than five years ago,” Yaasiin says. https://t.co/aQzqoU5bNH
— Sam Robinson (@samueljrob) November 2, 2026
The corporate Democrat-aligned think tank Third Way kicked off months of attacks on El-Sayed long before the August primary that focused on his decision to campaign with streamer Hasan Piker, who has said the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel was a “direct consequence” of US and Israeli actions. His association with Piker, the group suggested, was an act of antisemitism. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and a number of Democratic operatives have amplified the claim.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said point-blank recently that El-Sayed would put Americans' lives at risk should be win the Senate seat and serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee, while the candidate has been asked repeatedly about his views on Israel's "right to exist" by journalists who have said nothing about his comments on fighting antisemitism.
Meanwhile, a number of political observers have noticed that the corporate media has said far less about rampant Islamophobia and how the safety of Arab Americans and Muslims in the US has been impacted by the persistent attacks on El-Sayed.
Stevens has accused El-Sayed of being "disrespectful to women," and focused intently this week, as she struggled to explain why she had decided to endorse Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in the race, on El-Sayed allegedly becoming "angrier and angrier"—suggesting the Muslim former public health official is an "angry antisemite," as Matt Sledge wrote at The Intercept.
The former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party also asserted that El-Sayed, an outspoken critic of US funding for the Israeli military, is an "extremist" and urged Democrats to vote for neither the Democrat nor the Republican.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and Cruz have openly called El-Sayed a "jihadist," the president has mocked his Arabic name, and Rogers has claimed he has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood—a movement based in Egypt which Rogers himself has previously said he would be open to working with—and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy baselessly mused at an event for the Republican candidate that hundreds of millions of Arabs across the world had contributed nothing to science and literature.
A speaker at a Rogers rally also claimed that the Michigan-born candidate, whose family immigrated from Egypt, is "not an American."
While interview questions, rally speeches, and articles have fixated on whether El-Sayed has endangered or could endanger Jewish communities, whom he has engaged with through a "deep canvassing" campaign in the final weeks of the race, observers have noted that Rogers and Trump have not been asked whether their comments on the candidate may endanger Arab Americans and Muslims.
"Mike Rogers has run a bigoted, openly Islamophobic campaign that endangers millions of our fellow Americans," said Dylan Williams of the Center for International Policy. "That some pro-Israel groups have assisted him by spreading lies about Abdul El-Saued should be a source of shame and cause for reflection among many who should know better."
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Where Is the Outrage When Islamophobia Comes Straight From the Top?
We constantly hear warnings about the rising tide of antisemitism in this country. But what about the tsunami of anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hatred that is not just coming from ordinary citizens, but from the highest levels of our government?
Oct 31, 2026
The Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate coming from the highest levels of our government are absolutely outrageous. From President Donald Trump to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to members of Congress, including Sen.Ted Cruz and Rep. Nancy Mace, we are hearing vile, ignorant and dangerous attacks that must be denounced not just by the communities and individuals under attack, but by all of us.
When RFK Jr. was campaigning in Michigan for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, he insulted the entire Arab community worldwide—all 500 million of them—saying that Arabs “don't produce science, they don't produce literature, and they don't win Nobel Prizes or other prestigious international awards.”
His remarks were not only incredibly racist, but absolutely false. In fact, Egyptian scientist Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman won the Nobel Peace Prize. Palestinian-American chemist Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and mathematician Michael Atiyah, whose father was Lebanese, won the Fields Medal.
There is a fundamental difference between Islamophobia and antisemitism in America today: Islamophobia is being promoted by the state.
And let's not forget the extraordinary contributions of Arab scholars to mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy over the centuries.
Then there's Donald Trump, who has been on the campaign trail spewing racist diatribes against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan. Trump has been deliberately calling him Mohammad. When told that his name is Abdul, Trump responded, "I'm the president. I can call him whatever the hell I want."
He has accused El-Sayed of being a “Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist, who hates Jews and Blacks and AMERICANS.” He's even said El-Sayed “would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he's allowed to go into the Senate.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz has joined in the hatefest. At a campaign event in Michigan, Cruz announced that his nickname for Abdul El-Sayed is "the jihadist leprechaun." Cruz then claimed that if El-Sayed were elected to the Senate, he could gain access to classified intelligence and pass it to terrorists. He warned that if El-Sayed is a "passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood," there is "a very real risk that Americans will die as a result." El-Sayed has repeatedly denied any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.
