When the National Guard was deployed to support ICE raids in Los Angeles, I watched families like mine torn apart in real time. For Mexican Americans, this violence isn’t new—it’s a wound carried across generations, a border that crossed us long before we could name it. My grandparents sacrificed so I could enter rooms they never imagined, yet I still see our communities brutalized on the land we sustain. This reflection is about more than immigration policy—it’s about belonging, survival, and the paradox of a nation that criminalizes the very people who feed it, build it, and care for it.