The year was 2016.
Donald Trump just won his first presidential run. My fourth-grade classroom was filled with nine to 10-year-olds informing each other about whom their parents had voted for, barely understanding the effect my parents and I were already facing due to the election’s outcome.
With the popular “2026 is the new 2016” trend flooding social media, it can be easy to fall into the romanticism of a year with notable aesthetics: block eyebrows, high-waisted denim, the Rio De Janeiro filter on Instagram and more. For me, 2016 is not focused on these nostalgic trends, but on immigration reform.
Throughout Trump’s first campaign, I remember hearing the Latino adults in my life worry about his stance on immigration policy. Following his inauguration, this fear only intensified.
For the next four years of his presidency, I remember growing more and more aware of the way in which the Latino community was perceived. Before the election, I had never given a second thought to what differentiated my White classmates and me. After the election and after the same students with whom I had shared a childhood began asking me if I would be deported, everything changed.
I became a frightened young girl who was hyperaware of her surroundings and conscious of where she spoke Spanish. Now, with the reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids being so close to home in Minnesota, I feel that the young girl is back.
The community that I saw beginning to feel safe once more during the Biden administration has once again reverted to the uneasiness felt 10 years ago — me included.
In my eyes, there seems to be more fear this time — seeing the lack of limitations ICE has shown through killings in person and in custody, injuries and even the arrest of 5-year-old Liam Ramos.
Seeing Ramos with his school backpack and character hat being detained was something that I feared in 2016. I believe there will now be kids around the nation who will feel the same sense of dread I did 10 years ago, wondering whether their friends, family or even themselves would make it home.
