"Denounce the foreign invader": Trump opens a hotline to report immigrants

SPECIAL ENVOY TO LOS ANGELESDystopia is intensifying in the United States. And it has echoes of the times of McCarthyism. The Donald Trump administration has opened a hotline inviting citizens to "report" on those it calls "foreign invaders," referring to immigrants living in the country illegally. To promote the new hotline, the Trump administration has distributed advertising flyers with an aesthetic and slogan reminiscent of the era of the persecution of communism promoted by Senator Joseph McCarthy: "Help your country and yourself. Report all foreign invaders."

This is the latest move by the Department of Homeland Security, led by Kristi Noem, and it comes amidst a citizen uprising in several cities against the mass deportations of immigrants that are increasingly spreading among the most vulnerable groups. The persecution of illegal immigrants, who are indiscriminately detained in places where they concentrate to look for work, such as Home Depot and even in churches, responds to the call made last month by Trump advisor Stephen Miller, author of Project 2025, which directed the government to "arrest 3,000 people a day."

The Department of Homeland Security account featured the new ad with the phone number to call to "help locate and arrest illegal immigrants," it said. "This is ridiculous and a purely fascist action," says Tony, a neighbor who went to a Home Depot in the southwest of the city on Thursday morning to hand out informational leaflets about a self-defense hotline to report ICE actions. "We must organize to protect our communities. If they create a hotline to persecute immigrants, we will create others to monitor ICE's movements." The hotline in question is that of the Los Angeles Renters Union (KTOWN).

These instructions have triggered arrests, which go far beyond Trump's promise to deport all immigrants with open criminal cases. Police operations now affect any immigrant, and this has unleashed protests in Los Angeles, where they have been going on for six days, and in other cities across the United States. On the streets of the Californian city, the feeling of paranoia has increased among immigrants: those who are not locked in at home go out with the warning that any van could be from ICE.

The face of Manuel, a 40-year-old Guatemalan without papers who is in the Home Depot parking lot looking for work, changes expression when he sees the sign created by the DHS to expose migrants. "I don't know what to tell you. I still don't understand why this president hates us; I only came here to look for a better life. It's scary to think that at any moment an ICE van could appear and take you away, but I need to keep working," laments Manuel.

The Department of Homeland Security also launched a mobile app months ago through which immigrants living in the United States illegally can "self-deport." "Those who self-deport through the CBP application will have any fines or civil penalties waived for failure to depart the United States," the department said, noting that any foreign national who fails to depart after a final deportation order must pay $1,000 per day.