By Bear Howard
If ICE raids continue the way they began — indiscriminate, militarized, and devoid of compassion — this could become the new American story: families hiding in attic crawlspaces, children too afraid to go to school, neighbors quietly defying the state to protect the people they love.
In the red rock canyons of Sedona—better known for energy vortexes, yoga retreats, and upscale resorts—the contradiction would become almost unbearable. Behind the serenity marketed to tourists, a different reality could take hold. People who make the tourism economy possible—the hotel workers, restaurant staff, housekeepers, caregivers—might begin to vanish. Not because they left, but because they were taken.
And those left behind? U.S. citizen children, spouses on work visas, asylum seekers still waiting for a hearing—lives legally present, emotionally invested, and suddenly shattered. What might emerge in response is a quiet rebellion. A modern underground network. Not of activists, but of citizens—retirees, shop owners, teachers, even church groups—offering shelter, food, and safety to families under siege.
Like the Dutch families who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, Americans now face impossible choices. Back then, Anne Frank wrote her diary beneath a swinging bookcase in Amsterdam. Now, somewhere in Phoenix or Des Moines, a nine-year-old girl named Alma whispers her own fears into the glow of an iPad, knowing a knock on the door could mean her family’s end in this country.
Like the abolitionists before the Civil War, who defied the Fugitive Slave Act by harboring runaway slaves, today’s defenders of the undocumented reject the notion that legality equals morality. They recognize a higher law—the one that values a life over a piece of paper. That sees a father, not a “felon,” and a future nurse, not a “burden.”
And like Germans in the 1930s who watched friends disappear in daylight but stayed silent, many Americans are being tested by this wave of authoritarian cruelty cloaked in legality. The ICE raids are no longer administrative—they’re militarized. With growing coordination from local police, drones, and facial recognition software, the state has turned neighborhoods into hunting grounds.
And they would do so not only out of compassion, but out of necessity. Because here’s the brutal truth no one in Washington wants to say out loud: America needs immigrants. Especially in towns like Sedona, where tourism, healthcare, and the service economy rely on labor the native-born population can’t supply. The U.S. has a labor shortage. A demographic crisis. A birth rate below replacement. And we’re deporting the very people we need to survive.
We are a country of just 4% of the world’s population trying to sustain a lifestyle that consumes 20% of its resources. Without an influx of young, capable, hardworking new residents—people ready to build lives, raise families, and contribute to our economy—we will crumble from within. Deporting these families doesn’t make America stronger. It makes it weaker, older, and more brittle.
And yet the raids are escalating. Faces pressed to the floor in front of children. No warrants. No warning. No humanity. The message is clear: legality matters more than life, and fear is the new form of control.
If this continues, then attics across Sedona—and across America—will begin to fill. They won’t just be places of hiding. They’ll be places of courage. Quiet sanctuaries of resistance. Cramped rooms where people will whisper bedtime stories, not knowing if the next knock on the door will be the last they hear in this country.
The irony, of course, is that many of the very people forced into hiding will have built this country’s future. Nurses. Builders. Teachers. Entrepreneurs. Deporting them is not immigration policy. It is national self-sabotage.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s the natural result of policy stripped of empathy, government divorced from ethics. What’s at stake is not just the fate of immigrant families—it’s the moral foundation of the American experiment.
So let the tourists come. Let them snap photos of red rocks and buy candles that promise spiritual awakening. But if we ignore what’s happening beneath those polished surfaces—if we allow families to be hunted, if we say nothing while children grow up in fear—we desecrate something far more sacred than scenery.
We desecrate our humanity.
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7 Comments
Bear
Well thought out and worded. Just one thing, well maybe two-
“Like the Dutch families who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, Americans now face impossible choices”
The choice to help others in their most dire circumstances is not a difficult choice if you are empathetic, humane and except the premise that “All Men are Created Equal” (should have been people but those were different times we tried to evolve out of but have now failed) and “Equal Justice For All” (another American ideal that has now failed).
