Say My Name—We Are Not All Jose and Maria

Newsweek

3 days ago

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In what seemed like a mocking and dismissive tone, Vice President JD Vance recently referred to Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) as "Jose Padilla."
Whether calling him by the wrong name was deliberate or unintentional, the impact is the same. It's dehumanizing.
It's a devaluing of the more than 65 million Latinos in the U.S. that some people see as just another Jose or Maria, not as people who contribute to this country. Latino GDP in the U.S. is $3.7 trillion and undocumented immigrants alone pay an average of $100 billion a year in taxes.
Protestors gathered on the corners of Sunset Boulevard and Vin Scully in Los Angeles, Calif. on June 21, 2025, to protest against ICE and President Donald Trump.
Protestors gathered on the corners of Sunset Boulevard and Vin Scully in Los Angeles, Calif. on June 21, 2025, to protest against ICE and President Donald Trump.
MADISON SWART/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images
As a Latina, I experience that when we are othered, when we are all grouped as Marias or Joses, it makes it easier for our community to be attacked and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct mass raids at Home Depots, bus stops, schools, courthouses, and churches. We are not individuals with rights if they see us all bearing the same name.
I know what it feels like to be called Maria.
As a young journalist working at a major newspaper in the Midwest, a top editor and white male, who interviewed me for the position, casually walked by me one time and said, "Hi Maria."
"My name is not Maria. My name is Teresa," I said calmly and firmly, rolling my R's.
He slowly turned beet red as I stared back at him.
Maria is not a part of my name. When he misnamed me, it felt as if he didn't truly see me or respect me. I was just another Maria, another Latina that he could diminish.
Latinos make up 12 percent of those working in media, including news, film, and publishing. More than 20 years ago, there were even fewer of us working in newsrooms.
Today, the Latino community is under attack by ICE and the policies of the second Donald Trump administration. All Latinos—all brown people and people of color—are being othered, and mislabeled as foreigners when the opposite is true.
Nearly two-thirds of Latinos are U.S. citizens and only around 13 percent are undocumented. But we are all vulnerable to ICE detention, as we've seen cases of Latinos who are U.S. citizens wrongfully detained.
ICE arresting U.S. citizens isn't new. It happened under former President Barack Obama and the first Trump administration. At least 70 citizens were deported by ICE between 2015 and 2020, with hundreds more detained or arrested, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
But the arrests of U.S. citizens is escalating and expanding. Since Trump took office the second time, at least five elected officials have been handcuffed, detained, or arrested standing up for immigrants, including Senator Padilla.
A U.S. citizen, Job García, was briefly detained last month by ICE while filming at a Los Angeles Home Depot. In January, U.S. citizen Julio Noriega was arrested, handcuffed, and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center in suburban Chicago. He was never questioned about his citizenship and was only released after agents looked at his ID. ICE also has deported at least three U.S. citizen children with their undocumented parents.
The current administration also is canceling the immigration status of more than 1 million immigrants who migrated to the U.S. legally. ICE is arresting non-criminal undocumented immigrants who lived here for decades and contribute to our society.
Narciso Barranco, an undocumented gardener, was recently arrested and beaten in Orange County, Calif. He is father to three U.S. Marines.
"I love serving my country. I think my brothers do as well, and it just infuriates us that our own country is doing this to our own people. What we fight for is justice, and we need a better pathway to fix all of this," one of Barranco's sons said in an interview.
The president promised mass deportations, and to meet his quotas, ICE will keep arresting gardeners, day laborers, and other workers. All of us are vulnerable, especially if you are brown, "look like an immigrant," or look like you could be a Jose or Maria.
When I renewed my passport several years ago, my mom told me to pay extra for the passport card. It's the size of a driver's license.
I recently started carrying it in my wallet just in case I get picked up by ICE. I shouldn't have to do this when my family migrated from Mexico to Texas in 1890. There was no ICE or Border Patrol back then. My great grandfather paid a nickel to bring his horse and cart across the border with his family.
But to ICE, I look like just another Maria.
Teresa Puente is a journalist and journalism educator based in California.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.