If I Am Killed by an Illegal Immigrant

The death of Mollie Tibbetts understandably captured the attention of the nation. Women who jog likely feeling a particular kind of fear, as Tibbetts’ death personifies the worst consequences of telling a man, “No.” But even as multiple members of her family have released statements, quite literally begging those to keep Mollie’s name out of this narrative — pundits of the Right, including President Trump himself, have taken to social media and the news to clutch their pearls and wring their hands, insisting we need The Wall™, now more than ever.

As acts of violence against women continue to permeate our headlines, it’s gotten me thinking about my own vulnerability as a young White woman in America. If the Presidents’ Twitter rants are to be believed, there are ‘caravans of rapists and drug dealers pouring in’ so I’d better prepare. Thus, as part of my last will and testament, I’ve outlined instructions for those within my community on what to do in the case of my untimely death at the hands of an ‘illegal’ immigrant.

To my husband, folks will share their deepest sympathies with you. They will cock their heads to the side with tears in their eyes, pat your hand, and pity your widow status. Among those mourners, there will be those who brazenly produce the lamentation, ‘See? It’s a shame what can happen when we let those people in.’ Please remind them that when your Polish ancestors arrived on this soil, no one asked for their documentation. Reject the idea that your pain is deepened solely because my attacker was from a ‘shithole country’ and instead, spend the rest of your life demanding more of the culture that made him feel entitled to my body in the first place.

To my parents, your grief will blind you but let this only be temporary. You may feel compelled to join the cries for border regulation because …hey, it’s only fair. But remember that our family’s citizenship was only serendipitously set into place decades before your birth with the passage of The Jones-Shafroth Act. Remember how you felt when that man shouted at you out of a moving car to ‘Go back to Mexico!’ because it’s never been about ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ any more than the civil rights movement was about access to water fountains and swimming pools.

To my brother, I give you control of my social media accounts. So when Vice President Mike Pence uses my likeness as an example to call for stronger borders, tag him. Remind him that James Holmes was born in San Diego, California but ended up killing 12 people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and that the distance between those two locations is 1,098 miles. If the character count allows, throw in that Poweshiek County, Iowa is over 1,600 miles away from Mexico.

To my brother’s girlfriend, an elementary school teacher, I’m sorry that your new classroom doesn’t have the same neighboring roof access as last year. I’m even sorrier that this forces you to think of a new escape route for your students in the event of a school shooting. But when your peers quiver at the idea of teaching in a sanctuary city, remind them that Adam Lanza was born in Kingston, New Hampshire — about 200 miles away from the Newtown school where he killed 20 children under the age of 7. And that the Right’s fierce response to even the slightest intimation of gun control forever validated the idea that accessibility to weapons matter more than the threat to human life.

To my inner circle of friends and colleagues,

Ask Tucker Carlson why the headlines don’t tell us that Stephen Paddock was raised in Arizona, but born in Clinton, Iowa — 64 years before he opened fire on the Las Vegas strip in Nevada, killing 58 people and injuring 851 others.

Ask Tomi Lahren to explain why, only when the perpetrator is not White, do we focus on the components of his identity that characterize where he was born?

Ask the hosts at Fox & Friends, who was it that radicalized Dylann Roof exactly? And probe them to please, be specific.

Ask any media source who prints the term ‘illegal alien,’ why Elliot Rodger was born in the UK and raised in LA but I had to dig through various news articles to know that about him. But not before I learned that he killed women solely because he felt aghast that they wouldn’t have sex with him.

Ask Barack Obama why he deported over 2 million people during his Presidency, even with the focus being on convicted criminals, especially when we have no problem incarcerating our own for much less? Haven’t we just made them someone else’s problem? Remind him and other Democrats and leftists that they are not removed from this narrative and are complicit when they try to delineate between who is here legally and who isn’t.

To anyone unknown to me but affected by the news of my death, take to the streets. Demand to know why it is that most of the men referenced in this essay were born nowhere near where they committed the most heinous acts of their life but yet — we’ve never seen a single Conservative voice call for the mass deportation of Men™ based on their gender, religion, or birthplace.

And if there’s time, ask Donald Trump why he’s so ferociously committed to perpetuating the myth that Latinx people are inherently more dangerous than other immigrants. Inquire that if I had been killed by a ‘natural born American citizen’ but had gotten black out drunk while wearing a short skirt, would I have been asking for it? I just want to be very clear about the tipping point at which I’d lose his sympathy. Why do we only care about a White criminal’s place of birth when it serves to humanize his story and garner sympathy for a life wasted? Why does it seem that only White perpetrators get the benefit of being characterized as mentally ill loners, while Omar Mateen could only have been pushed to extremism by his religion? And why do we ignore decades of crime data that prove over and over again that immigrants, whether they fall into the categorization of ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ are less likely to commit crime than American citizens? Suggest to President Trump that perhaps we can have a conversation about our country’s limited resources and borders without demonizing those whose culture we covet only when it serves to fill our hungry bellies and provide a backdrop for our vacation posts.

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