Every morning, my dad laces up his work boots knowing there’s a chance he won’t come home. A skilled carpenter, he has worked in Los Angeles’ construction industry since our family moved to the US when I was 3. Through years of backbreaking labor, his boss praised his skill, reliability, and loyalty. He not only built this city but also a life for our family in LA. Now, that life is in jeopardy—because like so many undocumented workers, when my dad needed protection from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was treated like he didn’t matter.

After 15 years of loyalty, my dad asked for a few days off at the height of the LA ICE raids out of concern for his safety. In response, his boss gave him an ultimatum: Show up to work and risk being taken by ICE or stay home. His employer threatened to replace him with someone “willing to do the job.”

His concern was not unfounded. Since then, ICE has raided my dad’s job site twice as part of the surge in raids across LA and the country. Our family lives in fear of the third time.

Behind these attacks is deliberate policy. The construction industry has become an easy target for the administration’s mass abduction efforts—according to a Stateline analysis this industry employs the most immigrant laborers. And Stephen Miller, a senior White House aide and the architect behind much of ICE’s siege on our cities, explicitly ordered ICE to conduct raids against working families, demanding at least 3,000 people be disappeared a day.

And the........

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