What do you do when people who are ignorant, uninformed and hateful respond to an announcement about a vigil for someone who died because of ICE?

Tonight the community is coming together to collectively mourn the death of Mario David Coronado, who died while attempting to get away from ICE.

I wrote about the Press Conference that was held on Tuesday regarding the death of Mario David Coronado. On Wednesday I shared a graphic that invited the community to attend the vigil being held at the location where his death occurred.

In just the last 24 hours there have been dozens of people responding with care emojis and other people have commented with kind words regarding the death of Mario David Coronado. However, at the same time there have been dozens of people who have posted ignorant, uninformed, hateful and just plain despicable comments.

Now, I have been removing them as quickly as possible, but I have never seen this many hate-filled and ignorant comments on a single post on my page. I know some people have responded to these comments, but those also get deleted when the hateful comments are removed. Here is a sampling of what people wrote:

One less illegal alien to deport 15 million to go

Or dont run when being pursued by law enforcement. I know he lost his life, yes thats a tragedy but being illegal and not stopping for law enforcement probably didn’t help. Why were you running? Because you’re illegally here? What if this dude rape or murdered someone? Itd be completely silent…. save your bullshit sympathy. Stupid leftist as always.

Shouldn’t have been in the country illegally and shouldn’t have tried to flee. It’s his own fault. Spare me the outrage.

I’m just glad that when he was avoiding justice, it was a tree he ran into and not an innocent person

ha ha ha and stupid

Illegal

refried

Break a bunch of laws and the Democrats will honor you

they can all move in with you and you can personally support them!

Sneaking into our country illegally, taking a citizens job and living off our tax infrastructure, then fleeing enforcement endangering people around him…….it’s unacceptable!

Sad he died but being an illegal alien fleeing law enforcement doesn’t call for abolishing the agency tasked with upholding our LAWS

Now, more than half of the hate-filled comments that were posted were from people outside of Michigan, which likely means they are bots or trolls who get paid to respond to topics like immigration and ICE, and/or because of the shitty algorithmic nature of social media. However, there were plenty of people who were from Michigan, even West Michigan who appeared to be real people who just happened to be awful and hate-filled people.

Beyond the banality of these comments and the utter lack of any real knowledge of US immigration policy, what bothers me the most is that people took the time to actually come on my page (or any page with similar content) and say the despicable things they said. I mean, who the fuck intentionally decides to go on a social media post about a vigil for a man who died while trying to avoid being subjected to the repressive clutches of ICE, the concentration camp-like ICE detention system or deportation – and then write ignorant, hateful and cruel comments?

Such behavior cannot simply be laid at the feet of the GOP or the MAGA bots. This type of behavior is systemic and it is rooted in the Settler Colonial, white supremacist dominant culture that is the US.

If you are able to attend tonight, please show up. We need to demonstrate that solidarity is more powerful than ignorance, hate and those who act as apologists for ICE.