And then there's Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who declared that "Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan Horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic." Imagine if someone said this about Jewish officials!
On March 9, 2026, Tennessee Republican Congressman Andy Ogles declared that "Muslims don't belong in American society" and that "Pluralism is a lie." He has also advocated stripping naturalized Muslim Americans of their citizenship and deporting them.
The attacks on New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city's first Muslim mayor, have been relentless. Ogles called him "little Muhammad" and demanded that he be stripped of his citizenship and deported. Senator Tommy Tuberville posted a photo of Mamdani celebrating Ramadan alongside a photo of the September 11 attacks, with the chilling caption, "The enemy is inside the gates." Mace also associated Mamdani with 9/11, while Congresswoman Elise Stefanik called him a "jihadist." How can we tolerate politicians treating an entire religious community as terrorists and enemies of our country?
Let's not forget the Trump administration's chilling raid on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home, even though no criminal charges had been filed against her. Over and over again, Trump has attacked Omar, telling her to go back to Somalia, calling her homeland a "shithouse," accusing her of hating America, and even suggesting she could be deported or jailed.
Antisemitism is certainly unacceptable, but so are Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.
We constantly hear warnings about the rising tide of antisemitism in this country. But what about the tsunami of anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim hatred that is not just coming from ordinary citizens, but from the highest levels of our government?
Where is the outrage? Where are the political leaders demanding accountability? Where are the congressional hearings? In the past two years, I have seen 14 hearings about antisemitism, compared with just two that discussed anti-Arab hate and Islamophobia.
CAIR's 2026 Civil Rights Report recorded 8,683 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in 2025, the highest annual number since it began collecting these figures in 1996.
As Jewish writer and political commentator Peter Beinart has argued, there is a fundamental difference between Islamophobia and antisemitism in America today: Islamophobia is being promoted by the state. Beinart points to the attacks on Muslim elected officials, the congressional campaign against Sharia law, and Trump's Muslim immigration bans as evidence that anti-Muslim prejudice is being promoted by the very people entrusted with protecting Americans' constitutional rights.
Antisemitism is certainly unacceptable, but so are Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism. And it's time we confronted all three with the same outrage, the same urgency, the same call for accountability, and the same commitment to justice.
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The Solution Staring Israel in the Face
What is needed from the opposition leaders? Nothing beyond decency. The government that ousts Netanyahu is the one that accepts the votes of Arab citizens.
Oct 30, 2026
Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich decisively lost Israel’s election on October 27. The governing coalition of Likud, the far right, and the ultra-Orthodox parties fell from 64 seats in 2022 to 53, eight short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The other 67 seats went to parties that campaigned to replace the government: 48 to the Jewish-led opposition headed by Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, and 19 to the two Arab parties. Turnout was 77.9 percent, the highest since 1999, and Arab citizens, who make up about one-fifth of Israel’s population, voted at an estimated rate of about 80 percent, up from 53 percent in 2022. The results make it clear: Israeli voters chose to end the Netanyahu government. The solution to Israel’s political crisis is in plain view. The only thing standing in the way of ousting the government is racism: the refusal of Israel’s Jewish opposition leaders to treat Arab citizens as part of the political community.
The racism is not hidden. On election night Netanyahu claimed a “decisive majority among the Zionist and Jewish public,” a formula that simply subtracts the votes of one citizen in five. His Likud party then viciously and absurdly declared that the election had been “stolen” by the Arab parties and demanded investigations by the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. The purpose, of course, is to brand Arab votes as illegitimate, so that no government resting on them can be accepted.
The tragedy is that the opposition leaders have adopted the same premise. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, has said that the Arab parties “are not Zionist, and therefore we will not rely on them.” Avigdor Liberman has ruled out any government that depends on Arab votes, even a temporary one. Eisenkot has said that Ra’am’s leader “won’t be part of my next government,” and that he does not “see any Arab or Haredi parties who accept” his conditions for partnership. These leaders do not object to anything the Arab parties would do in government. With good will, they could easily negotiate a governing arrangement.
The consequences of the racism are predictable. If the opposition leaders hold to their refusal, only two outcomes remain. Israel will go to another election, with the current murderous government remaining for many more months, or the opposition will join a unity government in which Netanyahu stays in power. Netanyahu has ruled out abandoning his far-right partners. Either way, the opposition leaders would hand Netanyahu and his murderous colleagues the victory that the voters denied him.
