Ice and Kavanaugh Stops Induced Fear in Elk Grove

As experienced in Minneapolis and other cities before that, Americans have witnessed heavy-handed and deadly actions by President Donald Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents.

While the constitutional validity of their methods has been rightfully questioned, in a ruling last year, the United States Supreme Court gave the agents leeway with the so-called Kavanaugh Stops, which allow them to stop people based on factors such as their accent, skin color, or where they shop.  

It is no mistake that the Kavanaugh Stops have ensnared otherwise law-abiding people, many of whom are American citizens or permanent residents. These stops strike fear and apprehension even in places like Elk Grove, Calif.

My wife, Maria, reminded me about this today. My wife and I have been together for 15 years and married for four years.

Maria legally immigrated to the United States in 2008 via a petition from one of her adult children and became a citizen nine years later. Until earlier this year, she was a supervisor at a Fortune 500 retailer with two Elk Grove stores.

Now that we are both of Medicaid age, she stepped back from management and took a part-time position at the same employer where she has been employed for 12 years. Even though she is no longer in management, she is still privy to upper management communications.

Today, the corporate office of her employer distributed a company-wide what-to-do memo if a store is raided by ICE and or Border Patrol agents. Given that many of the employees, Maria included, company-wide are women of color and immigrants, perhaps the company was being realistic, or more disturbing, maybe they have been tipped off about impending raids.  

Not coincidentally, since January 20, 2025, Maria has always had her passport in her possession. On the days Maria walked home after work with a passport in hand, aside from the occasionally creepy people walking the daytime streets of Elk Grove, she felt safe.

Given the recent actions on behalf of Donald Trump, and the what-to-do memo, that sense of safety from oppression doesn't seem so sure. Even though Maria is a lifelong English speaker with an accent from her country of origin and her non-Caucasian skin pigmentation, what is going to stop an ICE agent from coming into her place of employment or while walking the streets of Elk Grove and being summarily whisked away, even when presenting an American passport?

Realistically, we don't expect this to happen in Elk Grove, but who is to say these raids couldn't be initiated at places known to have a majority of immigrant employees? Those sorts of corporate memos are not distributed haphazardly.   

Furthermore, a year ago, most Minneapolis residents could never have imagined their city would be under the siege it is experiencing today. Combine the actions in Minneapolis, along with events like yesterday's raid of Voter Registration in Fulton County, Georgia, by the FBI at the behest of Trump, and you have a volatile mix of events that could spill over anywhere.   

The bigger effect of these immigration raids is to suppress public participation, particularly with naturalized citizens. It is not hard to imagine Trump deploying heavily armed federal troops to polling places in Texas, Georgia or Florida suppress voting next November to intimidate voters.

Thanks to the combination of court-sanctioned Kavanaugh stops, constitutionally questionable federal agent actions, and White House-centric cruelty and paranoia, it seems this and other jack-booted maneuvers can happen anywhere.

Even in Elk Grove.