Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez was an eight-year-old migrant girl who died in U.S. Border Patrol custody in May 2023. Despite having a chronic heart condition and rare blood disorder, U.S. Border Patrol medical staff refused to see her.

The CPB medical staff knew of the little girl’s serious health condition. But the nurse practitioner denied at least three requests from the girl’s mother for an ambulance. The day before she died, she developed a 40.5C fever. On the ninth day of her internment, she had a seizure and died.

This happened in 2023 under the Biden administration. Under a system which has always been racist and cruel. Under an arrangement of rationalized brutality that most Democrats have supported, albeit with a few tweaks that are more about optics than operation. And they are still supporting it by continuing to fund it and by refusing to abolish ICE.

Without a doubt, the Trump regime relishes in sadism. It is openly fascist and now no one is safe. Whiteness will no longer act as a buffer. An openly fascist regime isn’t interested in PR or optics. It is only interested in expanding an environment of terror and fear.

America has been on this trajectory for decades. Only its terror has been mostly reserved for racialized communities within the US and the Global South outside its borders. The most recent and egregious example of the latter is the Biden administration’s support and funding of the genocide in Gaza. One which Trump has gladly continued.

Unless white American liberals see the big picture, the unflattering one that shows the 250+ year American project for what it is, nothing will change. Absolutely nothing.

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, January 2026