There are no real policy obstacles to cooperation. Ra’am, the United Arab List, has already served in an Israeli government. In 2021 it joined the coalition led by Bennett and Yair Lapid, the first independent Arab party ever to do so. The other Arab party, the Joint List, has said it would vote with an Eisenkot-led government to establish an official inquiry into the failures of October 7, which is the opposition’s own first priority. Israel’s voters appear to be ahead of their leaders. A Hebrew University survey on election night found that more than 61 percent of opposition voters want Eisenkot to form a government with Ra’am, while only 20 percent prefer new elections. Arab and Jewish opposition voters want the same thing, which is to oust Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich.
A practical plan should follow directly from the arithmetic. First, when the new Knesset convenes, the 67 members opposed to the Netanyahu government should elect a new Speaker, giving the new majority control of the parliamentary agenda even before a government is formed. Second, Eisenkot should form a true coalition in which Ra’am sits as a full partner with ministerial posts, giving 56 seats, with the Joint List supporting the government from outside to reach 67.
The program of such a government would not be hard to negotiate, because the parties that would be in it already share most of it. The government would establish an official inquiry into the failures of October 7. It would adopt an emergency plan against the crime and violence that have devastated Arab towns, and it would invest in housing and services for Arab communities, including the unrecognized Bedouin villages of the Negev. It would restore the independence of the courts and the attorney general.
The government might last a year. Questions of borders and the Palestinian territories would not be settled by this government, but a non-racist coalition government now would move Israel toward a lasting peaceful solution, perhaps toward a binational democratic state or toward the two-state solution of the long-standing Arab Peace Initiative. In the meantime, and crucially, Netanyahu and the other war criminals would be ousted.
Israel’s leaders should also understand what is at stake beyond Israel’s borders. Israel’s racism and murderous campaign in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have profoundly alienated people all over the world. A Pew Research Center survey of 36 countries this spring found that a median of 67 percent of respondents view Israel unfavorably, including 60 percent of Americans. In Pew’s surveys this year, Israel was viewed more negatively than any other country it asked about. More Americans now sympathize with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. The alienation extends to Jews all over the world. If the politicians double down on their racism now, they will confirm the world’s harshest judgments of Israel.
What is needed from the opposition leaders? Nothing beyond decency. The government that ousts Netanyahu is the one that accepts the votes of Arab citizens. Israel’s president has asked the party leaders to come to his consultations with an open mind. The majority to remove Netanyahu exists, provided that the leaders drop their racism
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The Israeli Election Results Underscore the Extreme Racism of the Zionist Parties
When the Zionist Israeli politicians talk about “Arab Israelis,” they sound an awful lot like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace in the bad old days of Jim Crow in the United States.
Oct 30, 2026
The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that some 80% of Palestinian Israelis voted in the parliamentary election. I use the term “Palestinian Israeli” on the model of “Italian American,” rather than the typical “Arab Israeli,” which is racist since it implies that all speakers of Arabic are one ethnicity or nationality and that there are no Palestinians.
The community has not voted in that proportion since the 1960s, and it is a sign of widespread anger over the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted for war crimes under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
The editors of Arab 48 say that the Palestinian-Israeli parties may get 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, nearly 16% of seats. That isn’t quite equal to their 21.7% proportion of the population, but it is closer than they’ve been before. However, this representation will not turn into political power, since the Zionist parties absolutely refuse to allow Palestinian-Israeli blocs into their coalitions. This rejection of political participation for over a fifth of the population illustrates the oxymoronic character of the phrase “Jewish and democratic.”
Because Jewish parties in Israel refuse to cooperate with Palestinian-Israeli ones, Jewish politicians like Netanyahu can spew racial hatred and pursue a cold-hearted genocide without fear of voter backlash.
The main rival to the ruling Likud, Gadi Eisenkot, has announced that not only will he refuse to admit the Palestinian-Israeli parties to his coalition but that he would not accept their passive support either. In a parliamentary government you need 51% of seats to avoid losing a vote of no confidence, which would cause the government to fall and lead to new elections. But you could have a prime minister with 48% of the seats who stays in power a long time if parties that are not in her coalition pledge not to call a vote of no confidence. They would do this if they generally liked most of her policies and disliked those of her rivals. Eisenkot, who bears some responsibility for the Gaza genocide, is saying he won’t accept even passive support from the Palestinian Israelis, since, of course, it would make him at least a little beholden to them.
