Where To Feel Safe With No Safe Grounds

Lately, I have found myself thinking a lot about the boundary between individual rights and federal enforcement power. It is not something I used to notice in my day to day life, but over the past few years, that line has become impossible to ignore. As ICE has expanded its reach and tactics, what once felt distant and administrative now feels aggressive and personal. Enforcement is no longer hidden in offices or paperwork; it shows up in neighborhoods, near schools, and around hospitals. Spaces that once felt safe now feel uncertain. What has stayed with me most is the fear that comes from that visibility. Seeing federal agents in places where people are just trying to live their lives changes how those spaces feel. This fear is not imagined or exaggerated. In Minnesota, thousands of residents, students, workers, families, and clergy have marched and protested against expanded ICE actions tied to Operation Metro Surge, an enforcement effort that has shaped daily life and sparked demonstrations across the state (The Washington Post). Reading about these protests made it clear to me that this is not just a policy issue being debated somewhere else. It is something people are experiencing right now, in their own communities. I keep coming back to the question of how this shift became normalized. Politically, immigration has been framed again and again as a threat, whether to security or to national identity. When that framing takes hold, aggressive enforcement starts to feel justified to some people, even necessary. Socially, the constant presence of federal agents has made extreme measures seem ordinary. Economically, the scale of investment in enforcement infrastructure suggests that this approach is not temporary. It feels like a deliberate choice about what kinds of power the government is willing to prioritize. Reading Neuromancer has helped me put language to what feels so unsettling about this moment. In the novel, individuals exist at the mercy of massive systems they cannot control or even fully understand. Privacy is fragile, and people are treated as data points within larger networks. That dynamic feels eerily familiar when I think about how immigrant communities are treated today. People are reduced to legal status, paperwork, or enforcement targets, rather than being seen as whole human beings with families, histories, and futures. Everyday spaces become places of surveillance instead of safety. The boundary between protection and control collapses, just as cyberpunk warns it will. The consequences of this are not abstract. Undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families live with constant fear. The fear of separation, fear of being seen, fear of simply going about daily life. That emotional weight does not disappear. At the same time, I cannot ignore how this affects everyone else. When constitutional protections are weakened or selectively enforced, it sets precedents that extend beyond immigration. Once those boundaries are crossed for one group, they become easier to cross again. Neuromancer is often read as a warning about the future, but what unsettles me is how closely that warning mirrors the present. ICE’s current trajectory forces us to confront uncomfortable questions. How much control should the state have over individual bodies and movement? Where does enforcement end and intimidation begin? What happens when fear becomes an acceptable tool of governance? These questions are no longer hypothetical. They are unfolding now, in neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools, in ways that feel increasingly familiar to anyone who has read cyberpunk not as fantasy, but as caution. References Minnesota residents protest expanded ICE actions in state. (2026, January 23). The Washington Post.

AI Use Disclosure: AI tools were used for editing and revision in accordance with course policy. https://chatgpt.com/share/6974da99-449c-8012-83c8-fd67644dbe9b