homeland security

For decades, American families have gathered to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve.

The 1946 Frank Capra movie, about a man who on one of the worst days of his life discovers how he has positively impacted his hometown of Bedford Falls, is beloved for extolling selflessness, community and the little guy taking on rapacious capitalists. Take those values, add in powerful acting and the promise of light in the darkest of hours, and it’s the only movie that makes me cry.

No less a figure of goodwill than Pope Leo XIV revealed last month that it’s one of his favorite movies. But as with anything holy in this nation, President Trump and his followers are trying to hijack the holiday classic.

Last weekend, the Department of Homeland Security posted two videos celebrating its mass deportation campaign. One, titled “It’s a Wonderful Flight,” re-creates the scene where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart in one of his best performances) contemplates taking his own life by jumping off a snowy bridge. But the protagonist is a Latino man crying over the film’s despairing score that he’ll “do anything” to return to his wife and kids and “live again.”

Cut to the same man now mugging for the camera on a plane ride out of the United States. The scene ends with a plug for an app that allows undocumented immigrants to take up Homeland Security’s offer of a free self-deportation flight and a $1,000 bonus — $3,000 if they take the one-way trip during the holidays.

The other DHS clip is a montage of Yuletide cheer — Santa, elves, stockings, dancing — over a sped-up electro-trash remake of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” In one split-second image, Bedford Falls residents sing “Auld Lang Syne,” just after they’ve saved George Bailey from financial ruin and an arrest warrant.

“This Christmas,” the caption reads, “our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks.”

“It’s a Wonderful Life” has long served as a political Rorschach test. Conservatives once thought Capra’s masterpiece was so anti-American for its vilification of big-time bankers that they accused him of sneaking in pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, the director was a Republican who paused his career during World War II to make short documentaries for the Department of War. Progressives tend to loathe the film’s patriotism, its sappiness, its relegation of Black people to the background and its depiction of urban life as downright demonic.

Then came Trump’s rise to power. His similarity to the film’s villain, Mr. Potter — a wealthy, nasty slumlord who names everything he takes control of after himself — was easier to point out than spots on a cheetah. Left-leaning essayists quickly made the facile comparison, and a 2018 “Saturday Night Live” parody imagining a country without Trump as president so infuriated him that he threatened to sue.

But in recent years, Trumpworld has claimed that the film is actually a parable about their dear leader.

Trump is a modern day George Bailey, the argument goes, a secular saint walking away from sure riches to try to save the “rabble” that Mr. Potter — who in their minds somehow represents the liberal elite — sneers at. A speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention explicitly made the comparison, and the recent Homeland Security videos warping “It’s a Wonderful Life” imply it too — except now, it’s unchecked immigration that threatens Bedford Falls.

The Trump administration’s take on “It’s a Wonderful Life” is that it reflects a simpler, better, whiter time. But that’s a conscious misinterpretation of this most American of movies, whose foundation is strengthened by immigrant dreams.

Director Frank Capra

(Handout)

In his 1971 autobiography “The Name Above the Title,” Capra revealed that his “dirty, hollowed-out immigrant family” left Sicily for Los Angeles in the 1900s to reunite with an older brother who “jumped the ship” to enter the U.S. years before. Young Frank grew up in the “sleazy Sicilian ghetto” of Lincoln Heights, finding kinship at Manual Arts High with the “riff-raff” of immigrant and working-class white kids “other schools discarded” and earning U.S. citizenship only after serving in the first World War. Hard times wouldn’t stop Capra and his peers from achieving success.

The director captured that sentiment in “It’s a Wonderful Life” through the character of Giuseppe Martini, an Italian immigrant who runs a bar. His heavily accented English is heard early in the film as one of many Bedford Falls residents praying for Bailey. In a flashback, Martini is seen leaving his shabby Potter-owned apartment with a goat and a troop of kids for a suburban tract home that Bailey developed and sold to him.

Today, Trumpworld would cast the Martinis as swarthy invaders destroying the American way of life. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” they’re America itself.

When an angry husband punches Bailey at Martini’s bar for insulting his wife, the immigrant kicks out the man for assaulting his “best friend.” And when Bedford Falls gathers at the end of the film to raise funds and save Bailey, it’s Martini who arrives with the night’s profits from his business, as well as wine for everyone to celebrate.

Immigrants are so key to the good life in this country, the film argues, that in the alternate reality if George Bailey had never lived, Martini is nowhere to be heard.

Capra long stated that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his favorite of his own movies, adding in his memoir that it was a love letter “for the Magdalenes stoned by hypocrites and the afflicted Lazaruses with only dogs to lick their sores.”

I’ve tried to catch at least the ending every Christmas Eve to warm my spirits, no matter how bad things may be. But after Homeland Security’s hijacking of Capra’s message, I made time to watch the entire film, which I’ve seen at least 10 times, before its customary airing on NBC.

I shook my head, feeling the deja vu, as Bailey’s father sighed, “In this town, there’s no place for any man unless they crawl to Potter.”

I cheered as Bailey told Potter years later, “You think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t.” I wondered why more people haven’t said that to Trump.

When Potter ridiculed Bailey as someone “trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters,” I was reminded of the right-wingers who portray those of us who stand up to Trump’s cruelty as stupid and even treasonous.

And as the famous conclusion came, all I thought about was immigrants.

People giving Bailey whatever money they could spare reminded me of how regular folks have done a far better job standing up to Trump’s deportation Leviathan than the rich and mighty have.

As the film ends, with Bailey and his family looking on in awe at how many people came to help out, I remembered my own immigrant elders, who also forsook dreams and careers so their children could achieve their own — the only reward to a lifetime of silent sacrifice.