During the electoral campaign, Netanyahu and his Finance Minister-tsar of the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, constantly instigated against the Palestinian Israelis.
Mahmoud Mujadala, writing in the same newspaper, reports that Netanyahu and other members of the ruling Likud Party are accusing the Palestinian-Israeli parties of “stealing the election.” Netanyahu is alleging fraud and bribery at the ballot box, sort of the way US President Donald Trump and his acolytes accuse minorities in this country of voter fraud and the way they reject their loss of any election as a form of fraud. Netanyahu called for a police investigation. He also attacked the Joint List for chanting, “My country is my country.”
The Likud Party, among the more racist in the world, issued a communique saying, “The election in the State of Israel was stolen by Arab parties, which support terrorism and the erasure of the Jewish state, through serious criminal offenses that included bribery, threats, violence, fraud, and the deployment of disallowed voter mobilization programs.” It also accused Palestinian-Israelis of voting multiple times, taking a leaf from the crazy talk characteristic of Trumpism in the United States.
Because no Zionist, Jewish party will allow Palestinian Israelis into its coalition, it is possible that the two major blocs, those of Netanyahu and Eisenkot, will be unable to form a government. If they continue to reject a government of national unity, and if none of their smaller constituent parties defects to the other coalition, then yet another election will have to be held.
Because Jewish parties in Israel refuse to cooperate with Palestinian-Israeli ones, Jewish politicians like Netanyahu can spew racial hatred and pursue a cold-hearted genocide without fear of voter backlash. In the US, even segregationists like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace tried to get the Black vote once African Americans were allowed to vote and became a force in politics. That sort of moderation of extremist views isn’t happening in Israel because it still practices elements of Jim Crow.
Israel’s population is roughly 10,305,000, with 2,173,000 of them being Palestinian Israelis. Jews, along with Israeli citizens not recognized as halachic Jews by the Grand Rabbinate, total 7,828,000. Typically nearly a million of the Jews are outside the country at any one time, since young people and even middle-aged people go abroad for education and careers and many only return decades later. The return rate has fallen, though, during the fighting of the past three years. There are also 304,000 foreign nationals working in Israel, including guest workers and asylum seekers. The Palestinian-Israelis are 21.7% of the total Israeli citizen population.
The Hispanic and Latine population in the United States is roughly 20.5% of the whole. So this would be like Anglo politicians here saying that Marco Rubio should never be in the US cabinet. In fact, 22 Hispanics or Latines have served in US cabinet positions, beginning in 1988 with Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Lauro Cavazos as US Secretary of Education.
Or it would be like saying that the 50 Hispanics and Latines who hold seats in the US House of Representatives all got there by voter fraud or bribery.
In fact, the Zionist Israeli politicians, when they talk about “Arab Israelis,” sound an awful lot like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace in the bad old days of Jim Crow in the United States. Those segregationists stood against the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They didn’t want African Americans to have the franchise! And neither do the Zionist Jewish politicians in Israel want non-Jews to have the franchise. Since the latter can vote, and get seats in parliament, the only thing left for the Zionists to do is to pull their wagons around and make sure no non-Jews are allowed into the ruling coalition or the cabinet.
And the UK Green Party was attacked for passing a resolution noting that Zionism is racist. Of course, not everyone who considers themselves a Zionist is necessarily a racist. But the leaders of the political parties that embody Zionism are pretty unanimous on this score.
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Mike Rogers Helped Silence Black Voters in the 90s; He’s Still Doing it Now
Mike Rogers was willing to give up any ounce of principles he may once have had to stand up to Trump’s lies just to get cool with the MAGA crowd. If you think he has the best interests of Black Michiganders in mind, I have a bridge to Canada to sell you.
Oct 21, 2026
I was in the classroom for enough years to spot a bully from a mile away. At first glance, Mike Rogers doesn’t seem too threatening, but as you get closer, you realize that he’s just another Donald Trump wannabe. Rogers has been actively working to disenfranchise and demean Black Detroiters for decades.
Folks across the city are fed up over the conditions of our schools; closures due to excessive heat are now regular. These conditions can be traced back to the mismanagement that unraveled when Mike Rogers served as the state Senate majority floor leader and PA 10 became law, the legislation that allowed the takeover of Detroit schools. He bears responsibility as an architect of this educational breakdown.
