An insidious terminology has taken root in the United States: it distinguishes heritage Americans from the rest of us. This is a euphemism for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and, increasingly, evangelical nationalists as well. This language is being deployed systematically. In practice, the US Supreme Court has legalized a machinery of control in which ethnicity—including how someone speaks, how they dress, what they do—can be used as justification for federal officials, quasi-military forces like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to detain someone and ask for “your papers, please.”
In Minnesota, right now, ICE’s actions have become state terror—raids, arrests, fear in immigrant neighborhoods, and public protests—and have included lethal force, with the deaths at the hands of federal agents of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But this is also happening elsewhere, through new, silent and publicly invisible processes.
On January 5, 2026, after working for 16 years at the University of Colorado, the Human Resources Department sent me an email saying that I had not submitted documents proving that I was a legal resident or citizen of the United States. The university insisted that I had not provided that documentation when they hired me. And I was required to physically present my proof of citizenship (my U.S. passport) to a university official for verification. I am a foreigner in my own country.
The mail used the serene language of the administration. Was it, as they said, a “routine internal review” that applied to everyone? The important phrase was simple: “This step must be completed by submitting original and acceptable documents…Copies are not accepted.”
The university staff told me that I was not being singled out. But none of the heritage Americans from my History Department, with Anglo-Saxon and German surnames, were asked to come and physically prove their citizenship. Yes to me: Martínez-Dávila. And a colleague in my department—an employee for more than 25 years—was also forced to present her papers; Yes, he also had a Spanish surname. What are the chances? 100% in the United States.
When I shared this publicly on a professional network, a stranger responded with the kind of phrase that normalizes everything: “No one cares. Show the papers and that’s it.” The demand becomes banal, common. Public humiliation becomes something unimportant, something you are told to endure in silence.
What is so alarming—and so disorienting—is that I am of Spanish descent with indigenous Mexican roots. My family founded Spanish San Antonio, Texas in 1718. My genes tell the truth: 33% Iberian, 16% Sephardic Jewish, and 25% Native American. Who is here heritage American?
My family relationship with Texas keeps its own archive of paradoxes and is embodied in Juan Nepomuceno Seguín: my ancestor. Born in 1806, he was a Texan leader in the revolution for independence. And he was at the Alamo. On February 25, 1836, during Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo, Juan Seguín was sent by Colonel William B. Travis to request military reinforcements from Texan General James Fannin. Juan was the only survivor of that unfortunate demonstration of resistance and bravery.
The rest is history and the origin of our war cry: “Remember the Alamo!” He later organized the only Texan (Spanish-American) company that fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He then returned to San Antonio and supervised the burials of the Alamo dead.
And then the story turns: after serving in the Senate of the Republic of Texas, growing Anglo hostility against Texans pushed him to flee with his family to their old enemy, Mexico. In other words: the American founding myth includes Spanish-speaking patriots, and in my case, it is literally blood—as is the case with millions of people of Spanish ancestry.
Let’s go back to the present. In the United States, a person like me—like millions of people with Spanish ancestry—can be required, at any time, to prove their nationality. In Minnesota, the pressure has become visible on the streets. In Colorado, I experienced the quietest version: not a raid, not a control, but an institutional mail that ends in the same place: hand over your documents.
Spaniards know—in a way that Americans don’t—how quickly identity becomes hardened by paperwork. Under Franco, the State activated the “mandatory nature of presentation” of the DNI and implemented the requirement to prove identity to be able to move through ordinary life. I am not saying that the United States is Franco’s Spain. I’m saying this: when institutions normalize documentary demands—and when those demands fall unequally on certain surnames and certain faces—history issues a warning.
In the United States we are “fine” for now… Until we aren’t. That’s the lie we tell ourselves until the day we can’t anymore.
Last year I began the process to obtain Spanish citizenship not only for practical reasons, but also for deeply personal reasons. As a professor of medieval Spain and Spanish colonial America, I have dedicated my life to finding and rebuilding that communion with Spain. I feel the pull of Spain as home: my real home. But now love is not the only reason. The necessity is. I wonder if I will need that citizenship not as a symbol but as a refuge, before it is too late.