By John Tien, former deputy secretary of U.S. Department of Homeland Security
In spring 2020, I was filling up my car at a gas station near my home in Atlanta, when a large pick-up truck pulled up close. A man got out, pointed his finger at me and yelled, “Take your Covid back and go home.”
As a Chinese American male, I’ve unfortunately had many moments like that in my lifetime. But this one was different, because the man was repeating a rhetoric he had heard from the president of a country I had served for 24 years in the U.S. Army. I locked the gas pump. I glanced at my reflection in the car window. I took a deep breath, and turned to face him.
“Which ‘home’ do you mean, sir?” My voice was louder and deeper than I expected it to be—my family calls it “the Colonel voice.” “Do you mean my house just down the road? Or where I was born in New Haven, Connecticut? I haven’t been there in a while. Or do you mean one of the Army bases I was deployed to as a soldier in Iraq defending your right to speak to me like that?”
He was startled. The roles had been reversed. He was being called out, and he clearly had not expected me to confront him. He was now the person feeling threatened even though my intent was merely to stand up to this bully. He didn’t say anything. He pulled his baseball hat down low, got back in his truck, and drove away.
I let out a slow breath as I returned to the gas pump. At that moment, I decided that every time I would go out during the pandemic—for groceries, for medicine, for a walk just to get some fresh air—I would wear a rotating closet of Army apparel. It would be my shield, along with my stature—I’m a tall, broad, muscular guy. But hundreds, thousands of other Asians and Asian Americans didn’t have those shields while Donald Trump was president.
Donald Trump repeatedly and aggressively stirred anti-Asian hate across the country.. As president. Trump used the bully pulpit of his office to legitimize and weaponize his repugnance, empowering thousands of people to believe that hateful rhetoric and violence were not only acceptable, but American.
From March 19, 2020, to December 31, 2021, a total of 10,905 hate crimes against Asian American and Pacific Islanders were logged according to data collected by Stop AAPI Hate, an organization formed in response to the alarming escalation in xenophobia and bigotry resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. And those are only the ones that were reported. Elderly Asians were the most at risk, often unable to defend themselves. They were beaten on subways, in building lobbies, and just walking down the street. There is one instance at the start of the pandemic in April 2020 that particularly haunts me: a 39-year-old Asian woman in Brooklyn was taking her garbage out, and a neighbor threw boiling oil on her. She suffered chemical burns to her face, neck, shoulder and back.
Throughout his presidency and after it, Donald Trump agitated this hate and fostered senseless violence. The January 6 insurrection that Donald Trump directly incited was not just an attack on the U.S. Capitol but also on democracy and the rule of law. It resulted in injuries to Capitol Police officers, some of which ultimately resulted in death. The fever pitch continued just a few months later with the Atlanta shootings on March 21, 2021, when a gunman targeted several Asian spa businesses and ended up killing six women of Asian descent among two others.
Trump’s presidency instilled fear and trauma into millions of Asian Americans across our nation, including my mother, a Chinese orphan who was raised by nuns at a convent in Virginia. My mother died from COVID-19 just days before the vaccine became available. She did everything she was supposed to—she masked, she distanced, she hand-sanitized. And yet, she got sick. I think often of Donald Trump’s reckless encouragement to ignore the guidance of health officials, resulting in mass public endangerment and angst.
In the last year of her life, my mother was afraid to go outside–all because of Trump. Yet, she still believed in this country and the promise of the American Dream. She was proud that I retired as a U.S. Army Colonel and served under two presidents – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – in the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the White House National Security Council. I only wish she had lived just one more year to see me get sworn in as the United States deputy secretary of homeland security.
When I told my wife and daughters of what happened at the gas station, I asked them to always try their best to be safe, but also to be unafraid and unwavering in their optimism for America. I want a better future for my two half-Chinese American daughters. I want a country that does not give mouthpieces to politicians who build their career on hate. I want a country where my daughters don’t have to carry pepper spray in their pockets, where they don’t worry about people attacking women that look like their grandmother on the street, where they don’t call me and beg me, their three-combat tour veteran father, to stay home to be safe.
I have spent most of my adult life in service of defending our great nation, and ensuring safety and security for each of us, and everyone we love. However if Donald Trump becomes president again, I guarantee you we will be under the threat of violence and hate again. We can’t go back to the age of terror and fear under Trump. Vote for Kamala if you want to live in a country of hope, optimism, and opportunity for all.
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John Tien was the first Asian American to serve as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2021-2023.