I started my career in 1998 teaching second and fifth grades at John Lynch Elementary School on the east side. It was just before the Detroit public school system changed dramatically; the democratically elected school board had their power taken from them while the state installed unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions on behalf of Detroit families’ futures. The result? Our votes and voices got ignored, while a $100 million operating surplus turned into a $200 million deficit.
We don’t need another leader representing us in Washington who is trying to trample over our rights as Black folks.
Rogers’ disregard for Black Detroiters didn’t stop there. He’s no moderate; he’s a radical whose campaign has numerous ties to Christian Nationalists while parroting Trump’s racist attitudes about our city.
His record is all there. In just the past few years alone, Rogers fundraised with a former state legislator who made racist remarks about African Americans, had someone on his student outreach team who defended a group chat filled with praise of Hitler and slurs, and defended Trump making the city of Detroit a scapegoat. Not to also mention that one of his largest financial backers is a Texas oil tycoon’s PAC associated with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
They say you are the company you keep. And what does that say about Mike Rogers?
Rogers has long stood in the way of Black Detroiters’ full participation in democracy, and that started when he was first a state legislator in the nineties. Some argue he was just a standard, Bush-era neoconservative back in the day who supported DeVos school voucher schemes, but today he’s transitioned into a full-on MAGA mouthpiece.
Consider how Rogers has changed his tune on the Big Lie. We all remember how in 2020 Trump claimed the election was rigged partly based on conspiracies around ballot counting in Detroit. At the time, Rogers tried to distance himself from the soon-to-be impeached president, so much so that he wrote a Washington Post opinion piece on the eve of the January 6 insurrection urging Republican lawmakers to uphold the will of the people.
Now, Rogers is a full-on election denier. Not only has Rogers claimed that his loss in the 2024 US Senate race was “stolen” despite an audit confirming it was completely fair, he’s now promoting the worst of Trump’s voter intimidation tactics against Black voters.
At an April 17, 2026 Kalamazoo County GOP meeting, Rogers described recruiting off-duty or retired police officers as poll watchers in Detroit, saying, "Try to intimidate them, please," and, "All you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt.” Not only is voter intimidation a federal crime, but calling for this in the largest majority-Black city in the country reeks of racism.
Mike Rogers would be a reliable vote for Donald Trump’s agenda if he’s elected. That means Republicans will be closer to passing the SAVE Act, which are plainly Jim Crow-like tactics that disenfranchise voters by requiring people to show documents like a birth certificate or passport to vote that are inaccessible for many.
Mike Rogers was willing to give up any ounce of principles he may once have had to stand up to Trump’s lies just to get cool with the MAGA crowd. If you think he has the best interests of Black Michiganders in mind, I have a bridge to Canada to sell you.
We don’t need another leader representing us in Washington who is trying to trample over our rights as Black folks. Now, it’s on us to show up to the polls on or before November 3 to make our voices heard.
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'My Name Is Abdul': El-Sayed Confronts Trump's Racist, Anti-Muslim Attacks Head-On in New Ad
"In response to attacks about his faith, Abdul doubles down on who he is," said one observer.
Oct 20, 2026
In his latest campaign ad released late Monday, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic US Senate candidate in Michigan, struck a resilient and matter-of-fact tone that suggested the recent racist attacks on him, his Arabic name, and his Muslim faith are no secret—but he has no plans to try to hide his identity to appease Republicans and Democrats who have claimed he's an "extremist" or accused him of terrorist ties.
"My name is Abdul," said El-Sayed in the 30-second ad. "It means servant. I pray every day. I reflect on my role in this life, on this Earth—how we leave it better than we found it."
He continued by linking his own faith traditions to those of millions of Michiganders who also "pray"—many of whom, he suggested, "feel hopeless" in President Donald Trump's America, as they face rising costs and struggle to afford groceries, healthcare, childcare, and other essentials.
As a man of faith, I pray every day. Faith is a thing there’s just too little of in Washington. https://t.co/1OUOb51AC8
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) October 19, 2026
The ad, subtly connecting El-Sayed's Muslim faith to people of all belief systems across Michigan, comes as Trump and others ramp up Islamophobic attacks on the progressive former public health official, with two weeks to go until Election Day.
The president explicitly, baselessly slandered El-Sayed as "a jihadist" at one recent rally, mocking his name as he told the crowd that El-Sayed "is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood." The Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, former Rep. Mike Rogers, has also attempted to tie El-Sayed to the political movement that was founded in Egypt in 1928.
