Roger Martínez-Dávila says he was suddenly told to prove his US citizenship by the University of Colorado, where he’s been working for the last 16 years. It wasn’t required of his department colleagues with Anglo surnames

An insidious terminology has taken root in the United States: it distinguishes “heritage Americans” from the rest of us. It’s a euphemism for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and, increasingly, for evangelical nationalists as well. This language is being deployed systematically. In practice, the U.S. Supreme Court has legalized a machinery of control in which ethnicity — even how someone speaks, dresses, or what they do for a living — can be used as justification for federal officials, quasi-military forces like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to stop someone and ask for “your papers, please.”

In Minnesota right now, ICE’s actions have descended into state terror—raids, arrests, fear in immigrant neighborhoods, and public protests—and have included lethal force, with the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents. But this is also happening elsewhere, through new, silent, and publicly invisible processes.

On January 5, 2026, after working for 16 years at the University of Colorado, the Human Resources Department emailed me stating that I had not submitted documentation proving my legal U.S. residency or citizenship. The university insisted that I had not provided this documentation when I was hired. I was then required to physically present my proof of citizenship (my U.S. passport) to a university official for verification. I am now a foreigner in my own country.

The email used the calm language of bureaucracy. Was it, as they said, a “routine internal review” that applied to everyone? The important phrase was simple: “This step must be completed by submitting original and acceptable documents… Copies are not accepted.”

University staff told me I wasn’t being singled out. But none of the Heritage Americans in my History Department, with Anglo and German surnames, were asked to come in and physically prove their citizenship. I was: my surname is Martínez-Dávila. And a colleague in my department — an employee for over 25 years — was also required to produce her papers; yes, she also had a Spanish surname. What are the odds? 100% in the United States.

When I shared this publicly on a professional network, a stranger responded with the kind of phrase that normalizes this sort of thing: “Nobody cares. Show them the papers and that’s it.” The demand becomes banal, commonplace. Public humiliation becomes insignificant, something you’re told to just endure in silence.

What’s so alarming — and so disorienting — is that I’m a descendant of Spaniards with Mexican Indigenous roots. My family founded Spanish San Antonio, Texas, in 1718. My genes tell the truth: 33% Iberian, 16% Sephardic Jewish, and 25% Native American. Who is the “Heritage American” here?

My family’s connection to Texas holds its own set of paradoxes, embodied in Juan Nepomuceno Seguín: my ancestor. Born in 1806, he was a Texan leader in the revolution for independence. And he was at the Alamo. On February 25, 1836, during Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo, Juan Seguín was sent by Colonel William B. Travis to request military reinforcements from Texan General James Fannin. Juan was the sole survivor of that unfortunate demonstration of resistance and courage.

The rest is history and the origin of our battle cry: “Remember the Alamo!” Later, he organized the only Texan (Spanish-American) company that fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. Afterward, he returned to San Antonio and oversaw the burials of the Alamo dead.

And then the story takes a turn: after serving in the Senate of the Republic of Texas, the growing Anglo hostility toward Texans drove him to flee with his family to their old enemy, Mexico. In other words: the American founding myth includes Spanish-speaking patriots, and in my case, it’s literally blood — as it is for millions of people of Spanish descent.

Let’s return to the present. In the United States, a person like me—like millions of people of Spanish descent—can be required, at any time, to prove their nationality. In Minnesota, the pressure has become visible on the streets. In Colorado, I experienced a quieter version: not a raid, not a checkpoint, but an official email that ends in the same place: hand over your documents.

Spaniards know — in a way that Americans don’t — how quickly identity becomes hardened by paperwork. Under Franco, the state mandated the presentation of national identity cards and implemented the requirement to prove one’s identity in order to move about in everyday life. I’m not saying that the United States is Francoist Spain. I am saying this: when institutions normalize documentary requirements—and when those requirements fall unevenly on certain surnames and certain faces — history offers a warning.

In the United States, we’re “doing OK” for now… until we’re not. That’s the lie we tell ourselves until the day we can’t anymore.

Last year I began the process of obtaining Spanish citizenship not only for practical reasons, but also for deeply personal ones. As a professor of the history of medieval Spain and Spanish colonial America, I have dedicated my life to finding and rebuilding that connection with Spain. I feel the pull of Spain as home: my true home. But now love is not the only reason. Necessity is. I wonder if I will need that citizenship not as a symbol but as a refuge, before it is too late.

Roger Martínez-Dávila is a professor of Spanish medieval history at the University of Colorado.

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