In the trailer for All That’s Left of You, there is a brief image of orange trees and heavy machinery. For many, it may pass unnoticed. For me, it opened a wound that has never fully closed.

My great-grandfather Ahmad Sulieman Qutiefan owned an orange grove in Beit Nabala (Bayt Nabala), a Palestinian village just nine miles from Yaffa. Those oranges were not inherited wealth. He planted them himself, beginning as a child, after his own father passed away. Knowing his family depended on him, he stepped into responsibility early, planting tree after tree, tending the land with care and pride. The grove became his life’s work. He nurtured it daily, believing it would one day sustain his children and his children’s children.

He never imagined that it could simply be taken.

Though geographically it lies near Qom, Jamkaran (the site associated with the hidden imam, Mahdi) exists far beyond any mosque, shrine, or well. It is a psychological architecture— a way of relating to power, history, and responsibility. Jamkaran names the belief that salvation arrives from outside human agency, that redemption descends from above rather than being constructed through collective action. It is not theology per se, but a political imagination shaped by waiting.

Karl Marx described this condition as inverted consciousness: a world turned upside down, where material relations are masked by metaphysical fantasies. Michel Foucault would recognize it as internalized power, domination reproduced within the subject rather than imposed solely from without. Antonio Gramsci named it hegemony: the absorption of ruling ideas so deeply that they appear natural, inevitable, even desirable.

The ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis is the latest in a string of deaths related to ICE raids, traffic stops, and detention facilities. Last year 32 people died in ICE custody―the most in more than two decades. Border Patrol agents have also shot, wounded, and killed civilians during Trump’s mass deportation raids. ICE and Border patrol agents are bullies who intimidate, and attack people based on the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the accents they have. They’ve also shot and killed people in their cars and used deadly weapons against bystanders and people who are standing up for their neighbors. 

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Watch: Medical neglect in Butler County Jail, an ICE contract facility (Spectrum News)

In early January, Geraldo Lunas Campos died in civil immigration jail in Texas, choked to death by a guard. Last year, 32 people died in immigration jail, making 2025 the deadliest year since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was founded. Despite the dangers, the Trump administration continues to rapidly grow the nation’s civil immigration system, with help from Congress and some county sheriffs. 

It is always easier—and more profitable—to align oneself with existing wealth and power than to resist it on the principled grounds of justice, equity, or stewardship. While the pursuit of profit rewards speed, scale, and indifference, conservation demands restraint and the acceptance of limits. The incentives are fundamentally lopsided: on one side, the gains from exploitation are immediate, private, and compounding; on the other, the rewards of conservation are delayed, diffused, and socialized. Those who seek profit have the obvious motive and the ample means to dominate the discourse, while those who argue for restraint must expend their own time, resources, and credibility with no hope of reimbursement. It is asymmetrical warfare made personal.