On Oct. 5, 2026, President Donald Trump, the leader of the free world and the physical embodiment of American patriotism, put a hit out on Los Angeles and San Diego. On Oct. 6, 2026, he did it again. Fear immediately struck the hearts of many Californians, as I can’t imagine another United States president has ever called for the destruction of U.S. cities by a foreign adversary.
In Grand Island, Nebraska, on Monday, Oct. 5, Trump spoke at the Pinnacle Bank Expo Center as part of his midterm rally spree to galvanize his existing base in red states. Among numerous indecipherable rants, such as “now you can have a lawnmower, boom,” he made a terrifying comment in reference to the Iran War: “They could take out a city. Let them take — let them — let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”
The explosive sentiment in Trump’s stutter-ridden statement sent chills down Californians’ spines. Our state has long been the subject of Trump’s ridicule, but this time, his comments are about more than just blue, liberal cities. He could’ve named any California city, but instead he chose the top two where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have been rampant.
Hours after this spectacle, I received a phone call from my father, a Mexican American who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for all 64 years of his life. When I asked him what he felt after hearing Trump’s words, he told me, “It doesn’t make me nervous that he said ‘go ahead, Iran.’ What scares me more is that he can actually have his military do it and blame it on Iran.” He then called ICE Trump’s “personal military force” and made an apt comparison between the Gestapo secret police force in Nazi Germany and our very own ICE officers.
I see it too. I have watched too many videos of masked men dressed in hues of black grabbing people and pushing them in unmarked vans at airports, on streets or outside courtrooms with zero evidence of due process, to ignore the fascist similarities of our country with Nazi Germany. My father’s instinct told him that Trump’s speech at the rally was calling for the devastation of Latino communities.
After facing condemnation for his remarks from California’s elected officials, Trump attempted to rephrase his comment about San Diego and LA the next day, at a rally in San Antonio, Texas, to be a commentary on what would happen if he didn’t go to war with Iran. Again, he said, “Let them take out” San Diego and LA, followed by, “If you want to see a country in freefall. We are not gonna let that happen; we protect our cities.”
Regardless of Trump’s backtrack, “As the president, you have a huge responsibility to U.S. citizens to not say stupid, idiotic comments,” my dad continued. And I couldn’t agree more. I don’t care about the context of his comment; it has already affected California. Following the rally, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services increased their tracking of “activity as relates to cyber concerns,” Governor Gavin Newsom mentioned on The Jim Acosta Show two days after Trump’s remarks.
As Mexican Americans, my family and I knew what Trump truly meant on Oct. 5 and 6, and our suspicions about Trump’s tactics were confirmed on Thursday. Operation Safe California launched that week, defined as a 45-day ICE Raid campaign starting in San Diego and planned to travel up the California coast into San Francisco, stopping in LA and other cities along the way.
The 45-day ICE Raids have a new intensity to them: more officers have been brought in to focus on smaller areas, and they were told to “go after anybody,” regardless of criminal history. It is no surprise that in the final, vital weeks leading up to the midterms in early November, Trump is trying to scare Latinos away from voting and into submission. He has targeted Latinos since the beginning of his presidency, from his famous “build the wall” rhetoric to calling Mexicans “drug dealers, criminals, rapists.” Considered a strong electoral threat to Trump’s power this November, a new poll by NBC News and Telemundo shows Latino voters largely favor Democratic control of Congress, predicting a 24-point margin in the upcoming midterm election.
Behind those numbers is a message: Since Trump’s return to the presidency in 2025, the number of children detained by ICE, some with zip ties or handcuffs, has more than doubled, and many children are completely estranged from their parents due to the lack of due process present in ICE cases. The U.N. has directly declared this U.S. practice a human rights violation. On top of this, Trump is, in fact, detaining and sometimes deporting U.S. citizens in at least 506 cases.
No other explanation seems plausible to me, other than that Trump really is trying everything he can to get rid of us, or at least scare us into staying home this November. They aren’t looking for birth certificates or Social Security cards; simply having brown skin is crime enough. Trump is so consumed with racism that he would call for a foreign adversary to take his own people on American soil, and he cannot go unchecked.
What he and both parties fail to understand is that Latino Americans have survived years of oppression at the hands of government, and we will continue to persist and make our political voices heard. This November, we will vote. Right now, Trump doesn’t feel the need to mask his desire to eradicate us behind dog whistles anymore. But our vote has the power to halt the eradication of our community that Trump continues to call for, and in that way, we are infinitely more powerful than he could ever dream of being.
Elena Gutierrez PZ ’27 is the first blue-haired non-liberal to attend the 5Cs. She instead prefers a politics in which there is only a Dictator, if the Dictator is Her only.
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