The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.
“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”
She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.
“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”
Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”
She said the agents didn’t care.
“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”
Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”
“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”
Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment.
“One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.
“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.
Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.
I'm sorry but at this point I would be too embarrased to be an American citizen and migrate the F out lmao, a second term Donald Trump? So embarrassing 😭🤦🏻♂️💩💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
That's kind of an asshole take. As a US citizen, there's no country that would take me in right now. I'm just not eligible to work in any of the other countries I've looked at.
First, I only know English. I know a bit of French because my parents paid for lessons when I was a kid, but I've had zero chance to practice after college. Many Americans have no foreign language experience at all.
Second, what skills can a typical American market? If you don't have any good skills, it's hard to apply for work visa in another country. You could try applying for asylum, but other countries don't really see things as bad enough to take in Americans yet.
Third, how long would it take to apply? A year is typical. Again, you could try asylum which may have an initial time allocation to stay until your hearing. But that only works once countries start accepting Americans' asylum claims.
A lot of people can't afford to move.
And a lot of people want to stay and fight.
In November I woke up ready to bail. but upon reviewing my options, I determined that nowhere was really better.
There seem to be precious few countries that aren't flirting with authoritarian parties right now and leaving this one, where I have my social safety net (friends and family, if not government aid) and at least a small amount of power to vote for my values, to go somewhere where I am an immigrant or refugee and lose the power to change policy seemed to be a poor choice. so far. I'm white, straight and middle class, though, so that may be entirely different math for other people.
I'm choosing to stay and fight.
We are the illegal immigrants now.
I am embarrassed to be American. But I'm also too poor to do anything about it
And that’s what the rich want! The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer! It’s the new American way sadly!
If only it were that easy.
What country are you in, and what have you done to make it easier for people to claim asylum there?