A faithful call to abolish ICE

(RNS) — In less than a week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has mercilessly taken two more lives.

Neither man appeared to have been the “intended target” of the operations that took their lives, according to news reports . But I would argue they were. Both were brown men. Both were immigrants. And the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies have intended to target immigrants of color all along.

Last week, after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, the Department of Homeland Security said the victim was targeted because he “resembled” the person they were seeking . And for an operation that uses shameless racial profiling, of course he did, because he was brown. These tragic killings confirm that in the United States, all immigrants of color, regardless of legal status, are in imminent danger.

Araujo, 52, was from Mexico, but had been calling the U.S. home for 35 years, and his family told The New York Times he was likely months away from receiving a work permit. He worked as a homebuilder, supported his family, and on July 7, he was driving members of his construction crew to work when he was racially profiled and killed by ICE. His eldest son,…