Sarah Goldstein’s story begins with her family, where some brush off the news of immigration raids and others see it as a reason for extreme alarm.
Her mother and grandmother, both naturalized citizens, move through ordinary days with a vigilance that never fully turns off: watching who’s behind them, weighing what they say, bracing for the possibility of being profiled or detained. Her Jewish father — born here — tries to meet their fear with jokes, logic and a belief that it’s his role to “balance it out,” even when that comes across as dismissal.
Goldstein explores how immigration raids — and the threat of them — reshape family dynamics when its members share a home but not the same risk, and how we learn to support the people we love even when we don’t fully understand their fear.
This piece is part of "Resilience in the Age of ICE," a series of podcasts and essays produced by students at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and published by Golden State. Visit golden-state.org/USCproject for more.
