As a child, whenever anyone knocked on our front door, our mother jumped to the floor, warning my brother, sister and I to do the same. We knew the routine: Move away from the windows, stay crouched on the floor, and don’t say a word. 

After we were positive the knockers were gone, we’d get off the floor, but still be wary of walking near the windows. Only strangers used our front door, and the strangers my mother most feared were the bill collectors. “They’ll come into the house and haul our furniture out. No more beds. No more couch. And when we still owe them money, they’ll take the house. We’ll be sleeping on the streets,” she warned us. 

My sister and I shared a bed. At night, we’d look out the window imagining which spot would be best for sleeping, safest from cars, and I wanted a spot where I could read by the streetlight, certain this new sleeping arrangement would not provide me with any sleep.

Today, I worry about my neighbors who don’t have citizenship, fearing those same knocks on their doors. But unlike the knocks on my childhood door, they will be immediately removed from their homes and hauled to who knows where, and who knows if their families will be separated. 

They won’t be sleeping freely on the streets but locked up in a detention center in who knows what country. No phone calls will be offered. As children, we walked to school. Bill collectors wouldn’t come looking for children in their classrooms. Today, children stay home from school, fearing ICE may snatch them from their classrooms. Their parents may be hauled away from their jobs. Nowhere is safe for undocumented immigrants in America.

Decades ago, I was a special education teacher who spent the summer break trekking in the Himalayas and wandering around Thailand. While I was going through customs in Honolulu, the inspector noticed I had $300 in traveler’s cheques and hit the security button to notify an officer and closed our lane. 

She told me they needed to inspect my belongings because it was suspicious for someone to have that much money at the end of the trip. I explained that I had spent most of the summer sleeping outside for free and I traveled by backpack so I wasn’t interested in buying souvenirs.

Even in my younger days of travel, I never had traveler’s cheques, just whatever money I had saved up stuffed in my backpack, while I’d bike or hitch here and there.

I felt rather responsible — finally having extra money while traveling. Until I met this woman at customs. Feeling desperate, I pulled out a photo of my severely handicapped students and pointed to the boy in the wheelchair, explaining the reason I had cut my trip early by a week so I could attend his funeral. 

She just shook her head as I tried to show her that I was a respectable American citizen. Then I felt the gun on my back. Two customs officers escorted me away, and as we walked past a large window, a young man held up my expensive sleeping bag with a knife, warning me he was about to cut it open, and I realized they had me confused for a drug smuggler. I asked to call my attorney, which I didn’t have, but I did have a couple of phone numbers of friends who were attorneys, but I was not allowed.

Instead, I endured a humiliating cavity search. When they didn’t find opium, I was sent to another room for hours, and finally was able to call the friend who probably wondered why I didn’t show up at the airport in Phoenix. Eventually, the ACLU looked into my case, and most of the report was blacked out, redactions everywhere, but I had been profiled: I subscribed to Mother Jones and The Progressive, donated money to Peace Tax Resistors, and didn’t pay that puny federal excise tax on my phone bill as my means to protest tax dollars going to war. I continued my job as a special education teacher while two of these customs workers apparently lost their jobs after I filed my complaint.

Compared to what is happening to undocumented immigrants today, my episode at the airport makes me feel like a whiner by recounting it here. I am a white woman with no criminal record. Our current regime has allowed Elon Musk and his fanatic pals complete access to our Social Security numbers. They can use AI to search through our social media accounts, targeting their perceived “enemies.”

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Visas are revoked for attending protests. Laws and due process have been shredded. As much as Trump moans about the cartel, he certainly runs our country like they do in their countries.

I sit here after Pope Francis died, a man who cared deeply about immigrants, while Trump’s Easter egg hunt is sponsored by Meta and Amazon. Their founders are two billionaires who could buy citizenship for many undocumented immigrants — people who may have walked across the border undetected or overstayed a visa but have paid taxes for years, hoping to obtain sacred American citizenship in a country that once was respected for being a free country.

Yet, if you are a white South African with $5 million, you may get instant citizenship to this country while 5 million brown-skinned people get deported to who knows where. We have a choice: Ignore what's happening or respond as conscientious citizens who care about our neighbors. 

— Diane Payne is a resident of Holland.