This Thanksgiving, thousands of American families are not gathered around a joyful dinner table. They are stressed, separated, grieving — many locked in ICE detention centers because of the current administration’s ruthless anti-immigration policies. Even U.S. citizens have been mistakenly swept up in aggressive enforcement raids by masked ICE agents, and held without due process. Countless others have been deported despite having the legal right to remain.
During a week when the nation is encouraged to reflect on gratitude and origins, it is impossible to ignore the historical irony: The white European settlers celebrated as the “Pilgrims” were, in fact, America’s first undocumented immigrants.
According to the sanitized version of U.S. history, the “first Thanksgiving” refers to the 1621 harvest feast at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, shared between the Pilgrims and about 90 Wampanoag people, including Chief Massasoit. The Wampanoag contributed five deer to the three-day event, which featured venison, fowl, vegetables, prayer, and communal games. It is portrayed as a harmonious gathering of cultures.
But let’s be clear: The Pilgrims never called it “Thanksgiving.” To them, a “day of thanksgiving” meant fasting and solemn prayer — not eating and celebration. In addition, the 1621 gathering was not the first religious day of thanks in the colony; that came in 1623, after rainfall ended a drought.
The more important truth is this: The feast is now used to mask the violent history that followed. Wampanoag land — like the land of so many other tribes — was later taken through forced treaties, military aggression, broken promises, and federal legislation such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Dawes Act of 1887. These laws legally sanctioned the theft of Native lands, dismantled tribal governance, and furthered the displacement and genocide of Indigenous peoples.
President Abraham Lincoln did not proclaim the Thanksgiving holiday until the 1860s — long after the Pilgrims, meaning the celebration we know today is a national invention, not an authentic reflection of the 1621 feast.
For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is not a day of joy, but a day of mourning — a reminder of the violence, betrayal, and cultural devastation that came after Europeans arrived.
And yet today, the irony continues.
The descendants of the Brown Native Americans who welcomed the first undocumented Europeans are now the “immigrants,” treated with suspicion, hostility, and fear. Meanwhile, 59,762 people languish in ICE detention as of September, according to TRAC Immigration — and 71.5% of them have no criminal convictions.
Once again, the people suffering under the weight of government policies are overwhelmingly Brown and non-European. Once again, families will cry through the holidays, separated from their loved ones. Once again, powerful forces push the fiction that America’s identity must be protected from demographic change — a modern echo of the same fear that fueled centuries of Native dispossession.
What, exactly, are we supposed to be thankful for this holiday?
Thanksgiving should be a time of truth-telling. A time to remember that the first newcomers to this land never asked for permission, never applied for visas, and never faced detention. A time to acknowledge that America’s story began with Indigenous generosity — and was repaid with violence and erasure.
In 2025, as immigrants once again face cruelty, exclusion, and the threat of annihilation from the very nation built on stolen land, that truth matters more than ever.
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.