On Monday, as El-Sayed's ad was released, Trump took aim at the candidate's name once again, calling him by his middle name, Mohamed.
"He knows my name is Abdul," El-Sayed said of the president earlier this month. "He says it every day. But he’s not just attacking me. He’s attacking all of us. He thinks so low of us. He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office. He thinks we don’t know any better. It’s time for change."
The Republican claims regarding El-Sayed's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood made their way into an exchange the candidate had with a town hall attendee identified as "Tommy" in Caro, Michigan over the weekend, where Tommy demanded that El-Sayed "disavow" the group.
“Sure. Yeah, absolutely,” El-Sayed said, before challenging Tommy to explain why he was asking a Muslim candidate to do so.
This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his. https://t.co/p09eMtsh0x
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) October 18, 2026
Anti-Muslim attacks have come from both sides of the aisle since El-Sayed began his campaign, with Democratic strategists spending months fixating on his decision to campaign with popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and tying the candidate to Piker's earlier remarks about September 11 and Israel.
On Monday, former Michigan Democratic Party chair Lon Johnson accused El-Sayed of "extremism" and said his rhetoric threatens Jewish communities, calling on Democrats in the state to "leave the Senate race blank" to represent "a rejection of ideological absolutism." El-Sayed is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and, like a majority of Americans, is deeply critical of US support for Israel as it continues its assault on Gaza and the West Bank.
In the ad released Monday, El-Sayed suggested that "faith" like his could bring positive change to Washington, DC, where political leaders have long claimed that big changes to systems in the US—such as its for-profit healthcare system, which El-Sayed strongly believes must be replaced by Medicare for All—would be impossible to make.
"Faith is a thing that there's just too little of in Washington," he said. "We don't have faith in our future. We don't have faith that we can actually fix things."
Mussab Ali, a former school board official in Jersey City, New Jersey, said the ad took "courage" to release.
"I think this might be the first time in American history you’ve seen a Muslim candidate demonstrate a part of their prayer in an ad like this," said Ali. "In response to attacks about his faith, Abdul doubles down on who he is."
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Reckoning With the Children Buried in 'Secret Cemeteries' Across the US
There are more than 1,000 graves of children who died in state custody that are slowly being identified, forcing the nation to confront legacies of racism and child exploitation.
Oct 12, 2026
Last year, Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice, broke the news that 230 or more incarcerated Black children died at the Maryland House of Reformation & Instruction for Colored Children. These children died and were buried between 1877-1939 in nearby unmarked graves. Last month, the Center released research finding that there are 40 similar “secret” burial sites in 29 states where over 1,000 children were buried after they died while under the care of youth institutions. The news went viral when shared in a Washington Post piece.
Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice undertook this research as part of the Forgotten Children Initiative launched back in February 2026. Back in 2023, the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services started to document and report how the department has functioned, including reckoning with histories of physical and emotional abuse, exploitative labor practices, and racial discrimination. The House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, which was open and operational from 1870-1937, is just one example.
Georgetown University’s report indicates that House of Reformation served as the first reform school for delinquent Black children in the American South. The house was originally created by the Maryland General Assembly because Black children were sent to adult jails and state prisons for criminal offenses, some as light as running away from home. Maryland children were sent to the House of Reformation for many reasons—sometimes because they were orphaned or had lost a parent or did not have a parent deemed “fit” to care for them, because they lived in poverty or were unhoused or because they were accused of minor offenses.
This latest report reveals a devastating but not entirely unknown truth—that children continue to be exploited, killed, and buried in secrecy under the “protection” of the state and federal government.
Nineteenth century prison reformers argued that children should be placed in facilities that offered religious, vocational, and personal education, but despite this arguably white saviorist goal that these institutions not be places of punishment, reform schools like Maryland’s House of Reformation became places where children were pushed into overcrowded facilities without proper food and medical care. Many children were then forced to labor without pay (often solely to enrich the institutions rather than to teach them vocational skills), to live and work in isolation, or were subject to corporal punishment.
As Georgetown University’s report indicates, a child’s reform school experience was largely based on their race, class, and age. Black and white children were placed in segregated facilities, often also separated by gender. Young Black girls specifically were especially subject to sexual violence and assault in these facilities. As expected, reform schools—later called training schools, industrial schools, juvenile reformatories, and eventually juvenile detention centers—were radically different based on whether Black or white children were living and working there.
