The escalation of state violence in the United States has been unprecedented. In the span of three weeks, two people were shot dead in Minneapolis during “anti-immigration” raids. Both were branded “domestic terrorists”.Meanwhile last week, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents used five-year-old Liam Ramos as bait to get his asylum-seeking father to come out of their home; the two have now been taken to a detention centre in Texas. The administration calls this – the act of locking up children in mass detention camps – “immigration enforcement”. ICE detained at least 3,800 children last year, including 20 babies.Across the country, the violence inflicted by ICE is creating a culture of fear within migrant communities.I know this fear; I know this violence. These are the fear and violence that have long devastated my birthplace – Palestine. I hope Americans never have to deal with the scale of death, forced disappearances and violence that generations of Palestinians have had to suffer. But under US President Donald Trump, they are already now experiencing the tactics that are so familiar to Palestinian victims of the Israeli military and illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.The parallels are impossible to ignore.In 2025, 32 people, called “illegals”, died in ICE custody, making it the deadliest year in two decades. They died of seizure, heart failure, stroke, respiratory failure, infectious disease, suicide or neglect. ICE accepted no responsibility for their deat …