And I have stated this before. The Director of the Israeli holocaust museum once stated, “the Nazi’s were not the monsters, the monsters were those who remained silent!” This has been true in every Authoritarian country where genocide and war crimes happened but nobody was willing to speak up about who the culprits were for allegedly fearing reprisals for doing so especially in a war crimes tribunal held in another country than where the crimes were perpetrated. This was remedied by the World Court after the mass genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1984 and the Hutu majority slaughtered, tortured and disfigured some 1 million plus ethnic minority Tutsi. It was ethnic hatred on a scale not seen since the holocaust and not yet discovered in Bosnia at the time. When we went in there with the UN the stench of corpses was absolutely unbearable and the corpses and survivors hacked to pieces with machetes. There was at least one alleged instance of humanity known as Hotel Rwanda. I’ve no idea how true the story was as the story took place in the French and Canadian sectors of the country and I was further south. The violence that resulted in this insanity was just that- insanity on a mass scale that flowed like a monsoonal flood in a desert wash. It was rapid and brutally violent.
Somalia was different. Our troops were absolutely not wanted there. Somali’s
like everyone else in the world had a sense of pride in their sovereignty. They were fine with the NGO’s on the ground there to actually help. But then General Aidid declared he and his militia in charge and began diverting aid to his militia first and the people last (typical Greedy DICKtator). This led to Bill Clinstone sending us in to secure and escort aid and aid workers to and from the port and airfield to wherever it was most needed. Then someone got the bright idea to send Delta Force to capture and or kill Aidid and his crew of thugs. This led to an Ambush of Italian Special Forces in an incident known as the Check Point Pasta ambush. Where 9 Italians were ambushed by Aidid’s men posing as local law enforcement who turned upon the Italians as they were clearing buildings. It was named check point pasta because it was the checkpoint that led to a warehouse where Italian soldiers were housed and it just happened to be an Italian Colonization of Somalia artifact- an old Barilla Pasta Factory. Anyway, the Italian Commander in charge of the Italian Task Force “Ibis” requested our black hawks and little bird helicopters provide cover and extraction. After all we were both NATO militaries. But our CO told them to get bent after a single strafing of the area. In return when it was our turn to face the crucible known as Black Hawk Down and subsequent Mogadishu Mile, General Loi and every other country on the ground refused to assist with the exception of the Pakistani troops who had the foresight to deploy with armored vehicles unlike us.
Bosnia was not much better but there was more willingness for neighbors to help neighbors especially in Sarajevo which was highly integrated and has been since the Ottoman occupation. But there was also thousands if not millions of cases where neighbor ratted out neighbors or took it upon themselves to eliminate them. There were friends doxing friends and family cousins and in laws.
The same sorts of things are happening in Ukraine where neighbors are reporting neighbors or spying on Ukrainian forces because they are blood line Russians descendants. It’s happening in Gaza where people are completely desperate and in self survival mode trying to live amongst piles of rubble that was once THEIR home.
We were no different during the revolutionary, independence or civil wars where spies and traitors loomed everywhere. And we will be no different today only on a much grander scale since we have a militarily armed civilian populace that has access to military grade drones, radios and other surveillance equipment.
There are plenty of Monsters right here in America willing to do violence upon their own fellow citizens on a genocidal level because quite simply, we have learned absolutely nothing as a nation that for a very brief period of time was known as The Beacon of Democracy and Freedom. Now it is known in the annals of history as the country that went stark raving mad and imploded itself into a fascist autocracy that eliminates rights, ignores laws and the constitution, violently attempts to overthrow a free and fair election, calls for journalists, judges, court clerks, politicians, attorneys to be attacked violently or killed through intimidation tactics used by the current administration against anyone and anything who speaks out against their crimes. It’s not an easy or simple thing to topple a Fascist Autocracy and it takes intestinal fortitude to stand up against it. So the question is what are you willing to stand for?
We have laws. You don’t get to select which ones you want to obey.
Sorry, you may have to pick your own strawberries or clean your own house.
We also just threw out a lawless administration that allowed some 14 million illegals into the country including 2 million gotaways. Who are these people? Unfortunately we are about to find out.
