ICE Raids Echo Nazi Germany. Question For Black Folks: Now What?

Covfefe Chronicles with Dr. Stacey Patton — Source: creative services / iOne

The opinions expressed in audio and on this page are those of the author.

Last week, thousands rallied in cities across the country for the No Kings protests. This was a grassroots response to Trump’s latest wave of ICE raids. From New York to Phoenix, immigrant families, clergy, organizers, and students marched with signs like “No Human Is Illegal” and “Stop the Raids,” condemning brutal detention conditions and the renewed push to tear families apart.

But despite the outcry, the machinery of white supremacy grinds on.

ICE continues its operations, with federal agents ramping up worksite raids, courthouse arrests, and roundups tied to the Trump administration’s mandate of up to 3,000 arrests per day. Immigrant children and their parents are still being detained—some taken from schools, others picked up during routine check-ins. Families are being torn apart with little warning, rushed through hearings, and deported overnight—often without access to legal counsel.

And for Black communities, the question remains: Should we even be showing up? Why should we put our bodies on the line?

It’s a question that echoes in barbershops, church pews, group chats, social media threads, and organizing circles. Why should we risk our bodies, energy, and visibility for people who haven’t always shown up for us? For communities that have participated in anti-Blackness, exploited our labor, and stayed quiet during our own moments of crisis, are white people benefiting from the privileges our ancestors fought and died for?

In this week’s episode of The Covfefe Chronicles, I unpack the moral, historical, and political stakes of that question and why the answer isn’t as simple as yes or no.

Because while it’s tempting to view immigration as a separate issue, detached from Black struggle, history tells a different story. When the state decides who belongs, who is worthy, and who is disposable, the target might change, but the logic never does.

The ICE raids are not just immigration enforcement. They’re a dress rehearsal for authoritarianism. The language, “invaders,” “infestation,” “illegals,” is the same dehumanizing vocabulary used by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The tactics, door-to-door raids, detention centers, legal erasure and family separations mirror the early stages of what would later become one of history’s most notorious genocides. No, America isn’t Nazi Germany. But the comparison isn’t hyperbole. It’s a warning.

And Black folks know how fast this kind of violence spreads. We’ve seen it before. We’ve lived it. Our ancestors were enslaved by laws. Lynched with impunity. Redlined, sterilized, surveilled, and caged. We know what it means to be rendered stateless in your own country. We know what it feels like to be deemed “illegal” on stolen land.

That’s why the Black moral dilemma is so heavy: we’re expected to be the conscience of a nation that refuses to have one. To march for people who may not march for us. To sound the alarm, again, for a country that silences our righteous rage. And yet, if we don’t resist this moment, who will? Listen to the audio below.

Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.