‘Sending military to your own states… you are literally waging war on your own people.’

Karalyn Cisler, 25, is a senior Studio Arts major at UWM focused on painting and drawing. She believes the government is turning people against each other. From education to immigration, many administration actions are controversial, and the government shutdown is not helping.

Kavina Spinks: Is there anything the Trump administration has done that affected you?

Karalyn Cisler: Not anything directly, thankfully, though, I have been trying to apply for FoodShare. If the government shutdown continues, is not going to be dispersed for the month of November. That’s kind of turning me away from getting any benefits coming in the next month, but I’m very lucky that I have not been personally affected by anything yet.

Spinks: There was a teacher training program funded by UW-Madison, which was cut. How do you think this affects not only the teachers but students?

Cisler: Cutting teachers, you have less people to teach, and I’m sure the amount of people willing to become teachers is slim already. I mean, I tried to do the education route, and then I said, “Never mind.” It was a lot, so props to educators, props to teachers. But you’re taking away their jobs; they are teaching these students.

Spinks: How do you think [revocation of student visas] will be a reflection on, not only our students, but the country as a whole?

Cisler: I am aware of one of the students whose visa was revoked and who was deported. And coincidentally, they were speaking out on world issues, specifically the genocide that was happening over in Palestine. They were approached about how they were speaking about it, how they were speaking out in support of the Palestinian people, and again, Israel. If our country is prioritizing a certain group of people, or even our university is restricting free speech, like the administration. If you are anti what this country that we support is doing, then we don’t want to hear it from you, so we’re just going to send you away because we don’t like it. That’s scary. That’s censoring free speech. And also, people are being sent to places they aren’t even from, where they don’t know the language, they don’t know the people. They have nothing there; all their belongings are being taken; nobody knows where they’re going. That’s not deportation. Deportation is sending somebody back where you came from, originally. This is kidnapping.

Spinks: Trump signed an Executive Order to restore the historic name “Department of War,” which will be used as a secondary title for the Department of Defense. How do you think other countries might see this name?

Cisler: Department of War sounds like a threat; instead of Department of Defense, that sounds like we will do what is necessary to protect our people. Department of War it just sounds like a threat, the word war itself.

Spinks: Is there anything that you just don’t understand why they did it?

Cisler: War on your own people, sending the military to your own states to help drag people off the streets, in suspicion that they are immigrants; to deport them, you are literally waging war on your own people. The White House’s Instagram account is freaking ridiculous. I don’t know if you saw horrendous, but the posts they make. There was a post about Chicago being a war zone or something, and then they also did ASMR of deporting illegal immigrants, where they recorded them being chained up and walking up the stairs, swear on my life. How do you do that to people? People aren’t even viewing them as humans, that’s so disgusting and foul, and what the country you built off of, well, colonization and terrible atrocities, but promising the “American Dream” for people, but then when they come here, they’re labeled as criminals, drug dealers, rapists, abusers, just because of how they look.