I can’t constantly share my own experience or status because right now people are going to weaponize my situation.
Che Guerrero on the psychological costs of surviving in this present moment. PLUS a detained US veteran needs our help and digital Know Your Rights Cards
During our conversation comedian and performer, Che Guerrero reflected on the uncertain and rocky path ahead for members of his own family. “People don't understand how much this is breaking up a lot of us,” he noted solemnly.
In this second part of our conversation, Che discusses the real sense of danger he is feeling in this present moment and the psychological fatigue of constant scrutiny in the U.S.
If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it here:
(and read to the end for digital know-your-rights cards and a call for help for a detained U.S. veteran.)
ANTERO GARCIA: Are you feeling surprised by these opening weeks of the Trump administration?
CHE GUERRERO: I'm going to be honest with you. I was really angry at Kamala because every time she came here [Philadelphia], she came to Independence Hall and all the affluent areas. And I went up to North Philly, which is mostly Dominican, Puerto Rican, and they heavily voted for Trump. When I went up there, you didn't see votes for Kamala. All you see is they changed “vote” to “vota.” I was like, "Oh, great. We got one letter changed. Hey, this is really going to help, guys." [The Harris campaign] didn't make any trips up there. They didn't go to restaurants up there. They didn't try to talk to the community.
That showed me, like, oh, my god, they're really just hoping that this vote is going to be like, "Yeah, they're going to vote Democrat.” I'm like, "No, Trump was talking to them." Because the Latinos are like, "Oh, no, I'm not the criminal. That's the criminal." I was like, "No, no, no, no. He thinks we're all criminal."
AG: Yep. Has your content substantially changed in the months since the election?
CG: Yeah, first of all, I actually got a lot of death threats. I got genuine people online, saying, "Hey, we're coming for you. You're one of the first ones." I understand that a lot of the things that are going to happen to the undocumented community are going to come from crazy Trump supporters that are in the neighborhood that are watching my TikToks. These are the people that are the scariest and the most violent. I saw a study that 54% of conservatives believe that undocumented immigrants should be dealt with through violence.
It was very heartbreaking because I really became a lot more vocal in 2020 when Biden had won. That's when I felt this maybe false sense of hope and safety. I was like, "Okay, I can talk about my experience. We have a democratic president," even though he was starting to ramp up deportations and hurt asylum or whatever.
I guess, outside of what he was doing federally, it still felt like the community was on my side. The TikTok community was very receptive to my message and understanding that undocumented people, are good, hardworking people and that there are isolated incidents--like in any community of people--who do things. But as I always say, white people get to be individuals and people of color are always lumped in a group, you know?
AG: Yeah. Yeah.
As I always say, white people get to be individuals and people of color are always lumped in a group.
CG: When one person does something, we all got to answer for it.
It was after November 5th that I saw maybe the tides have changed, but for that first week I saw even a lot of Latinos start to come out of the woodwork and be like, "Yo, we're going to deport you." It was more scary seeing my own people send me those messages.
That's when I had to really look at the online situation. It was uncomfortably easy to find information about me. Not just TikTok, it was personal information. So, I scrubbed the internet for as much as I could of the information like that. I went back through years of my TikToks.
That really hurt because I'm watching my work for the last three years, through humor and sharing my story. I was like, "Damn, I am freaking hilarious. I am so good at this." Having to delete those videos because those could be used against me, it was very heartbreaking, but I unfortunately understood that I'm not going away. I'm still talking about stuff.
But on my TikTok I had to decentralize myself from the story. I'm still going to keep giving people information and letting them know when things are happening and giving my opinion. I'm still going to talk about, "This is white supremacy. This is anti-Blackness. This is trauma from our community, of not dealing with the things that we came with from our countries,"
I can’t constantly share my own experience or my status because we're at a place right now where people are going to weaponize my situation.
I even had a friend of mine, their name is Jacks. They run Barrio Drive in Los Angeles. They were somebody that was very open about their experience and their status. And recently, every video they post, it's nothing but threats.
They're a non-binary dreamer and they have a whole other intersectionality of fears that they have. People are starting to realize, "This is very sad that I have to go back into the shadows." It really is psychologically messing with me, where even when I write a new joke about the undocumented experiences I'm like, "Should I even be saying this?" You know?