Because of the horrific working conditions; a systemic lack of medical care; and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, hundreds of children died at these schools. Approximately 230 Black boys died at the Maryland House of Reform & Instruction while it was operational, and when they died, they were buried in hidden or unidentified graves, likely to cover up the rampant child abuse and death that occurred under the state’s watch. In fact, the secret cemetery was only discovered through a former Maryland Department of Juvenile Services staff member, and while the first section of the cemetery dating to the 19th century included headstones with the names of the boys buried at the site, the second section (dated from the early 20th century) only has rows of cinder blocks with no name or other identifiable information.
The Department of Juvenile Services is working to identify living relatives of the boys buried on site, restore and maintain the site to an official cemetery, and erect historical markers that acknowledge how children were exploited at the site. As the Forgotten Children Initiative report reads, “The overall goal was to properly honor the youth who died or were killed at the House of Reformation and are buried at the site, and provide a more holistic and accurate understanding of the racial inequities that we see today and help with efforts to reduce these inequities moving forward.” This is key because the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services runs the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, a successor to the House of Reformation where almost 250 boys died and were buried in unmarked graves.
But as Georgetown University undertook this study, the researchers realized this was a much more widespread problem. More “secret cemeteries” have come to light, specifically at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida and the New York House of Refuge in New York. These are just three of hundreds of reform schools and institutions that received federal funding to effectively abuse children for decades. At its core, these reform schools were racist institutions meant to police, mold, and erase children of color across the country.
These patterns of child death and secretive burial are also deeply connected to Native American boarding schools throughout the United States and Canada. As Georgetown University’s latest report notes, there are more than 1,000 graves of children who died in state custody that are slowly being identified. The Forgotten Children Initiative questions how many more “secret cemeteries” will be discovered and how many will still be hidden to protect the state that literally enabled their deaths.
This research is part of a global reckoning about the outright murder and covert burial of children in state and religious-run youth institutions. This summer, survivors of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes and their allies rallied in downtown Cork against the impending development on the lands of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Institute where hundreds of infants and children are believed to be buried. These institutions, strikingly similar to those in the United States in the 1960s during the “Baby Scoop” era, were homes for unwed mothers who would have their babies in these facilities. Their children would then be adopted out to neighboring families or would be put into a religious-run institution where abuse and neglect were rampant.
To be clear, this still exists to this day with the Liberty Godparent Home where young, single, pregnant women are coerced into giving up their children to be adopted by affluent Christian families in exchange for a full tuition scholarship to Liberty University.
This violence is also indicative of a much larger history of the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States, where people whose bodies are not claimed or whose families cannot cover the expenses to prepare and bury their loved one, are buried in prison cemeteries with simple concrete slabs or metal markers with the incarcerated individual’s name rather than traditional headstones, or their bodies might be cremated and stored or scattered according to The Marshall Project. It’s one final denial of an incarcerated person’s humanity and dignity reminiscent of what the young Black boys at the House of Reformation experienced.
The children who died (or more accurately who were killed due to abuse and neglect in state-run institutions) are the direct ancestors of the modern Prison Industrial Complex. The Prison Industrial Complex tethers together histories of slavery and sharecropping with modern prison systems where prisoners are forced or coerced to work for subminimum wages, with no employee protection. Like modern juvenile detention centers and even group homes, the House of Reformation and other reform schools served as pipelines to prisons, keeping people of color incarcerated in systems of exploited labor for their entire lives.
It’s worth noting that the House of Reformation admitted its first occupants in 1873, only six years after Maryland had abolished slavery, so at least some of the first children admitted into the House of Reformation were formerly enslaved. During a time when courts were still segregated and Black Americans were systematically denied due process, any criminal accusation against a Black child (in the time before Emmett Till’s horrific lynching) would be difficult to fight. Even before (and after) Maryland outlawed slavery, free Black individuals could be easily declared unsuitable to raise their children under discriminatory statutes, forcing minors into unpaid indentured servitude under white masters and later these reform institutions.
This latest report reveals a devastating but not entirely unknown truth—that children continue to be exploited, killed, and buried in secrecy under the “protection” of the state and federal government. It will take decades if not centuries to locate or recover the remains of children, especially children of color, whose lives and deaths were erased by the state to cleanse itself of systemic violence, if all of these children can be found at all. But as more information comes to light, this news is indicative of a much longer, and darker American history of exploiting children, especially children of color, and how this violence continues in the modern juvenile detention and prison systems.
