ICE Killed Her Father. Now She's Speaking Out.
ICE’s Violence Didn’t Start with Trump it’s Been Systemic for Decades
ICE didn’t start abusing immigrants when Trump took office. No, this brutality has been unfolding for years, with the only change being its escalation. ICE’s violence, its indifference to human suffering, its utter disregard for the rights and lives of those it ensnares.. this is nothing new. It’s systemic, entrenched, and devastating. For decades, ICE has had a free pass to tear apart families, to erase lives, and to do so with impunity.
And as Jorge Luis Rosales Villanueva’s story painfully shows, this isn’t just an isolated incident it’s a legacy of violence. A violence that has no name but the one it wear.. enforcement.
In 2007, ICE showed up at Jorge’s door, not to arrest him, but to arrest someone else. They lied, claiming they were looking for someone else… a tactic they’ve used time and time again. In that moment, Jorge, confused and scared, “gave himself up.”
His only crime? Being there. Being undocumented. In that moment, he handed over his life to them, hoping that complying would bring him safety. But safety never came.
Jazzmin, his daughter, talks about it like it was yesterday. “Can you imagine Gestapo just banging on your fucking door?” she says.
In her words, you feel the weight of the fear she felt. The fear of losing her father. The fear that’s now ingrained in every immigrant community, every family that lives in constant terror of that knock at the door.
Her childhood was consumed by unrelenting pain.. a pain that followed her everywhere, a shadow that never left, even when she wasn’t there to witness the worst of it.
She didn’t see the moment her father was taken. But it didn’t matter. It might as well have been happening in front of her. The terror still crept inside her, gnawing at her every day, long after the night ICE knocked on their door.
“I wasn’t there when they came knocking on his door. But somehow, I can see every single moment,” she says, as tears roll down her face. The image of that night, of the moment her father was ripped from her life, is a vision that will never leave her.
Even as life moved on, even as she tried to bury the pain, it was still there. It existed in the quiet moments, in the places where she thought she could be free. It was always there, like a weight on her chest.
“When my mom told me that ICE knocked on his door,” she says, “I still feel like I am that same person.”
That moment froze her in time, and it still haunts her.
She was never able to be the same person she was before that night again. The little girl who ran through life without fear, without the knowledge of how quickly everything could shatter, was gone. The terror that consumed her father’s life consumed hers too in a way that words can barely capture.
“I didn’t tell anyone when my dad got deported. It broke my heart to pieces.”
Jazzmin’s voice cracks as she speaks these words, each syllable laced with the kind of sorrow only someone who has lived through such a nightmare could understand. Her face full of tears. Her eyes red.
The silence she carried after her father’s deportation was more than just the weight of unspoken words. It was the weight of a child who felt like she had to hide her heartbreak, who couldn’t show the world the pieces of herself that ICE had broken.
The loneliness she felt wasn’t just the absence of her father; it was the void that grew inside her every time she had to smile, every time she had to pretend everything was fine.
But it wasn’t fine. It never would be. That pain didn’t just steal her childhood. It became her childhood.
Every moment of joy, every milestone, was tainted by the constant, crushing reminder that ICE was out there. That her father was not there because of that. That their brutality didn’t just destroy her father’s life, it stole hers too.
She couldn’t escape it. It was there in the mornings when she woke up, in the nights when she couldn’t sleep, in the spaces between her thoughts when everything felt like it was falling apart.
For 18 months, Jorge was held in detention.
A year and a half away from his family, from everything he knew, and in those 18 months, ICE did not just take his freedom… in the end they took his life.
Jorge, living with HIV since the '90s, had been managing his condition with medication. But ICE made sure he would not receive it. They withheld the very medication that kept him alive.
“They want them to die,” Jazzmin says, her words charged with anger and the cold truth that her father’s suffering wasn’t a mistake.
It was deliberate because ICE knew and they didn’t care.
Jorge’s condition deteriorated. What had been manageable turned into full-blown AIDS. His body, weakened, was sent back to Mexico, abandoned in a foreign land. “They just dropped him off at a border town, no money, nothing, his daughter Jazzmin recalls, and you can hear the anger in her voice. She is not just remembering a broken system; she’s calling it out for what it is a system that let her father die, a system that doesn’t care who it leaves behind.
