Small Town Courage Means the World in the Age of Trump
We stood there for an hour or so, clanging noise makers, waving those signs, and telling our neighbors to be careful about the rumored activity of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) in our community. Cars slowed and beeped, drivers waved — mostly their whole hands, but sometimes just that one lone finger — and some called out “Thank you” or “Gracias!” To our surprise, even a reporter and photographer from our local paper showed up.
New London is a small city — or maybe just a big town — of fewer than 28,000 people. According to the 2023 Census, we are 51.8% White, but only 12.8% of those Whites (myself included) send our kids to the public schools. I’ve always thought that doing so was a strength in our community. And thanks in part to that, I’ve become capable of maintaining a passable conversation in Spanish with my neighbors and the parents of some of my kids’ friends.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any Haitian Creole or French, but that community is growing in New London, too. I worked for a while at a local food pantry and I loved hearing the gentleness in tone as my young Haitian coworkers helped older Haitian ladies with their food boxes. Their voices grew soft, respectful, and full of warmth.
Recent immigrants are my neighbors, friends, and have been coworkers at my jobs and other responsibilities, but when, on a recent Friday morning, I got the text about ICE entering New London, the last thing I wanted to do was launch myself into action. I had a grant application due later that day. Ro, a senior, had a random day off from school but also a looming college application deadline. We were sitting next to each other at the library plugging away and nowhere near done. But I found that I couldn’t just sit there. I had to do something.
I texted a few people, including a friend with close ties to Spanish-speaking communities in our town, passing on what I’d heard.
“Oh no,” she texted back, “what should we do?”
What Should We Do?
That is the big question, right? What should we do? What’s happening in this country all feels so big and hateful and we’re all so small. And the Spanish-speaking and Haitian communities feel so vulnerable. Of course, the Trump administration’s policies are racist and cruel (and the news only gets worse and worse). The administration began its potentially vast deportation effort by flying 104 Indian nationals to Punjab on a military airplane shackled for the duration of the 40-hour flight. The White House also sent 300 immigrants from Afghanistan, China, Iran, and other countries on a harrowing, pointless odyssey to Panama — yes, Panama! — that included being trapped in a local hotel and then bused to a makeshift prison in the jungle.
The White House announced an end to temporary protective status for Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants who would face a welter of problems back home. Trump and company then opened Guantanamo to detain apprehended immigrants from Venezuela only to abruptly airlift them all back to Venezuela. The newest plan is to use military bases across this country as detention and processing sites for people rounded up in ICE raids, sweeps, and other operations. Incidentally, though you don’t see much about this, all of it comes at an astronomical price tag. Trump’s “show of power” putting those Indian immigrants on that single C-17 Globemaster for the 40-hour flight to Punjab reportedly cost $28,562 per flight hour — more than $1.1 million (or almost $11,000 per person). So many better things to spend that money on! And we taxpayers are the ones who will foot the bill. According to the Institute on Taxation and Policy, immigrants without work papers in this country nonetheless paid $96.7 billion in taxes to the United States in 2022. Tell me how you square those two facts.
And what indeed should we do?
On a sudden impulse, I texted my friend back: “What do you think if I go hold a sign at Coleman and Jefferson? Just to let people know — and to say it’s not okay?”
The emojis came back fast. Thumbs Up. Thank You hands. Hearts.
“Okay,” I thought, “Here we go. The grant will have to wait.” I texted a few friends to see if others were hearing what I was hearing. I found out that a bunch of them were in a meeting discussing what to do if/when ICE comes to our town. “What perfect timing, friends!” I texted the group. “I was thinking of holding a sign, but let me know if you think I should do something different.”
The text I had gotten said that ICE was on Spring and Summer Streets, as well as Coleman and Jefferson Streets, conducting sweeps. Half an hour later, Ro and I joined my sister Kate and our friend Kris at Coleman and Jefferson, a very busy intersection in New London. It’s where two two-way streets meet two one-way streets, and a commercial strip becomes a neighborhood. It’s down the hill from our town’s high school and was a strategically good spot for our tiny protest/public-service announcement.
Courage is Contagious
I knew that if I got the news, half of New London had, too. Lots of people call New London “News London,” because it seems as if everyone knows everyone and everything that’s going on. We’re a city of gossips and snoops and curious curtain peepers (myself included). Unfortunately, while it’s fun to know what’s going on and it demonstrates a certain level of care and concern, it’s not enough. The jolt of fear that went through me when that text told me ICE had made it to New London was nothing compared to how that same news affected my immigrant neighbors, but it was a jolt nonetheless. I sat paralyzed for a few minutes, wrapping myself in all the work I had to do, as fear grabbed me by the throat. And I had to work through that fear before I could head out to the street corner.
