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The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a restraining order and ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may conduct immigration raids in Los Angeles. The 6-3 decision has permitted ICE agents to make stops based on “reasonable suspicion,” which may include factors such as race, language, or occupation — elements that have been considered “profiling” in the recent past. I’m reminded of the oft-paraphrased words of Martin Niemöller.
After the Second World War, Martin Niemöller, a German pastor, spoke words that echo today. He said, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.” Then came the trade unionists. Then the Jews. And finally, he ended with himself. By then, he said, there was no one left to speak out for me.
What gives those words their power is not simply their warning, which speaks to caring about people regardless of their “tribe.” What gives those words their power is the life of the man who spoke them.
Niemöller was a decorated German submarine commander in the First World War, a proud nationalist. He was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1924 and welcomed Hitler’s rise in 1933, believing it would restore Germany’s strength and pride. He sat silent as others were disappeared. However, he only broke with the Nazi regime when the government reached into his church and tried to control his voice.
For that resistance, he was arrested in 1937 and spent seven years inside the barbed wire of Sachsenhausen and Dachau. When the war ended, Niemöller looked back with regret. He admitted he had been silent when others were taken. He knew that by the time they came for him, it was too late. His words after the war were not polished lines for applause. They were confession. They were testimony.
The lesson is simple: when injustice comes for one group at a time, silence is not neutral. Silence is permission.
That is the danger of only speaking when it reaches your own children, your own church, your own community. By then, it’s too late.
America in 2025 is not Germany of the 1930s. But comfort can blind any people, and silent selfish indifference is an enabler of tyranny. We grow used to small compromises. We shrug off small cruelties to others. We begin to believe that what happens to “them” is separate from what happens to us. We demonize empathy — until one day we wake up and find that the country of laws and process we thought protected everyone has become a country of men and emotion with predatory agendas.
The strength of the American idea is the rule of law, rooted in a Constitution that protects everyone equally, without regard to race, wealth, religion, or gender. Laws that stand taller than any one man. Laws that protect the weak as well as the strong. Laws that restrain power and promote equality. That promise is only real if we insist it be kept for all people.
Niemöller learned that lesson the hard way. He left his words as both confession and caution. The Nazis divided people into groups and stripped away their humanity one by one. Because people didn’t stand together, they fell separately.
The names of the groups may change, but the pattern is familiar. Immigrants. Racial minorities. Religious outsiders. Political opponents. People whose identity or voice is cast as a threat. Whenever a society begins to accept exceptions to equal protection, we have all fallen.
Niemöller did not say it could never happen again. He said it would happen again if we let it.
Say something.
For more information contact Commissioner Oliver Gilbert on his social media as follows
Instagram: OGilbert3
X: OGilbert
Facebook: Oliver Gilbert
