LETTER: ICE makes it clear: U.S. can’t ‘terrorize its way to safety’

To Ozaukee Press:

A mother has lost her daughter. A son has lost his mother. A woman has lost her partner.

     These are not political abstractions. They are permanent ruptures in a family system that will never be whole again.

     Watching the shooting of Renée Good was horrifying, not only because a life was taken, but because it exposed how casually violence is now deployed in the name of “protection.” Leaders claim they are keeping the public safe, yet people are dragged from their homes, fired upon in their cars and terrorized in communities already buckling under rising costs and instability.

     This is not safety. This is trauma.

     When force mirrors the very violence it claims to prevent, we must ask what is truly being protected. Legal language has become a shield, disguising cruelty as procedure and grief as collateral damage. Fear has become a governing strategy.

     My heart breaks for the six-year-old child who lost his mother. His nervous system will carry this loss long after the headlines fade.

     A country cannot terrorize its way to safety. If we want stability, we must stop confusing power as protection. And if we want to call ourselves a nation that values life, then we must start acting like it.

Iman Khan

Cedarburg