Wreckless abandonment of our laws and way of life in exchange for politicians grabbing power with total disregard for US citizens.
Straining our social services, and even with those illegals paying taxes we have a net negative effect on the economy and services for legal citizens.
There are work permits, and the right way to do things. Breaking the law became the norm, and in sanctuary cities criminals ruled the streets. Sorry…you took the risk, and you may get booted.
However the worst are the targets. Families huddled in attics? Give me a break.
There are some that will get sucked up, and so be it. Giving people who violate our laws a pass doesn’t cut it. Don’t try it in other countries.
The invasion has been stopped, or severely curtailed, and it didn’t take a bunch of laws. It took a president with the will to enforce existing laws.
And the public approves.
I totally agree with you, break a law go!!
if your not here in America, with correctness.. you may want to self deport.
no drama, just get back to your roots, we will also..
Oh Michael you are always right even when you clearly are not! I agree with you because I am unable to fact check you for myself and blindly trust the propaganda and lies you spew to be true. I haven’t a clue as to what the reality is but I agree with you Michael because I work on MAGA fund raising and donations with you, I am white and independently wealthy so I only see brown criminals not the white ones that outnumber them 2-1. 🤮
Bear, I love your intelligent articulate take on this issue. Far from approving, most of “the public” that I know are appalled at the videos we’ve seen of innocents being pummeled and dragged off just because their paperwork is messed up. I can really relate, having found out my original recorded birth date has a typo. I’m trying everything but the state of my birth won’t correct their own mistake. So even though I had an ancestor who fought in the Civil War (Union side, thank god!), I’m being forced to prove who I am. It’s hard and expensive!
But at one point you mention the “native-born” population. I’d like to remind us all that white-skinned humans are not native to any part of the Americas, or Australia, New Zealand, etc. White skin in humans developed as a beneficial genetic mutation in far northern Europe. And like the Vikings, WE (White Europeans) have a history of invading and taking others’ lands. Around 1/3 of the US was part of Mexico until 1848, not that long ago in historical terms. And the president then, Polk, ordered some pretty heartless attacks on the Mexican people that forced them into a “deal” with the US. Sound familiar?
Those of us who have white skin and an intact conscience need to speak up for those who dare not!
Hey Chicken Little, nothing you have stated here is remotely accurate or true. You continue to post debunked nonsense to further the MAGA agenda of hatred toward all those opposed to your hate filled agendas. And you continue to focus upon the few and far between crimes of migrants which according to FBI statistics is far far lower than that of Caucasians, especially those who are White Supremacist. When will you demand they be rounded up and deported? You of course never will because you are simpatico with White Crime especially White Collar Crime and Criminals aren’t you?
Bear,
the attics have turned out to be churches, restaurants and places of gainful employment vs attics. Perhaps attics are next or even currently being occupied? We live in a police state led by a fascist tyrant who encourages people to rat out others just like the Nazi’s did and Stasi after them. The raid upon Colt Grill in VOC and the Taco place down in phoenix attempting to hide migrants were ratted out by some of the very soulless people (Karens) who frequented these establishments and decided that since people of color were working there that they should be torn asunder by faceless nameless cowards of DHS and ICE. I love when white people slander Mexicans and other Latino’s but continue to vacation in their countries like conquistador’s colonizing it for their own deviancy such as prostitution, pedophilia, drugs and public intoxication to name a few of their lesser crimes. And I love when white people who despise Hispanics gobble up all of their food and drink without hesitation. So like the black slaves of our not so distant past, Latino’s are welcome so long as they are servants at Mar A Lago or Bedminster! Otherwise they have to go away never to be seen or heard from by their families ever again. We are living in very dark times and being led by even darker soulless people who claim to be “Good Christians” while inflicting pain and suffering upon our most vulnerable communities both here and abroad. Good thing King Trump will have to answer to whatever his god is for his numerous crimes. And may his coverup of the Epstein report result in a rapid Icarus style plummet into the abyss! Karma is truly a bitch!