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Why Book Bans Harm Marginalized Young Readers
When we ban books for young readers that tackle topics surrounding marginalized people, we strip many young readers of the opportunity to feel seen when they are already painfully underrepresented.
Oct 10, 2026
As a first-generation Mexican American, the first time I ever connected with a book and felt genuinely excited to write a book report was when we were assigned to read Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan by Pam Muñoz Ryan in sixth grade. The story, which follows a girl learning to navigate her new life inside a labor camp in California after being forced to move there following the tragic death of her father in Mexico, included themes that really resonated with me.
Up until then, I had never read a book like that. It spoke to me in a way I never imagined a book would, and it made me want to read more. Sixth grade became the year I started considering myself an avid reader because I was pursuing that “special feeling” Esperanza Rising gave me in other books. I was chasing the feeling of being seen.
Today, Esperanza Rising is being challenged in states like Texas and North Carolina because parents feel uncomfortable with its themes of racism and immigration, and I can’t help but think back to my 11-year-old self. If this book had been banned before I got the opportunity to read it, I’m not sure that I would have discovered that “special feeling,” at least not in sixth grade. It would have taken me longer to discover it, if I discovered it at all.
There must be a collective understanding among the gatekeepers of children’s literature that these stories matter, and a commitment to protecting them from being removed from shelves.
This is what makes book bans incredibly dangerous, especially at a time of declining literacy rates, and parents struggling to get their kids to pick up a book instead of their tablets or devices. In October 2026, PEN America reported nearly 12,000 book bans involving more than 7,300 individual titles in US schools during the 2025-2026 school year, which the organization says is the largest censorship case numbers it had ever recorded.
There have been multiple studies reporting on the negative impact book bans are having on teacher morale and student learning, with marginalized young readers especially bearing the brunt of these decisions. The American Library Association reports that a significant proportion of contested books center on LGBTQ+ experiences, racial identity, or themes of systemic inequality, essentially sending the message that those themes should be censored.
When I wrote the first book in my middle-grade magic school series featuring the daughter of undocumented immigrants as the protagonist, Chloe Vega and the Agents of Magic, my goal was to educate young readers about immigration in a way that is digestible and age appropriate. It follows Chloe, who is terrified that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take her undocumented parents from her. She’s unaware magic exists until a sorcerer disguised as an immigration officer takes her parents, forcing her to embark on a journey to harness her abilities at a magical academy so she can reunite her family.
Despite its fantasy elements, the book is essentially about a little girl fighting to reunite with her family. It’s a heavy message for many young readers, but the magical elements make it easier for them to process. The book has been out for a year, and many parents have reported that it served as an excellent gateway to serious conversations with their children about immigration and the times we’re living in.
The sequel to Chloe’s story, Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen, was published on October 6, 2026, and both books could be challenged or banned in many states because they address immigration, despite their age appropriateness.
When we ban books for young readers that tackle topics surrounding marginalized people, we lose a critical avenue for parents, educators, and librarians to educate children on these serious topics and help them develop understanding and empathy. We also strip marginalized young readers of the opportunity to feel seen when they are already painfully underrepresented. In the times that we’re living in, this can be extremely harmful.
It also puts these authors at a significant disadvantage, making it harder to get their books into the hands of the readers who need them most. Many have had school visits canceled because educators and administrators fear repercussions from lawmakers and increasingly restrictive book-banning policies. These challenges create greater financial risk for both authors and publishers, which can make publishers more hesitant to invest in books by marginalized authors and further limit the diversity of stories available to young readers.
So far, many efforts have been made to combat book bans. In 2024, a group of authors banded together to launch Authors Against Book Bans, whose mission is to stand united against the unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read and to unequivocally support the availability of diverse voices in schools, libraries, and culture. Organizations such as PEN America are actively filing lawsuits against school boards, arguing that these bans violate the First Amendment.
But more needs to be done. There must be a collective understanding among the gatekeepers of children’s literature that these stories matter, and a commitment to protecting them from being removed from shelves. Books have long been celebrated for their ability to build empathy and compassion by inviting readers into lives and experiences different from their own. But when the books being challenged and removed are disproportionately about marginalized people, it does more than limit what children can read. It erases the experiences and identities of the very people whose voices deserve to be heard.
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