Later, as Ro and I held our signs, shifting them so different groups of cars could see them as the lights changed from red to green and back again, I thought about how contagious fear is — but so is courage. The smiles, thumbs ups, and horn toots from passing vehicles reminded me that our whole country hasn’t gone mad, despite those screaming headlines daily. Good people, I suspected, were busy, scared, confused, outraged, and — yes — getting organized. Just like my friends and me.
Buy the Book My sister Kate and our friend Kris held their signs across the street, as it rained off and on. While we stood there getting wet, some of our friends were meeting and laminating little “Red Cards” that included a statement the holder could read or simply hand to an ICE agent. Here’s how it went:
“I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.”
The “Red Card” had that statement in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole and friends were already starting to drop bundles off at businesses that cater to our immigrant neighbors.
During one of their runs, a car full of them rolled by and said they had heard that ICE agents were at the local hospital and middle school. We promptly packed up our signs, already soggy and water-stained, and went to both locations to ask around. “No ICE here,” a worker at the hospital said. “I would have seen them.”
“They knew we were coming,” I joked, “We got them running scared.”
“It’s not right,” he replied, laughing not (I suspect) at my joke but at my attempt at humor. “It’s not right. Everyone is just trying to make it the best they can.”
I nodded encouragingly.
“We all came from somewhere,” he added.
I tried not to think about what he must have thought of me — wet, unkempt, and free (in the middle of the day) to chat him up and hold a sign that told ICE to go melt somewhere else. After all, “I” (and I have to put that in quotes) came from somewhere too, but it’s been a while.
We All Came from Somewhere
Like all of us, I did indeed come from somewhere else after a fashion.
Nearly 48 million people are immigrants today — about 14% of our total population. Three of my four grandparents emigrated here. Only my paternal grandfather, Thomas Berrigan, was born in the United States. My mother’s parents both hailed from the same small town along Northern Ireland’s coast. Elizabeth O’Mullen left it first, heading for New Jersey to find her fortune far from the provincial hatred of her Catholic minority. William McAlister soon decided to leave, too. There were no jobs, no prospects at home. “You should look up the O’Mullen girl when you get there,” people told him. And so he did. They married, settled in the city of Orange, New Jersey, opened a construction business, and had seven kids.
My father’s mother was the lone German in our family. Frida Fromhardt emigrated from the Black Forest in the late 1800s and ended up in northern Minnesota with her parents as a five- or six-year-old. Later, she met Thomas Berrigan, a railroad laborer and raconteur. They were married in 1911 and had six sons. And I’m hardly alone in my connection to the “old country.” Seventy-five percent of Americans are, in fact, the grandchildren of immigrants. That is how the United States has been and remains a “nation of immigrants.”
As far as I can tell, for both the Berrigans and the McAlisters integration into White America was fairly straightforward. On both sides of the family, the path from poverty to comfort in the middle class took but one generation of hard work and sacrifice (and the G.I. Bill and the support of the Catholic Church and access to lines of credit denied Black Americans). Grandmother McAlister — like today’s immigrants who send remittances back to their families — dispatched regular packages to her relatives in Ireland’s County Antrim with food, money, and all her kids’ old clothes.
And now, here I am in an America where Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Elon Musk are fanning the flames of racial hatred and scapegoating recent immigrants. I don’t know what happens next, but I do know that holding that sign on that recent Friday was a turning point for me. It was the day that I felt transformed from someone in despair, consuming ever-grimmer news (and rumors), into someone willing to visibly resist all that in public. And in the process, I think I taught my kid something — that we can move from consumers to actors in minutes: a couple of texts, a couple of pieces of cardboard, a couple of Sharpies, and we make people mad or happy or supported or connected and become part of the news rather than simply depressed by it.
And in that, I’m nothing special. All over the country, resistance is rising. Massive marches in Los Angeles and San Diego a few weeks back demonstrated that recent immigrants are not afraid. Churches are suing Homeland Security to protect their congregants. In cities and towns across this country, people who do not fear deportation are building networks to respond to ICE raids.
That Friday when I demonstrated ICE did not actually apprehend anyone in New London. Still, we cheered ourselves up, feeling more connected and powerful that afternoon — a rare, wonderful, and motivating experience! It’s now been a few weeks and ICE hasn’t come back yet. Still, I know perfectly well that we’ll need more than a few demonstrators and cardboard signs to roll back the worst abuses of our dictator-in-the-making, but believe me, I’m prepared.
