Page 13 | Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Freedom From Fear and the Tactical Side of Terror

Cincinnatus Hibbard

Jan 13, 2026

Freedom From Fear and the Tactical Side of Terror

This is the second of a three-part series on ongoing issues with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it reaches into our areas. –Editor

Part 2: True designs of the administration

Let me be emphatic; all undocumented immigrants have committed a crime. They have all broken immigration law. All of the undocumented immigrants I spoke to frankly admitted this.

And almost all of them also expressed a real desire for immigration reform. That surprised me—at first. Although, on second thought, they would almost certainly benefit from any rationalized system—which would necessarily recognize their indispensable importance to the U.S. economy.

In all justice, it might trigger a second amnesty—like that signed into law by President Ronald Regan in 1986, granting 3 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. People who have served here in our hardest jobs for 20 years have earned it. Call it sweat equity.

Reform is badly needed. But Donald Trump’s new ICE is not the reform we need.

Surprisingly, it is not even effective at arresting the undocumented for deportation. “You’re not going to arrest illegal immigrants by marching down the street in full battle regalia,” Jason Houser, a former ICE chief-of-staff, is quoted as saying (The Economist, “Trumpforce,” Nov. 15, 2025).

Given the real danger and dire poverty of their counties of departure, ICE terror is unlikely to inspire mass “reverse immigration” either. As bad as things are, none of the people I spoke to spoke of fleeing. They spoke of hiding.

But mass deportation doesn’t appear to be the real objective of Trump’s terror campaign. It is doubtful that the Republican Party’s billionaire and trillionaire donor class or its millionaire Congress would ever allow for the mass deportation of 11 million undocumented workers—even if it were logistically or politically possible. They wouldn’t—their wealth and status depends on the mass exploitation of immigrant labor.

A showy surge in immigration arrests, emphasizing terror tactics, and the production of salacious anti-immigrant propaganda would deliver all the emotional “satisfaction” of Trump’s “build a wall” campaign promise, while actually deepening America’s economic status quo.

Thoroughly terrorized, the remaining mass of undocumented workers would be less visible in the public sphere, more silent and more compliant in their own exploitation. They would become much less political—and much more profitable. That is precisely the effect this deportation campaign is having, and I would argue, that is its intended aim. It fits the facts, and it fits all the political requirements. It fits.

Moving Targets

But it’s worse—much worse than that. Seemly, by design, the target of this terror is wider in its scope than undocumented immigrants. The target appears to be “all brown people” in America.

During a much needed break between our interviews, I asked my translator, “Marisol,” whether she felt targeted by ICE herself. A second-generation Mexican-American and an elected public official, she should feel safe. By way of answer, “Marisol” related a bitter joke to me, which illustrates how the campaign has been widely perceived in the Latin-American community. “ICE agents use ‘the brown bag test.’ They hold a brown bag to your face, and if the color matches—bam, you’re an illegal. Off you go to Alligator Alcatraz,” she said.

“Are you afraid?” is a question I asked all the Latino U.S. citizens I spoke to for this article. I quote “Marisol” because her answer is representative.

She spoke to me of the waves of fear within this American community touched off by each made-for-TV raid. The last and the biggest wave came when it seemed San Francisco would be next. That fear is still rippling and reverberating throughout the Bay Area. The chill is on.

There are still prominent Latino events in her district—she showed me photos from a Mexican rodeo the week before on her phone—but there are fewer now. And being out in the community now involves second guessing, precautions, some bravery—and political defiance. Many are choosing to keep their heads down.

To test the prevalence of the belief that ICE was using promiscuous, “brown paper bag” racial profiling, I asked a sample of Americans of Afghani, Indian, Egyptian, Brazilian, Filipino, Black, Chinese and Native descent. By degrees of severity, they all felt targeted by Trump’s ICE campaign—perhaps they would be harassed by gunmen at CVS or their status challenged. Several related ICE to the end of DEI visibility and their erasure from American history curricula.

The anxiety, isolation, concealment and dread now seeping through Black, Brown, Native and Asian communities—under pressure from a predominantly white enforcement apparatus answering to a white government that treats them as criminal—gives Trump’s open-ended mass deportation campaign the character of a white supremacist restoration in America. One abetted by billionaires seeking even greater economic power over us.

“National minorities” are the broad target … for now. By pretext of immigration reform, Trump now commands his own secretive police force operating throughout the country. It can target individual opponents or it can create economic and political chaos in whole regions. “Which political opponent, community or state in America will be targeted next?” was a live wire theme running through our taut private conversations. It is a question all Americans should be asking now. By pretext of the law, it could be anyone.

I, reader, am a white man. But I am also a journalist. Will armed presidential police bring a trumped-up charge of “aiding and abetting alien enemies” to my door? Who isn’t economically involved with illegal immigrants? Who hasn’t said a disparaging thing against Trump?

**REMEMBER** The recent Santa Rosa protest came on the heels of the shooting of Renee Good, the Minneapolis driver shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Photos by Bill Clark/Pro Bono Photo.

