The Banality Of Evil In The Border Patrol's Secret Anti-immigrant Slur

Javier Ramirez was handcuffed successful nan backmost of an unmarked car, bruised and confused, erstwhile migration agents utilized a connection he had ne'er heard before.

It was June 2025, and they were bragging astir the raids successful nan Los Angeles area that swept up hundreds of immigrants — and a fewer U.S. citizens, for illustration Ramirez. The unfamiliar connection caught Ramirez’s ear.

Tonk.

“I wondered what that meant — I thought it was immoderate code,” nan 33-year-old tow motortruck driver told maine complete a Zoom telephone this week. “But I didn’t make a large fuss astir it then.”

Masked men had thrown him to nan crushed outside a tow gait successful Montebello, for reasons they wouldn’t divulge. He ended up successful nan car pinch a man detained successful different roundup, headed for nan Metropolitan Detention Center successful downtown Los Angeles.

The colour vanished from Ramirez’s look erstwhile I explained what “tonk” means.

For astatine slightest half a century, Border Patrol workers have utilized nan onomatopoeic word, referring to nan sound of personification getting hit, arsenic slang for undocumented immigrants. Body camera footage and matter chains from past summer’s migration raids, released this week successful a tribunal filing, captures agents throwing astir anti-immigrant insults for illustration “wet” and “tonk” pinch nan aforesaid easiness that nan remainder of america opportunity “and” aliases “the.”

The astir egregious example, I told Ramirez, was directed astatine him and his friend, chap U.S. national Brian Gavidia.

A video shows an supplier shouting, “One tonk f— sewage away, dude!” arsenic colleagues manhandle nan pair. The aforesaid agent, who said pinch a Chicano accent, later sped disconnected successful a conveyance while asking successful Spanglish, “¿Alguien arresto un tonk, güey?” — Did personification apprehension a tonk, man?

“Oh, wow, OK, that’s really bad,” Ramirez yet said, laughing bitterly while gathering his thoughts. “It’s benignant of hurtful. They’re conscionable assuming who I am.”

Ramirez asked his attorney, Luis Castillo, if nan agents who accosted him “had unit connected their mind erstwhile they utilized that word.”

“You’re getting a double whammy,” nan longtime civilian authorities lawyer replied. “They’re hitting you twice, physically and psychologically.”

No, Luis: they’re hitting america all.

Brian Gavidia stands successful a parking batch adjacent to East Los Angeles College successful Monterey Park successful 2025 a time aft he and his friend were roughed up by migration agents extracurricular a tow gait successful Montebello. The 2 are suing nan national authorities for violating their civilian rights.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

If you’re still doubting that racist unit fuels President Trump’s deportation deluge, conscionable see what Gavidia and Ramirez person been through.

La migra roughed them up moreover arsenic they screamed that they had documents to beryllium their U.S. citizenship. They took Gavidia’s Real ID and ne'er returned it. Ramirez was detained for 5 days and charged pinch trying to battle a national serviceman and interfere pinch their activity — a lawsuit that went obscurity because he did nary specified things.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, on pinch different groups and backstage attorneys, included nan assemblage cam footage successful a tribunal filing asking a national judge to barroom migration agents from making stops based connected group profiling.

Gavidia is portion of that lawsuit, while Ramirez has sued separately. Now, nan 2 men are much definite than ever that nan Trump administration’s deportation strategy isn’t astir getting nan worst of nan worst.

To la migra, each Latinos are tonks.

“I ne'er moreover heard nan word, but erstwhile [lawyers] told maine nan mentation of what it meant, I was disgusted instantly,” said Gavidia, 30, who fixes up and sells cars. “They already knew what they were coming to do. We told them we were Americans. It didn’t matter. We were brown, and that was enough.”

“I saw [the tonk video] 300 times,” Gavidia added, “and it’s giving maine much trauma.”

“Tonk” has been a soiled small concealed of nan Border Patrol for decades — workplace lingo showing that nan banality of evil that’s la migra on its champion days has transformed into thing acold uglier nether Trump.

