Under the Trump regime, tourism to the United States is cratering, but who can blame foreigners for staying away? There are invasive searches of your devices at border control, the prospect of being whisked away to an ICE detention camp if a border guard is having a bad day, and the general suspicion and loathing emanating from the administration to anyone who doesn’t look like they walked out of Leave it to Beaver.
This extraordinarily unwelcoming atmosphere is exemplified by the NYPD’s treatment of Chilean tourist Javiera Montero. She flew to New York with plans to see the sights: enjoy Times Square, get the boat out to see the Statue of Liberty, maybe get some selfies at the top of the Empire State Building.
I saw this on IG and terror on this woman’s face when she realizes she’s being kidnapped as her 12yr-old daughter is left behind…her screams…this is domestic terrorism.
She was a Chilean tourist in New York. America can’t host any international event. Visitors are not safe . pic.twitter.com/pBe3rxDtWN
— Carolyn Hinds
#FreePalestine #CongoInCrisis (@CarrieCnh12) June 8, 2025
What she experienced instead was the sharp end of Trump’s police state. While walking through Times Square, Montero’s 12-year-old daughter was knocked to the ground, so she asked an NYPD officer for assistance. Instead of help, she was smashed to the ground, cuffed, and thrown in a cell. Meanwhile, her crying daughter was left abandoned on the streets of Manhattan.
A man took pity on the distraught girl and decided to help her out, doing his best to figure out where the cops had taken her mother. Fortunately, this good Samaritan was able to locate her, though on arrival at the police station, the distraught child was forbidden from using the WiFi to contact her father. Eight hours later, Montero was finally released, with the NYPD (who are actively collaborating with ICE) forced to admit she’d committed no crime and was simply an innocent tourist.
Quotas must be filled
Stephen Miller, alongside Kristi Noem, demanded that ICE ramp up daily deportations to at least 3,000 per day during a meeting at ICE headquarters last week.
Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/gUQl2juQHS
— AF Post (@AFpost) May 28, 2025
It’s worth underlining that the real reason Montero was arrested was simply because she has brown skin and was speaking Spanish. The Trump administration has set strict quotas for arresting anyone even suspected of being in the country illegally, with Stephen Miller ordering that 3,000 people be arrested every single day, or ICE officers will face consequences.
With that quota in place, is it any surprise that anyone with a Spanish accent on the streets of America is now in danger? Bear in mind that Miller’s quotas don’t mean those arrests need to translate into deportations, merely that people are being scooped up as individual officers desperately try to hit their targets or face retribution.
Montero is now back in Chile and is “completely mortified” at being arrested. Unable to admit that innocent people are being attacked for the crime of having brown skin, MAGA liars are claiming that she’s a criminal, or had been in the country illegally for years.
The truth is she was simply a tourist seeing the sights of New York with her daughter, and officers profiled her as an easy arrest to fill their immigrant-hunting quota for the day. If you have darker skin, a foreign accent, or a Latin-sounding name, beware.
