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Walmart in El Paso as “a response to the Hispanic
invasion of Texas,” he wrote in a manifesto before
the shooting. The shooter didn’t ask any of the 22
people he killed for their papers, or if they came to
the U.S. “the right way,” or if they immigrated “le-
gally.” That’s because it isn’t actually about legality.
It is about our brown skin in America.
In May, while unveiling his immigration plan,
Trump claimed, “Newcomers compete for jobs
against the most vulnerable Americans and put pres-
sure on our social safety net and generous welfare
programs.” But a Department of Labor report con-
ducted under the Bush Administration called the
perception that immigrants take American jobs “the
most persistent fallacy about immigration in popular
thought.” And in 2014, the chief actuary of the Social
Security Administration estimated that undocu-
mented workers have paid $100 billion in Social
Security taxes over the past decade. But it isn’t about
the economy. It is about our brown skin in America.
In July, Francisco Erwin Galicia, a Dallas-born
teenager, was held for over three weeks in Im-
migration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cus-
tody, where he says he lost 26 lb. because of the
poor conditions and was not allowed to shower. In
March, Customs and Border Protection detained
9-year-old Julia Isabel Amparo Medina, a U.S. citi-
zen, for more than 30 hours when she crossed the
border at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry to
attend school. These are not isolated incidents. ICE
has requested the detention of 3,076 U.S. citizens
from October 2002 to December 2018, according to
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse. It isn’t even about being born on
American soil. It’s about our brown skin in America.
This isn’t the America that I was taught to love
by my immigrant parents. The America that adver-
tises the promise of physical and economic safety
to people around the world. I have spent most of
my life in this country. I have built a career, devel-
oped friendships and fallen in love here. As I mark
25 years in the U.S., and five as a citizen, I have
come to understand that I was American even be-
fore I had a passport that says as much.
This brown skin will continue to glow against
the darkness that has fallen in America because I
also see the America that had hundreds of people
lined up in El Paso to donate blood. I see Army Pri-
vate Glendon Oakley Jr., who risked his life to take
several children to safety. I see the hundreds of
people who have donated nearly half a million dol-
lars to my scholarship fund to help undocumented
immigrants attend college. I see that America, and
that is the one I will keep fighting for.
Arce is co-founder and chair of the Ascend
Educational Fund and author of Someone Like Me
and My (Underground) American Dream
Mourners comfort
one another at
a vigil for the
victims of the
Aug. 3 shooting in
El Paso
JOHN LOCHER—AP