And honestly, nothing gets me angrier than the fact that there's a white comedian named Bert Kreischer. He has a whole story about going to Russia, getting involved with the Russian mob, committing crimes, shooting at people, and he gets to tell that whole story and they made it into a movie. But if I go, "I grew up undocumented", they go, "You're a criminal."
It really is psychologically messing with me, where even when I write a new joke about the undocumented experiences I'm like, "Should I even be saying this?"
AG: There's a very memed quote from Zora Neale Hurston, "All my skinfolk ain't kinfolk." I think this became very apparent in the days after the election in ways that are pretty awful. I'm curious how you think about your own sense of safety around all of this.
CG: For a while I actually did believe there is strength in numbers. That if something was to happen to me that people will come out and rally in the streets and try to really get me out of the ICE facility.
But unfortunately, I saw what happened to Alex Edin in Enamorado, in California. He was an activist who was literally getting in the belly of the beast and yelling at cops, at police stations about their xenophobia, the racism and everything. The Fontana Police created a whole case against him, a lot of it with very questionable evidence. The man has been in prison now for about a year and three months, and the internet started to rip apart his past and things that he had done. And If you're not this Jesus Christ infallible person, people automatically will forget about you or move on.
So, the hope that if something was to happen to me then people will help went away. I’m like, "As much as people say they love me, these people don't know me." My fiancé is my rock. I know now if anything happens to me, she is the one person who will not let me rot in that ICE detention center for years. I’ve realized it's about surrounding myself with good, honest people who know me personally, who love me, and who I love them back and we've shared a meal, and these are people who are not going to forget about me.
It's also about protecting my family. I come from a mixed status family. We are all in various points in the immigration system. I fear for them because I don't have the resources to help out everybody in my family should they all get swept up in a single household. I have family members who are from different countries. We've married.
I love my family because a lot of them married people who are also undocumented. They didn't marry for papers. They genuinely married for love. So, my family comes from various countries. So they're talking about, "Hey, we're going to have to go back to Mexico. We're going to have to go back to DR. We're going to have to go back here and there."
Things are going to get worse. I don't know how much my family's going to be fractured. I don't know where everybody's going to end up. People who have been married 20 years are going to have to go to two different countries and then have to figure out how to reunite later on. People don't understand how much this is breaking up a lot of us.
I’ve realized it's about surrounding myself with good, honest people who know me personally, who love me, and who I love them back and we've shared a meal, and these are people who are not going to forget about me.
AG: Right.
CG: Even if you have everything in order, they also don't realize how expensive these immigration lawyers are and not everybody has the resources. I'm very lucky. I'm a very lucky individual, but not everybody has the luck and the resources that I have. So that's where, like I said, my heart generally breaks for so many people. And also, the foolish, foolish people who genuinely got tricked by this man that are still going like, "Well, if you didn't come here legally, what do you want us to do?" It's like, "Papi, white people didn't come here legally. Okay?
Read about how Texas was stolen. It was nothing but illegal white people moving in with their slaves and not listening to the laws. White people blame us for the shit that they did. We're not doing those things. They're doing them and they're projecting all their evil on us.
Propina
We’ll conclude our conversation with Che Guerrero next week.
Free Marlon Parris
On January 22nd while leaving for work, Marlon Parris, a veteran who served three tours in Iraq and has lived in the U.S as a permanent resident for 20 years was ambushed by ICE agents and is now being detained for a non-violent drug related crime he committed and served time for over ten years ago. Marlon is a Phoenix community member, business owner, father, and husband. A local Arizona organization lead by veterans, Common Defense, is demanding his release.
To assist in the fight to bring Marlon home please sign their petition here
Digital Know Your Rights Cards
Additionally, recognizing the need to have access to know your rights information as close at hand as possible, we are offering digital versions/phone wallpaper for you to use (just save the images below). We’re starting with English and Spanish images. Let us know if you need other languages.
We’ll see you next week.
Heartbreaking stuff. I always say that the core of the discussion about undocumented immigrants is really just the answer to this question: "Do you think most undocumented immigrants are good or bad?" And way too many people in this country believe that most are bad.