Jorge, already broken by ICE’s neglect, made his way to his family’s village south of Guadalajara. He was weak. His immune system destroyed. And soon, he contracted pneumonia, a sickness that for most people is treatable. But for Jorge, it was a death sentence.
He had no chance. And within a year, he was gone.
“He died of AIDS complications,” Jazzmin says in tears. “He contracted pneumonia and had no immune system left.”
Her only peace is knowing she was able to visit him in Mexico before he died. And in that visit she got to see the real beauty of Mexico. Her families culture, heritage and life.
But remember that it didn’t have to be this way and Jorge didn’t have to die.
HIV is manageable in the U.S., and with the right medication you can live a long and meaningful life.
Jazzmin reminds us.
“People like Magic Johnson, they’re still alive, and my dad could still be alive.”
And that’s the cold truth of it. Jorge’s death wasn’t inevitable.
It was preventable but ICE didn’t care. They never cared.
A Broken System and the Fight for Justice
Jazzmin’s voice carries a strength that should not be ignored. “This is not about one administration. It’s about a system.”
And she’s right. This isn’t just about Trump. It’s not just about the Bush administration, Obama, or Biden. It’s about a system that has been complicit for years. A system that has ignored the suffering of immigrants for decades, regardless of the party in power.
She is done with silence.
She is done with watching the government tear families apart. “We are seeing our families detained in concentration camps,” she says, and there is no denying the truth of her words. This is not just a matter of policy.
This is about lives being destroyed. This is about families being torn apart. This is about a system that has been allowed to continue unchecked, year after year.
And Jazzmin will not stop.
“My dad might be gone, but there’s still time to save so many others,” she says. The strength in her voice is palpable, the anger undeniable.
“This has been happening for a long motherfucking time.”
But there are people who are fighting back. Not enough people. But a lot more than you see on the news.
People like Jazzmin. Who have been fighting for years. Who have used her fathers story to try to make the world a better place.
People like those in Oregon right now, standing up against ICE’s cruelty. People like the activists in Florida, who are organizing in the shadows, out of the media’s gaze. People like those in LA. People like the ones ambushing ICE agents in Texas, refusing to let this violence continue unchecked. They’re rising, demanding justice, speaking out, risking everything to say “No more.”
But the mainstream media? They’re not telling those stories. They don’t show the faces of resistance. They don’t share the names of those standing in the way of ICE’s violence. Why? Because it’s more profitable for them when people comply.
The mainstream media makes money when people are passive. When they stay silent. When they allow the system to continue without question. Fear sells, control sells… but resistance? That’s harder to package.
It doesn’t fit neatly into a headline that keeps the masses docile. It’s messy. It’s uncontainable. And that’s why they ignore it.
Because if they show you the people fighting back, if they show you the movement rising, they’d have to admit something uncomfortable.. that change is possible. That resistance works.
That people are no longer willing to accept this violence, this cruelty, this system. And that’s not what the media wants you to believe.
You can find Jazzmin on TikTok @JazzminStarDavis
But the truth is, resistance is happening. People like Jazzmin are demanding change, standing up, telling the stories the media won’t share. They are speaking for the people who have died because of ICE’s neglect. And they are fighting so that no more families have to go through what they went through. “My dad might be gone, but there’s still time to save so many others,”
Jazzmin says. “What are we going to do?” That’s the question we must all answer.
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ICE is and has always been nothing but a fascist group of storm troopers. They're a bunch of bullies with badges and that's why they work for ICE. I've known many LEOs and prison guards and 90% of them got b off on being able to bully people without repercussions. Especially the prison guards. Some of them would have been right at home at Auschwitz. I don't know what the solution is to our sick society short of deporting all the MAGAts to Russia so they can experience life in a real autocracy. Keep doing what you're doing. America needs writers like you.
You are doing a valuable service. I'm sure that anyone that has discovered your writing looks forward to your articles. Keep up the great work.