American Fascism

Whether white nationalist restoration is the express design or an approved byproduct, that is the outcome, and it tracks with what we’ve seen and what we know of an administration that canceled the observation of Juneteenth (marking the end of slavery in America).

This article is a table—crunch the numbers:

In this new, muscular ICE, there is now, for the first time in the history of America, a large national police force that answers solely to the president.

There are no democratic checks or limits to this new presidential power.

All the qualities and characteristics of this force appear chosen and calibrated to inspire terror. It is secretive and non-transparent to review. Its arresting officers are masked, armored, anonymous—often refusing to give their names or show their badges. They are heavily armed, militarized, aggressive—often violent; they are dismissive of Miranda rights, dismissive of warrants.

They violate declared sanctuaries, homes, schools, hospitals and churches.

They attack peaceful protestors.They stage political propaganda. They claim immunity from prosecution.

They strike in lightning raids at any location in the nation. Their deployment has been heavily partisan, a tool not for law, but for the consolidation of political power.

With charges of violating immigration law, they frequently carry trumped up charges of the most monstrous kind—rape, murder, treason. They dehumanize the most vulnerable among us.

They disappear people—that is their work. By a pattern that appears to be a policy, they often fail to inform families of these disappearances or their judicial process—family members just “disappear,” fanning the terror.

They disappear people into a dark judicial process that frequently violates human rights and international norms of due process before the law—some of our most important checks against tyranny.

They are linked with barbaric secret prisons.

By its practical effects, their mission takes on a white supremacist cast, suggesting a limited form of racial cleansing through forced removal and the political and economic subordination of nonwhites broadly through terror.

This is not a historical metaphor or a rhetorical flourish; the newly reformed ICE is being operated as an authoritarian secret police force. They are acting like Gestapo—albeit Gestapo adapted to a modern American context of ubiquitous smart phones, steroidal militarism, social media obsession, show biz politics, billionaire aristocracy, and stars and stripes iconography. If their use and tactical pattern is allowed to harden into the new normal, the United States will have crossed the line into a white supremacist police state.

Finally, of the one who wields this enormous power, Donald Trump—the billionaire president: ICE’s arbitrary and vindictive commander-in-chief is sustained by a nascent cult of personality; his crushing policies flatten institutional checks and exaggerate existing economic and racial hierarchies to concentrate power in his own hands.

He behaves in openly authoritarian ways, seeking to terrorize his many political opponents. He has already tried to overturn the result of one presidential election he lost, and his allies have spoken openly about seeking an unconstitutional third term. In ICE, he now has his terror weapon.

Their tactical masks are off, reader. In the scale and spectacle of this “mass deportation campaign,” the Trump administration’s intentions can no longer be disguised. If judged only by the all pervading fear, this is fascism—fascism in a new form, fitted to a new era. At the end of 24 interviews, the only question that remained to me was “Will the fascists win this time?”

It’s time to take our gloves off.

Next week, Part 3: Fighting Fear.

Learn more: linktr.ee/iceterrorANDamericandemocracy.

‘Phenotype,’ the art of visible consequences

Daedalus Howell

Jan 13, 2026

‘Phenotype,’ the art of visible consequences

Walking into Phenotype, Annette Goodfriend’s new sculpture exhibition at Sonoma’s Alley Gallery, is like stepping into a natural history museum curated by Dr. Frankenstein.

Rib cages bloom into unlikely appendages. Limbs seem to hesitate mid-evolution. Bodies appear assembled from plausible parts, yet refuse to resolve into anything anatomically correct. The notion of teratomas (tumors that sprout their own teeth, hair and nails) looms large. And yet, for all the Cronenberg-esque body horror, it’s beautiful.

Goodfriend’s work has long occupied the fertile overlap between art and science. The exhibition takes its name from the biological term describing the observable traits produced when genes encounter the environment. It’s the visible expression of invisible code. As Goodfriend explains, “The definition of phenotype is the visible characteristics that you see of an organism that result from its genetic makeup and environmental factors.” In other words, it’s not the blueprint but the outcome. And, if one is an artist like Goodfriend, a lot can happen along the way.

To be clear, her sculptures aren’t literal illustrations of genetic disorders or medical anomalies. They are speculative, surreal, even mordantly humorous (the knotted, noodly appendages leading to oddly expressive feet will draw a smile). Goodfriend describes the work as “looking at malfunctions in the genetic code that result in kind of perverse physical forms,” while emphasizing that the results are intentionally interpretive rather than diagnostic.

Materials play a crucial role in grounding that speculation. Working with steel and aluminum armatures layered with epoxy resin, rubber, plaster and wax, Goodfriend builds forms that are tactile and appear credible. The surfaces recall skin, cartilage, bone, and are expertly executed. The forms are convincing enough to persuade the eye of their verisimilitude, but not natural enough to reassure that something hasn’t gone terribly awry on a molecular level.

As she puts it, “I am telling a surreal story of biology. It is a visceral investigation of the perversity of nature, the role of science, and how our bodies both affect and are affected by the world around us.”

