Local opinion: We are seeing the daily practice of cruelty

In a 7/25/25 Arizona Daily Star letter to the editor I posed this question: What will you do when ICE comes to your neighborhood? For a number of my neighbors, it took seeing an unarmed elderly man grabbed by eight masked ICE officers, handcuffed and thrown into an SUV, and taken to prison for a supposed visa violation before the scale of the daily practice of cruelty became a reality.

While polls show the administration has broad support for deporting “criminals,” Trump has eviscerated international law by attempting to prevent anyone from seeking asylum at our country’s borders. For the time being this effort is blocked by the courts. However, ICE, with the full support of the Republican members of Congress who voted for the budget bill, now has $175B to squander hiring more agents and increasing deportations. ICE tactics include raids that skip lightly over due process, separate parents from their children and migrant workers from their employers, and snag a few U.S.-born or naturalized citizens as necessary collateral damage.

ICE and children

A 7/27/25 Star article “Migrant kids on their own in court” reported on the current jeopardy for unaccompanied minors and the non-profit Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which aims to provide legal services for immigrants in Arizona. In March, 2025, the Trump administration terminated funds for legal services for unaccompanied minors; litigation has temporarily restored it until September. That same Star article quoted an immigration judge shaming a Spanish-speaking 16-year-old who had returned to court as directed but had not yet filled out the asylum paperwork or found an attorney to take his case. Tragically, the only option for legal help this teen was given was The Florence Project, which cannot take on new cases without assured federal funding.

In a few short months, the administration and its acolytes have gone from bullying immigrants to outright persecution. It is a bureaucratic and personal nightmare when one administration allows certain immigrants legal status through executive orders and specialized visas, such as temporary protective status and humanitarian visas, and the next one rescinds those exceptions in order to turn those law-abiding people into criminals. It is unconscionable for the most powerful nation in the world to flaunt international law and hundreds of years of precedent as a place of refuge for those seeking freedom from persecution and suffering.

Toxic empathy

Influencers on the right have appropriated the term “toxic empathy.” While therapeutic professionals help patients who over identify with other people’s problems, pain, and emotional stress, some on the right have perverted this real disorder when they apply it to empathy and compassion at a societal level. They do, in fact, describe the crisis of conscience I and many others are currently experiencing as “toxic empathy,” which can turn a “normal” thinking and feeling person into a bleeding-heart sap.

Those of us who expect our government to be a moral force for good within our country and around the globe presume that decision-makers will uphold common decency. When we are stunned by the actions they take, we feel betrayed because they use our taxpayer dollars to enact brutality in our name. We rightfully take responsibility and feel outraged by our government’s unjust and cruel acts.

Radical empathy

When the cruelty of the current administration comes to your neighborhood, the evidence of moral degradation comes into sharper focus. When we have seen it and felt it in our own backyards, we can neither unsee or stop feeling the moral decay in our national politics evidenced by the administration’s inhumane policies and behaviors.

What can we do when our government has lost all semblance of a moral compass? When cruelty trumps empathy, people of conscience must embrace the antidote to cruelty: radical empathy. We, who recognize our interconnection with all human beings, must be willing to fight for those who are needlessly suffering. It is past time to simply bear witness. Rather, it is time to channel our outrage to loudly protest, generously donate, volunteer, and use our bodies and voices to demonstrate compassion and stop the steal of our common humanity.