I’ve had an important realization about our country. 

It came to me at some point between September 26, 2024 and January 20, 2025. The first date marks the arrival of Hurricane Helene—the tropical storm that dumped 40 trillion gallons of rain on the southeast U.S., including my new hometown of Asheville, NC. 

I could try and dig up some statistics to explain just how devastating Helene was on our city. But I’m not great with numbers. They tend to slip from memory as quickly as they enter. So instead I’ll tell a brief story that I haven’t been able to forget. 

The rivers in Western North Carolina ran so high that people were climbing on top of their houses to avoid getting sucked into the raging, toxic, brown water. One mother threw her six-year-old daughter up on their roof, told her she loved her and was then ripped away with the current. Her daughter later told rescue workers, “My daddy says Mommy is a mermaid now… I know my mommy is a real mermaid.”

Anyway, that was late September. The more recent date, January 20, as you all surely know, was the day I watched Donald Trump take his Bible-less oath. The day I saw the world’s richest man perform a sieg heil behind a presidential podium. Twice. It was also the day I saw the world’s other richest men—who control virtually every major form of modern mass communication—come to sit at the altar of our new president—a president who feels strongly that his detractors and dissenters ought to be silenced, while his supporters deserve the freedom to sing his praises without any pesky fact-checking. These gatekeepers appeared happy to accept these terms.

It was at some point between these two dates. Between watching that cruel and unflinching daughter of climate chaos named Helene bring my city to its knees, and then watching our new president and his trillion-dollar crew pull out of the Paris Climate Accords, walk back renewable energy development, rededicate themselves to fossil fuels and promise to “drill baby drill.” Somewhere amidst it all, I realized that there is a very dark and disturbing force in this nation that threatens all of our collective futures.

I’m talking, of course, about illegal immigrants.

I just know that illegal immigrants are the source of all of my troubles as a 27-year-old American today. Now, I’ve never knowingly met one, and if I have, they haven’t done me any harm. But that just proves how sneakily they’re lurking beneath the surface. And I’m relieved that the new president is finally doing something about it.

As unprecedented wildfires tore through southern California, I saw news coverage about undocumented folks from—I don’t recall where actually so let’s just call it Mexico—who unhesitatingly risked their lives. They entered the inferno and worked tirelessly to save strangers’ homes, simply because, “You don’t need to have legal papers or be a U.S. citizen to help others.”

Where is ICE when you need them?! These immigrants are clearly up to something.

I’m a freelance writer, and work’s been impossible to find lately. I know it’s because immigrants are stealing all the jobs! My friend said, “Owen, you’re crazy. You’re losing work because of AI. You ought to be mad at the tech giants who are automating everything so they don’t have to pay humans.” I just looked at him sadly, “So the woke mind virus has infected you too, huh?”

Like everyone, I can hardly wait for the biggest payoff of the Trump presidency. Cheaper milk and eggs. It turned my stomach reading a recent report, which claims that immigrant laborers make up more than half of the entire dairy industry’s workforce. I’m so tired of these immigrants scooping up our cushy dairy jobs. Don’t Americans deserve the chance to earn low wages, working long hours in dangerous environments, all while being specifically excluded from even the most basic labor protections?

These immigrant dairy workers are also the first to be exposed to bird flu. Doesn’t this give them an unfair antibody advantage over Americans once it inevitably becomes our next worldwide pandemic?

If not for the immigrant workforce, the report also said, dairy production would decrease by 48.4 billion pounds and the cost of milk would increase by more than 90 percent. Well, I seriously doubt that. And no, I will not be defending my stance. You can’t make me.

Climate change. Unaffordable health care. Millions without enough to eat. Millions facing homelessness or housing insecurity. Mass shootings predominantly committed by white males. I can’t stop thinking of national crises that will be easily solved by the dehumanization, vilification and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Once that’s all finished up, we can address our next biggest issue: how drag queens have co-opted and ruined the American traditions of brunch and bingo.

Owen Walsh formerly of Honesdale, worked as a staff writer with the River Reporter. He’s currently an Asheville-based musician with the debut album, ‘On My Way.’