That phrasing—perversity of nature—captures the exhibition’s tone. In previous bodies of work, Goodfriend focused on the ocean and humanity’s impact on marine systems, examining environmental change from a global vantage point. Here, that same logic collapses inward. The site of consequence is the human body itself.

Perhaps tellingly, Goodfriend studied genetics at UC Berkeley while spending equal time in the art studio, eventually earning an MFA from California College of the Arts. The scientific curiosity never left; it simply found a more elastic medium. Now a full-time artist, she integrates cast body parts—sometimes her own, sometimes her son’s—with constructed forms, allowing her concepts to dictate material and method. “Whatever feels right for the piece,” she says, becomes the rule.

There’s a quiet narrative coherence to the show that benefits from being experienced as a whole. Solo exhibitions allow for that kind of sustained argument, and Goodfriend clearly values the opportunity.

“When you have a solo show,” she notes, “you’re able to put your different works in a single place, and it tells a story. … It kind of creates a narrative.”

In Phenotype, that narrative unfolds as a progression of altered anatomies—each one a different answer to the same underlying question: How does change manifest? Or, even more tantalizing: Why?

‘Phenotype’ is on view now through Jan. 25, with an artist conversation with Susanne Cockrell at 4pm, Jan. 17, Alley Gallery, 148 East Napa St., Sonoma. alley.gallery

Storied Radio Career, Big Bike Bash and Tibet’s Lost Enclave

Crush

Weeklys Staff

Jan 13, 2026

Storied Radio Career, Big Bike Bash and Tibet’s Lost Enclave

Santa Rosa

Action for Jaxon

For 17 years, Steve Jaxon’s afternoon basso profundo and dry wit were a steady presence on Sonoma County airwaves, guiding listeners through the afternoon on The Drive—first on KSRO, later on Wine Country Radio. A lifer in the medium with more than five decades behind the mic, Jaxon signed off for good in August at age 73, closing the book on a 53-year radio career. Now, the community is returning the favor. Over the past six months, a series of health setbacks—including ministrokes layered onto long-standing hip and back issues—has left Jaxon with limited mobility and the need for in-home care. A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to offset his medical and care expenses, which is closing in on its $16,000 goal. Jaxon’s path to Sonoma County began his 53-year career in Detroit and followed with stints at stations across the country, but it was here that he became something more than a broadcaster. When The Drive debuted on KSRO in 2008—and later migrated to Wine Country Radio’s 95.5 FM—it evolved into a kind of daily town square. When Jaxon stepped away, he passed the microphone to frequent guest host Daedalus Howell (editor of this paper). To make a contribution to Jaxon’s fund, visit bit.ly/jaxon-aid.

Mill Valley

Big Bike Bash

The Marin County Bicycle Coalition puts on a party with a purpose at its annual gala, an evening that turns bike advocacy into a full-bodied celebration. This one mixes civic-minded mission with high-end indulgence: a gourmet dinner by Emmy Award-winning chef Ryan Scott, craft cocktails, live music from Bay Area favorites Mercy and The Heartbeats, and a live auction led by celebrity auctioneer Chad Carvey. Every ticket supports MCBC’s work toward safer streets, expanded trail access and a more bike-friendly Marin. 5:30pm, Thursday, March 12, Mill Valley Community Center, 180 Camino Alto. $250. marinbike.org/mcbc-gala.

Yountville

Art & Mustard

Yountville leans into its most photogenic season with the Art & Mustard Celebration, an evening that pairs mustard-hued creativity with local flavor—literally. Presented by the Yountville Chamber in partnership with Yountville Arts, the event doubles as the opening of the Napa Valley Mustard Celebration Photo-Finale exhibition, showcasing images inspired by the region’s iconic winter bloom. Expect mustard-themed art, bites inspired by the season, pours from local wineries and a chance to shop select vendors, including Jessel Gallery. The Photo-Finale exhibition remains on view through March 26, extending the glow of mustard season well into spring. 5:30–7:30pm, Thursday, Jan. 22, Steve Rogers Gallery and Community Hall, Yountville Community Center, 6516 Washington St. $25 advance/$30 door, yountville.com/events.

San Geronimo

Faces of Dolpo

The San Geronimo Valley Community Center presents Faces of Dolpo, Tibet’s Lost Enclave, a photographic exhibition by David Hoffman that documents a rarely seen Himalayan world on the edge of modernity. Drawn from Hoffman’s 1971 journey to the remote region of Dolpo, Nepal, the images capture landscapes, daily life and cultural rituals encountered by few outsiders. Hoffman—better known for his decades of work traveling Asia in search of rare, organic teas—brings the same patience, respect and attentiveness to this photographic essay, preserving moments shaped by tradition, isolation and change. Artist slideshow and presentation 6:30pm, Friday, Jan. 16; artist walkthrough 3:30pm, Saturday, Jan. 24, San Geronimo Valley Community Center, Maurice Del Mue Galleries (West Room), 6350 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Free.