Authoritarianism at Home: The Brutal Arrest of Narciso Barranco
While America wages war abroad, the war against immigrants at home intensifies — even when their children wear the uniform.
Monica here —
A Saturday in Santa Ana
It was just another Saturday morning in Santa Ana, California — the kind of morning where landscapers mow storefronts and families eat pancakes. But at an IHOP off Bristol Street, something darker was unfolding. Witnesses watched in horror as six masked men, dressed in tactical gear, chased down a slight, middle-aged landscaper, tackled him to the pavement, and began to beat him. One agent punched him repeatedly as another drew his weapon toward the honking cars trying to intervene. The man on the ground was Narciso Barranco — 5’7”, 150 pounds, undocumented, unarmed, and the father of three United States Marines.
Is This What You Voted For?
Is this what you voted for, MAGA? You were told by Trump that he would do mass deportations to get rid of the “worst of the worst,” the “vermin” that are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Is that what you see in Narciso Barranco? The man who so loved his adopted homeland that he encouraged his sons to serve their country?
Are these the tactics you stand for? Masked agents, unidentified and unidentifiable, outnumbering and overpowering this one unarmed man? Are you cheering on the sidelines as they beat him into submission, dislocating his shoulder and bloodying his face?
A Son Speaks Out
In an interview with NBC’s Jacob Soboroff, Barranco’s son Alejandro was asked his thoughts on his father’s treatment. As a Marine, Alejandro was trained in use of force. Did he agree with the Department of Homeland Security’s assessment that there was minimal use of force in his father’s arrest?
“I think it’s the complete opposite. I think it’s the maximum amount of force and I think unprofessional force. You see in the video there’s a so-called agent, running with his gun in hand pointing it sideways at a vehicle. At what point in our training are we taught to hold a gun sideways? It’s always both hands on the gun and your finger off the trigger.
It doesn’t take four or five guys holding him down, beating him in the face, pepper spraying him, beating him within inches, not even the appropriate distance…that’s just unprofessional.”
Soboroff noted that Alejandro Barranco served in Afghanistan and asked what would have happened had he treated a detainee that way in the Marines.
“I promise you, it would have been a war crime.”
A war crime.
This is where we are in America.
Authoritarian Creep, Disguised as Policy
Understandably, Trump dragging the United States into yet another war in the Middle East has taken control of the news cycle. But behind that monstrosity lie other burgeoning signs of authoritarianism. The continuation of ICE raids by masked and unidentified agents, SCOTUS signing off on remanding immigrants to third countries with little to no due process, and the Big Ugly Bill that will strip Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits away from millions just so that billionaires can buy a boat for their yacht.
The story of Narciso Barranco is just one of many. Many hardworking, unassuming immigrants that have been in the United States for years. Contributing to society, boosting our economy, becoming an integral part of the fabric of their community. Parents or spouses to American citizens.
Do we honor their contributions? Do we acknowledge their place in the community? Do we thank them for raising children that serve their country with honor?
No. We assault them on the streets where they live and work, brutalize them, and treat them inhumanely. In the same interview with Jacob Soboroff, Alejandro Barranco had just seen his father. Four days after his arrest, he was still in the same bloody clothes, had received no medical care, little food or water, and was in a room with 70 men and one toilet.
We’re Not At the Edge. We’re In It.
The complete and utter lack of humanity calls to mind other authoritarian regimes. There is no putting a shine to any of this. We can’t say that “this is how it starts.” We are several steps into authoritarianism. We are there.
The Republican party has historically been one that prides itself on being the party of law and order. The party of family values. Honoring service.
Not one of them has denounced what happened to Narciso Barranco.
This isn’t just about immigration. This is about unchecked powers. As we’ve noted here before, the United States was built to have three co-equal branches of government to serve as checks and balance. Yet Congress has ceded its power to the Executive branch. While the judiciary is holding the line in many of the cases that have gone before them, SCOTUS is so wildly unbalanced and is largely a product of Leonard Leo and the Heritage Society, so pardon me if I don’t hold out a lot of hope in that institution.
Authoritarianism isn’t just knocking on the door. It has broken in, made itself a cup of coffee, and is watching the chaos unfold.
And those authoritarian powers thrive when the populace is distracted.
What better way to distract than a war in the Middle East?
Don’t Look Away
Because while we’re busy looking outward, we’re ignoring the fact that our government is using the same playbook at home — targeting the vulnerable, denying due process, and conditioning the public to accept cruelty as normal. The image of a slight, bloodied landscaper pinned beneath armed men becomes background noise in a country trained to see immigrants as threats, not neighbors. And this is by design. Fascist regimes don't need mass compliance — they only need enough people to look away. To scroll past. To excuse it. To say, “Well, he was undocumented,” and move on.
This Is What It Looks Like
What happened to Narciso Barranco is not an aberration. It is what happens when a nation decides that some lives are worth less than others. When service, sacrifice, and decency don’t matter if your papers aren’t in order. When the rule of law bends to the will of a strongman and his enforcers.
Barranco’s sons were willing to die for this country. One of them says that what ICE did to his father would be a war crime in combat. And still, the silence from the halls of Congress is deafening. The silence from military leadership, louder still.
We don’t need to wonder how fascism takes hold. We’re living it. It’s here, in plain view. It’s in the beating of a landscaper on a Saturday afternoon. It’s in the blood on his face. It’s in the indifference that follows.
And the longer we tell ourselves this is just politics, or just immigration policy, or just the cost of “security,” the more we become complicit.
Authoritarianism doesn’t come wearing a swastika.
It comes wearing tactical gear and a badge with no name.
Monica, wow! Another masterpiece from the politics chick's! Although I'm in tears listening to your article, I thank you! You put into words what so many of us feel but can't express. You brilliantly write what many need to hear! 💙🙏