There Is No Middle Ground When Our Communities Are Under Attack

There are moments in history when people are forced to choose a side, when the stakes are too high, the violence too severe, and the truth too urgent for anyone to stand in the middle. Today, as immigrants across the Inland Empire face unprecedented attacks, we have reached one of those moments. And let me be absolutely clear: when it comes to growing authoritarianism and the humanity of immigrants, there is no middle ground.

For decades, immigrants in Riverside and San Bernardino counties have endured abuse, harassment, and violence at the hands of government agencies and local law enforcement. Our region has been a testing ground for some of the most aggressive and dehumanizing tactics used anywhere in California. But what we are witnessing now, the escalation and normalization of violence, demands a new level of political courage.

Families have been shot at by federal agents in broad daylight. Workers have been chased into medical clinics. Children have watched their parents detained in parking lots and grocery store aisles. Cars have been rammed, homes surveilled, and entire neighborhoods terrorized by federal agencies acting with impunity. These are not isolated incidents. This is a pattern. A system. A growing authoritarian impulse that sees immigrants not as people, but as targets.

Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive in uniforms or tanks; it arrives through normalized cruelty, unchecked power, and silence from those who know better. Authoritarianism thrives in silence. It thrives in hesitation. And it thrives when leaders are more afraid of political backlash than they are of the suffering of their own constituents.

Yet too many leaders in both major parties continue to search for a so-called “middle ground,” remaining silent or speaking softly about injustice to avoid controversy, calculating political risks rather than confronting reality.

At the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, we refuse to stand in the middle. Our movement was built on resistance, on exposing the realities of this inhumanity and confronting the machinery of violence that has taken hold in our communities. We will continue to shine a light on the abuse that has been ignored, the trauma that has been hidden, and the bipartisan political cowardice that has allowed this harm to continue. Our work is about truth and accountability. It is about honoring the stories of families who have been harmed and refusing to let their pain be erased by political convenience.

In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, our history is filled with both cruelty and courage. For every raid, every wrongful arrest, and every act of state violence, there have been organizers, families, and advocates who fought back and who refused to be silent and demanded dignity. That legacy continues today.

ICIJ confronts authoritarianism every day. Through our immigrant defense hotline, legal support, rapid response teams, community workshops, and advocacy, we stand with immigrants not only in moments of crisis, but in the long, exhausting struggle for recognition and respect.

But the fight ahead requires more from all of us. It requires clarity. It requires resolve. It requires choosing the side of humanity… even when it is uncomfortable, unpopular, or politically risky.

There is no middle ground. Not when families are being hunted. Not when children are being traumatized. Not when government agencies operate like a domestic secret police force, with the support of California legislators.

This is the moment we are in. We cannot pretend otherwise.

To every elected official, every organization, and every community leader, the days of silence, neutrality, and half-measures are over. The line has been drawn. And history will remember where we stood when immigrant families in the Inland Empire needed us most.

By Javier Hernandez, Executive Director, Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice