Tracy Fragale Henderson is a Portland resident.

Eating her mac and cheese at The Works on Temple St. in Portland recently, my daughter asked, “Do I have to be worried?” 

“About what?” I asked.

“About ICE.”

I almost cried. What a terrible question to have to ask. And what a terrible question to have to answer.

As Border Patrol arrests hit record numbers in Maine, and ICE arrests are up 75% in Maine this year, I am an American, and so is she.

My 9-year-old grandfather arrived in Ellis Island just after WWI, and my family’s immigration story continues through my daughter, adopted from overseas. Besides, Portland, Maine, is a welcoming city with many immigrants. So why is she worried?

Because a decision by the Supreme Court allows immigration agents to stop anyone they merely assume is here illegally — even if the central reason for the stop is race or ethnicity. 

So, as a person of color, my daughter’s concern is legitimate, and we have her carry proof of citizenship. But U.S. citizen Julio Noriega reportedly had his ID with him when he was taken, and officials didn’t check. And citizen Javier Ramirez told officials repeatedly that he had his U.S. passport, and he was ignored and put in a cell for five days. And Leonardo Garcia Venegas, yet another U.S. citizen, showed authorities his Real ID and was wrongly told it was fake, before it was confiscated. 

As a history teacher, I know that the framers crafted our 4th Amendment’s protection against search and seizure without probable cause and our 5th Amendment rights to not be deprived of liberty or property without due process to shield us from this exact arbitrary use of government power. But if officials don’t check for our U.S. ID, ignore when we tell them we have it and take it — and us — despite seeing it with their own eyes, what should my child expect? 

More than 170 citizens were detained at raids and protests by October of last year, according to ProPublica, and many of those reported being held without being able to call anyone, including a lawyer. 

In fact, U.S. citizen and school superintendent Wilmar Chavarria was not only denied his right to call a lawyer, he was told he had no constitutional rights at all. Isn’t refusing to allow people to prove their citizenship self-defeating for those who say they are after “the worst of the worst”?

But then, criminality could not be the focus if, by one metric, 65% of people taken by ICE have no criminal convictions and only 5% have a violent criminal conviction. So what is the focus?

At the heart of it, when I asked my daughter why she thought she was in danger, she told me it’s because she doesn’t look American.

That’s why I, a white woman, am “safe.” And why people of color, like my daughter, aren’t. Because the term American has been twisted by xenophobia and racism to mean white. And without me realizing, she has absorbed this as true. And why wouldn’t she? The people doing the twisting are loud and powerful. 

The president, even when he knows certain people of color are American-born citizens who have not broken the law, has suggested they go back “to the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.”  He has stated that people from Somalia are garbage who contribute nothing, and the vice president has indicated that American citizens should not have to live next to people unlike themselves.

The administration is overhauling the refugee system to favor immigrants who are white and/or lean to the far right — a new version of racial quotas. A hundred years ago, when Italian immigrants were entering the U.S. and deemed dirty, uneducated and criminal, it would have been my people this administration thought were “invading.”

This is about turning prejudice into policy. We need to remember who Americans are. Unless you are a Native American, you are from a family that came from somewhere else. Every. Single. Person.

If this was truly about immigration, then U.S. citizens would not be taken based on color. If this was truly about criminality, law-abiding but undocumented immigrants would not be taken as they are attempting to follow the legal process.

If this was truly about illegal immigration, legal asylees, permanent residents and citizens would not be fearful. And my daughter would not be afraid.