The tears flowed as always, this time prompted by a new takeaway that was always there — “Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo,” or “Only we can save ourselves,” a phrase adopted by pro-immigrant activists in Southern California this year as a mantra of comfort and resistance.

It’s the heart of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the opposite of Trump’s push to make us all dependent on his mercy. He and his fellow Potters can’t do anything to change that truth.

Call it an accident, call it the plan. But don’t stoop to the reprehensible gaslighting of calling it a lie: It is fact that federal agents have detained and arrested dozens, if not hundreds, of United States citizens as part of immigration sweeps, regardless of what Kristi Noem would like us to believe.

During a congressional hearing Thursday, Noem, our secretary of Homeland Security and self-appointed Cruelty Barbie, reiterated her oft-used and patently false line that only the worst of the worst are being targeted by immigration authorities. That comes after weeks of her department posting online, on its ever-more far-right social media accounts, that claims of American citizens being rounded up and held incommunicado are “fake news” or a “hoax.”

“Stop fear-mongering. ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens,” Homeland Security recently posted on the former Twitter.

Tuesday, at a different congressional hearing, a handful of citizens — including two Californians — told their stories of being grabbed by faceless masked men and being whisked away to holding cells where they were denied access to phones, lawyers, medications and a variety of other legal rights.

Their testimony accompanied the release of a congressional report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in which 22 American citizens, including a dozen from the Golden State, told their own shocking, terrifying tales of manhandling and detentions by what can only be described as secret police — armed agents who wouldn’t identify themselves and often seemed to lack basic training required for safe urban policing.

These stories and the courageous Americans who are stepping forward to tell them are history in the making — a history I hope we regret but not forget.

Immigration enforcement, boosted by unprecedented amounts of funding, is about to ramp up even more. Noem and her agents are reveling in impunity, attempting to erase and rewrite reality as they go — while our Supreme Court crushes precedent and common sense to further empower this presidency. Until the midterms, there is little hope of any check on power.

Under those circumstances, for these folks to put their stories on the record is both an act of bravery and patriotism, because they now know better than most what it means to have the chaotic brutality of this administration focused on them. It’s incumbent upon the rest of us to hear them, and protest peacefully not only rights being trampled, but our government demanding we believe lies.

“I’ve always said that immigrants who are given the great privilege of becoming citizens are also some of the most patriotic people in this country. I know you all love your country. I love our country, and this is not the America that we believe in or that we fought so hard for. Every person, every U.S. citizen, has rights,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said as the hearing began.

L.A. native Andrea Velez, whose detention was reported on by my colleagues when it happened, was one of those putting herself on the line to testify.

Less than 5 feet tall, Velez is a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona who was working in the garment district in June when ICE began its raids. Her mom and teenage sister had just dropped her off when masked men swarmed out of unmarked cars and began chasing brown people. Velez didn’t know what was happening, but when one man charged her, she held up her work bag in defense. The bag did not protect her. Neither did her telling the agents she is a U.S. citizen.

“He handcuffed me without checking my ID. They ignored me as I repeated it again and again that I am a U.S. citizen,” she told committee members. “They did not care.”

Velez, still unsure who the man was who forced her into an SUV, managed to open the door and run to an LAPD officer, begging for help. But when the masked man noticed she was loose, he “ran up screaming, ‘She’s mine’” the congressional report says.

The police officer sent her back to the unmarked car, beginning a 48-hour ordeal that ended with her being charged with assault of a federal officer — charges eventually dropped after her lawyer demanded body camera footage and alleged witness statements. (The minority staff report was released by Rep. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.)

“I never imagined this would be occurring, here, in America,” Velez told lawmakers. “DHS likes … to brand us as criminals, stripping us of our dignity. They want to paint us as the worst of the worst, but the truth is, we are human beings with no criminal record.”

This if-you’re-brown-you’re-going-down tactic is likely to become more common because it is now legal.

In Noem vs. Vasquez Perdomo, a September court decision, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that it was reasonable for officers to stop people who looked foreign and were engaged in activities associated with undocumented people — such as soliciting work at a Home Depot or attending a Spanish-language event, as long as authorities “promptly” let the person go if they prove citizenship. These are now known as “Kavanaugh stops.”

Disregarding how racist and problematic that policy is, “promptly” seems to be up for debate.

Javier Ramirez, born in San Bernardino, testified as “a proud American citizen who has never known the weight of a criminal record.”

He’s a father of three who was working at his car lot in June when he noticed a strange SUV idling on his private property with a bunch of men inside. When he approached, they jumped out, armed with assault weapons, and grabbed him.

“This was a terrifying situation,” Ramirez said. But then it got worse.

One of the men yelled, “Get him. He’s Mexican!”

On video shot by a bystander, Javier can be heard shouting, “I have my passport!” according to the congressional report, but the agents didn’t care. When Ramirez asked why they were holding him, an agent told him, “We’re trying to figure that out.”

Like Velez, Ramirez was put in detention. A severe diabetic, he was denied medication until he became seriously ill, he told investigators. Though he asked for a lawyer, he was not allowed to contact one — but the interrogation continued.

After his release, five days later, he had to seek further medical treatment. He, too, was charged with assault of a federal agent, along with obstruction and resisting arrest. The bogus charges were also later dropped.

“I should not have to live in fear of being targeted simply for the color of my skin or the other language I speak,” he told the committee. “I share my story not just for myself, but for everyone who has been unjustly treated, for those whose voice has been silenced.”

You know the poem, folks. It starts when “they came” for the vulnerable. Thankfully, though people such as Ramirez and Velez may be vulnerable due to their pigmentation, they are not meek and they won’t be silenced. Our democracy, our safety as a nation of laws, depends on not just hearing their stories, but also standing peacefully against such abuses of power.

Because these abuses only end when the people decide they’ve had enough — not just of the lawlessness, but of the lies that empower it.