Tonk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wondered what that meant \u2014 I thought it was some code,\u201d the 33-year-old tow truck driver told me over a Zoom call this week. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t make a big fuss about it then.\u201d<\/p>\n
Masked men had thrown him to the ground outside a tow yard in Montebello,<\/a> for reasons they wouldn\u2019t divulge. He ended up in the car with a man detained in another roundup, headed for the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n The color disappeared from Ramirez\u2019s face when I explained what \u201ctonk\u201d means.<\/p>\n For at least half a century, Border Patrol workers have used the onomatopoeic word,<\/a> referring to the sound of someone getting hit, as slang for undocumented immigrants. Body camera footage and text chains from last summer\u2019s immigration raids, released this week in a court filing,<\/a> captures agents throwing around anti-immigrant insults like \u201cwet\u201d and \u201ctonk\u201d with the same ease that the rest of us say \u201cand\u201d or \u201cthe.\u201d <\/p>\n The most egregious example, I told Ramirez, was directed at him and his friend, fellow U.S. citizen Brian Gavidia. <\/p>\n A video shows an agent shouting, \u201cOne tonk f\u2014 got away, dude!\u201d as colleagues manhandle the pair. The same agent, who spoke with a Chicano accent, later sped off in a vehicle while asking in Spanglish, \u201c\u00bfAlguien arresto un tonk, g\u00fcey?\u201d \u2014 Did someone arrest a tonk, man?<\/p>\n \u201cOh, wow, OK, that\u2019s really bad,\u201d Ramirez finally said, laughing bitterly while gathering his thoughts. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of hurtful. They\u2019re just assuming who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramirez asked his attorney, Luis Castillo, if the agents who accosted him \u201chad violence on their mind when they used that word.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re getting a double whammy,\u201d the longtime civil rights lawyer replied. \u201cThey\u2019re hitting you twice, physically and psychologically.\u201d<\/p>\n No, Luis: they\u2019re hitting us all.<\/p>\n Brian Gavidia stands in a parking lot next to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park in 2025 a day after he and his friend were roughed up by immigration agents outside a tow yard in Montebello. The two are suing the federal government for violating their civil rights.<\/p>\n (Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n If you\u2019re still doubting that racist violence fuels President Trump\u2019s deportation deluge,<\/a> just consider what Gavidia and Ramirez have been through.<\/p>\n La migra roughed them up even as they screamed that they had documents<\/a> to prove their U.S. citizenship. They took Gavidia\u2019s Real ID and never returned it. Ramirez was detained for five days and charged with trying to assault a federal officer and interfere with their work \u2014 a case that went nowhere because he did no such things.<\/p>\n The American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, along with other groups and private attorneys, included the body cam footage in a court filing asking a federal judge to bar immigration agents from making stops based on racial profiling. <\/p>\n Gavidia is part of that lawsuit, while Ramirez has sued separately. Now, the two men are more certain than ever that the Trump administration\u2019s deportation strategy isn\u2019t about getting the worst of the worst.<\/p>\n To la migra, all Latinos are tonks.<\/p>\n \u201cI never even heard the word, but once [lawyers] told me the explanation of what it meant, I was disgusted instantly,\u201d said Gavidia, 30, who fixes up and sells cars. \u201cThey already knew what they were coming to do. We told them we were Americans. It didn\u2019t matter. We were brown, and that was enough.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI saw [the tonk video] 300 times,\u201d Gavidia added, \u201cand it\u2019s giving me more trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTonk\u201d has been a dirty little secret of the Border Patrol for decades \u2014 workplace lingo showing that the banality of evil that\u2019s la migra on its best days has transformed into something far uglier under Trump. <\/p>\n The slur is so vile \u2014 predicated on violence by law enforcement, unlike ethnic jabs that insult food or culture \u2014 that it has never crossed over into mainstream English. \u201cTonk\u201d in its anti-immigrant meaning doesn\u2019t appear in the Merriam-Webster dictionary or even the Dictionary of American Regional English, the premier academic collection of American slang.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s exactly how the Border Patrol likes it. <\/p>\n The earliest use of \u201ctonk\u201d to demean immigrants that I\u2019ve been able to find is in a 1976 book by Paul Schuster Taylor,<\/a> an early pioneer of Mexican American studies best known for documenting the plight of Dust Bowl refugees along with his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. <\/p>\n Taylor quoted a Border Patrol inspector referring to Mexicans as \u201ctonks\u201d but offered no definition. In a 1978 hearing, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Leonel Castillo<\/a> said the slur was \u201csort of like the new term\u201d for \u201cwets.\u201d <\/p>\n Castillo \u2014 no relation to Luis \u2014 nevertheless defended his agents\u2019 use of anti-immigrant words.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s the way \u2014 the tone in which you use it, and then how you treat people,\u201d he said, maintaining that the verbiage was ingrained in the \u201cvery fine gentlemen\u201d who worked under him. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to change them,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they\u2019re not necessarily bad people.\u201d<\/p>\n A year later, an anonymous Border Patrol agent writing for the white supremacist publication Instauration debunked Castillo\u2019s apologia. He claimed that \u201ctonk\u201d derived from the thudding noise when agents smashed a flashlight on an immigrant\u2019s head.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Anglos of the Border Patrol are not as intimidated by federal guidelines as people might think,\u201d the agent wrote. \u201cWe have our own methods of interrogation in the desert.\u201d<\/p>\n San Diego State English professor William Nericcio has spent his career studying anti-Mexican hate. He grew up around Laredo, Texas, in the 1970s and 1980s with \u201cguys and their dads who worked in Border Patrol because it was a good job.\u201d <\/p>\n Yet he hadn\u2019t heard of \u201ctonk,\u201d either.<\/p>\n Immigration agents detain two men at a car wash in Montebello, Calif., in 2025.<\/p>\n (Gregory Bull \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n \u201cA drum roll of anti-Mexican violence turns into a soundtrack \u2014 wetback, beaner, spic and now, tonk,\u201d Nericcio responded when I asked why the slur has stuck for so long among immigration agents. \u201cOf all these anti-Mexican terms, this is the only one that directly connects to an act of violence. It\u2019s a thing of pride when you say it \u2014 \u2018Hey boss, I got a tonk today! Where\u2019s my bonus?\u2019 It\u2019s glory days for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The casual use of \u201ctonk\u201d by la migra eventually became a PR embarrassment even for the Trump administration. In 2019, during Trump\u2019s first term, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told an Arizona public radio station<\/a> that the slur \u201cis now considered a derogatory term and CBP does not condone its use.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785502820_215_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Immigration](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785502820_193_.jpeg\")
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