These killers tell us something disturbing about America under Trump

Turns out the Border Patrol officers who murdered Alex Pretti are of Hispanic lineage. Their names and ages are Jesus Ochoa, 43, and Raymundo Gutierrez, 35, according to Pro Publica.

This appears to be causing some confusion among people of good faith. How can men of Hispanic lineage work for a paramilitary organization dedicated to terrorizing Hispanics?

The news is also, I presume, being used by people of bad faith. Donald Trump’s critics say ICE and CBP are purging Latinos in order to achieve his real goal — to make America white again. His defenders can point to this news to say the “crackdown” has nothing to do with race. See? Latinos want what Trump wants.

While racism is real, race isn’t. Talking about a thing that isn’t real can cause real confusion. Confusion provides opportunities for bad actors who search for ways to exploit it. So let’s clarify our terms: White doesn’t mean white race. It means white power.

Specifically, it means an unequal and unjust racial caste system with rich white men at the very top. They are protected the most by the law. They benefit the most from the economy. Everyone else in this pyramid-shaped hierarchy is subject to decreasing degrees of protection and economic benefit, going all the way down to the bottom where everyone is Black or brown, no one is protected by the law and no one benefits from the economy.

Sadly, this is what some Hispanics want, no matter how long their families have been in the US. They want to be white, that is, to stake a claim on white power. Instead of fighting oppression, they aim to sit with the oppressors, as if they were equals. They seek for themselves a warped, corrupt version of the American Dream.

However, they have to prove themselves. Immigrant history is full of stories of nonwhites gaining access to positions of authority and using them to demonstrate to people they believed were their superiors (ie, white people) that they were not only “good immigrants,” but also deserving of the blessings of whiteness.

So it’s not ironic that Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez work for Donald Trump’s paramilitary. It’s in keeping with American history. They’re like some Irish cops in 19th-century New York who beat down other Irish to prove they left behind the Old World to be loyal to the whiteness that was assimilating them.

In the case of Alex Pretti, this dynamic has another dimension. According to the either/or logic of white power, the ICU nurse was disloyal. He rejected his birthright by choosing to fight for people brutalized by an unequal and unjust racial caste system.

In defying CBP, Pretti thought he was being true to the soul of America. According to the logic of white power, however, patriotism isn’t loyalty to one’s country. It’s loyalty to one’s race.

“You feel bad for this race traitor?” said white supremacist Nick Fuentes. “We are thoroughly in the Trump era. If you don't get it at this point, you're irredeemable. If you're out there throwing yourself in front of ICE to die for these dirt bags, let them.”

(Nick Fuentes is also of Hispanic lineage. His dad is a biracial Mexican. Fuentes speaks fluent Spanish. He works harder than any other white supremacist to prove he’s truly white, because the white race is, for him, a thing of such importance that it must reign supreme over every other thing, including self-love.)

As for Ochoa and Gutierrez, the CBP officers who murdered Pretti, what better way to prove you are worthy of whiteness than by punishing a privileged white man for turning his back on the social order that gave him so much? Pretti was not worthy.

But Ochoa and Gutierrez are.

I suppose the real irony is that this pursuit of the blessings of whiteness by Hispanic men in positions of authority is demonstrating to their fellow Hispanics a stone-cold truth: No matter what they do, how hard they work, how obedient they are, or how much excellence they achieve, they will never be white enough to white people invested in the orders of white power.

Poll after poll suggests that the inroads Trump made with Hispanic voters in the 2024 election (as well as with other minorities) have been wiped out since unleashing ICE and CBP on America. Back then, he said only violent criminals would be targeted. This week, he said the same thing (“really hard criminals”). The difference is few people of Hispanic lineage believe him.

Virtually everyone now understands the “illegal” part of “illegal immigrants” has nothing to do with legal status and everything to do with whiteness, as in: if you’re not white, you’re “illegal.” Even if you are white, you might still be “illegal,” as was evidenced by the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. They were guilty of treason against their “country” (ie, their race), a crime undeserving of due process, instead straight to execution.

In an interview today, JD Vance was asked if he would apologize to Pretti’s family after an official investigation of his death had been completed. The vice president responded: “For what?”

But perhaps the biggest irony is what the pursuit of the blessings of whiteness is doing to white people, especially respectable white people who usually avoid the appearance of being political.

It’s forcing them into greater awareness of their race, which is something respectable white people hate thinking about. And it’s building future conditions in which they may end up consciously choosing between whiteness and the values that make it possible for respectable white people to be respectable white people.

Their status and race are increasingly in conflict.

No one knows how that’s going to go.