We know that the rhetoric of our elected officials that broadly and repeatedly characterizes immigrants as violent and lawless is inaccurate and dehumanizing. Left unchecked, that rhetoric has led to policies weaponized against entire categories of people.

We have now witnessed countless examples of people — no more criminal than you or me — being violently abducted, disappeared and separated from their families. We know for a fact that the vast majority of people swept up in ICE dragnets in Colorado have no criminal record or criminal charges, particularly when filtered for violent crimes. And so we are left to surmise with some clarity that this is essentially a policy of scapegoating and ethnic cleansing that brings shame to our nation and horror to those who live here.

As a nation, we are abducting and disappearing people targeted not for their criminal activity, but for their heritage; not for their character, but for their country of origin or their ancestors’ country of origin, or, to be more honest and accurate about it, for not being White. That is not the kind of nation we want to be.

The perpetrators of these horrific policies say they are doing this in the name of law and order. But when law and order is not in service to civility, it is corrupted and inevitably inverts from law and order to criminal and chaotic. This is happening now. It exposes the proclaimed desire for law and order as a sham; a front for authoritarianism.

Let us be clear, law and order without civility and due process is the mask of the dictator. This is not news. This is obvious.

You can’t have law and order without due process. You can not enforce the law without obeying the law. You can not illegally occupy cities in your own country with your own military. And you can not target people for their heritage or ethnicity.

That is not only uncivil, it is cowardly. It is a sniveling betrayal of everything we were taught America stood for and, if pursued as policy, will continue to erode my faith in that happy fiction that, while far from comprehensive in its historical view, at least gave us something beautiful to aspire to; a land of opportunity where you are free to be who you are and pursue your dreams untethered to class and race; where heritage is celebrated and shared and the mistakes of the past are remedied; where cultures combine to create a kaleidoscope country, rich in its flavors, perspectives, and possibility.

And to that end I say to all who have ears to hear that we are done with politicized policing. We are done with law and order that has no integrity. We are done with masked goons of a mafia boss abducting innocent people and traumatizing families, children, and whole communities.

There is a reckoning coming. It is happening all across this nation. It is a reckoning based on compassionate policies, with civility as its foundation and freedom-for-all as its aspiration.

And there is room for all — for you — in its pursuit as we insist on integrity in law enforcement, and compassion in policy, while building a society that recognizes that freedom and responsibility are integral to each other.

The Rev. Ron Phares is the minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Colorado Springs.