The slur is truthful vile — predicated connected unit by rule enforcement, dissimilar taste jabs that reproach nutrient aliases civilization — that it has ne'er crossed complete into mainstream English. “Tonk” successful its anti-immigrant meaning doesn’t look successful nan Merriam-Webster dictionary aliases moreover nan Dictionary of American Regional English, nan premier world postulation of American slang.

And that’s precisely really nan Border Patrol likes it.

The earliest usage of “tonk” to demean immigrants that I’ve been capable to find is successful a 1976 book by Paul Schuster Taylor, an early pioneer of Mexican American studies champion known for documenting nan plight of Dust Bowl refugees on pinch his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange.

Taylor quoted a Border Patrol inspector referring to Mexicans arsenic “tonks” but offered nary definition. In a 1978 hearing, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Leonel Castillo said nan slur was “sort of for illustration nan caller term” for “wets.”

Castillo — nary narration to Luis — nevertheless defended his agents’ usage of anti-immigrant words.

“I deliberation it’s nan measurement — nan reside successful which you usage it, and past really you dainty people,” he said, maintaining that nan verbiage was ingrained successful nan “very good gentlemen” who worked nether him.

“It’s very difficult to alteration them,” he said. “But they’re not needfully bad people.”

A twelvemonth later, an anonymous Border Patrol supplier penning for nan achromatic supremacist publication Instauration debunked Castillo’s apologia. He claimed that “tonk” derived from nan thudding sound erstwhile agents smashed a flashlight connected an immigrant’s head.

“The Anglos of nan Border Patrol are not arsenic intimidated by national guidelines arsenic group mightiness think,” nan supplier wrote. “We person our ain methods of interrogation successful nan desert.”

San Diego State English professor William Nericcio has spent his profession studying anti-Mexican hate. He grew up astir Laredo, Texas, successful nan 1970s and 1980s pinch “guys and their dads who worked successful Border Patrol because it was a bully job.”

Yet he hadn’t heard of “tonk,” either.

Immigration agents detain 2 men astatine a car lavation successful Montebello, Calif., successful 2025.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

“A drum rotation of anti-Mexican unit turns into a soundtrack — wetback, beaner, spic and now, tonk,” Nericcio responded erstwhile I asked why nan slur has stuck for truthful agelong among migration agents. “Of each these anti-Mexican terms, this is nan only 1 that straight connects to an enactment of violence. It’s a point of pridefulness erstwhile you opportunity it — ‘Hey boss, I sewage a tonk today! Where’s my bonus?’ It’s glory days for them.”

The casual usage of “tonk” by la migra yet became a PR embarrassment moreover for nan Trump administration. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told an Arizona nationalist power station that nan slur “is now considered a derogatory word and CBP does not condone its use.”

This clip around, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told my Times colleagues that “agents are focused connected protecting nan American group — not entertaining performative outrage.”

CBP didn’t respond to my aggregate requests for remark astir whether its soul guidelines proceed to discourage “tonk” and whether agents look immoderate subject for utilizing it.

If you’re not disgusted by this devolution successful protocol, I’m not judge what tin perchance disgust you.

ACLU lawyer Mayra Joachin said nan assemblage cam footage is “clear grounds that these stops were ever astir individuals’ quality of being Latino moving class” and is impervious of nan “culture of racism underlying” nan Trump administration’s deportation strategy.

How are Gavidia and Ramirez emotion now, aft being called a racist slur they hadn’t moreover known existed and that doesn’t moreover technically use to them?

“If you’re a U.S. citizen, you can’t beryllium free successful nan U.S.,” Ramirez said. What happened to him “can hap to anyone, it tin hap to their kids and family, and erstwhile it happens to their family, that’s erstwhile they’re going to spot nan truth of what’s happening.”

Gavidia, who voted for Trump successful 2024, said that migration agents deliberation they “are supra nan Constitution and law.”

“That’s sad and disgusting,” he said. “If we don’t extremity this and conflict this now, it’s going to get worse and worse.”