by
Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D.
Emeritus Professor of Sociology
British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist Jane Goodall was known for her 60 years of studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park in East Africa, died on October 1, 2025. Her groundbreaking lifelong work debunked the myth that only human beings were capable of making tools. She died at 91 years old doing what she loved; giving speeches and talks about nature and advocated for wildlife conservation. But what impresses me the most is that her work helped burst the bubble that because we live in apartments and huge houses in cities, drive cars, and even have Ph. Ds and believe in our superior religions, that we are not animals. On the contrary, we humans are animals.
When I was five years old 66 years ago in the late 1950s, I lived at Chipewa Village in Lundazi district and also later in the Luangwa Valley in Eastern Zambia deep in the wilderness among wild animals night and day. We human beings even to this day behave just exactly like other fellow wild animals. This has become very apparent to me looking at dozens of videos of the horrible Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and abductions that are happening in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland.
The intimidating (ICE) agents wear masks to hide their identity, carry long guns, wear military fatigue, they are big muscular males just as lions look like in the wild. We ordinary Americans going around our everyday lives are the impalas, deer, wildebeests, buffaloes, antelopes, birds. Since the inauguration of the new President in January, word has rippled that ICE human lions were going to hunt, abduct, deport us to unknown countries, and some of us were going to die in the process. All of this was going to happen to our suspected fellow undocumented animal neighbors we have come to love.
What is happening is the classic predator and prey threatening and often deadly drama that happens in the wild. The Lion King in the White House Den has dispatched ICE human lions to hunt in Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles for undocumented human wildebeests, impalas, deer. American human animal citizens have been warned that ICE lions are roaming in the neighborhoods. We the animals have to go to the grocery store to buy food. We have to go to our animal church, to the doctor, animal parents take their children to school, they go to the courthouse to report to animal immigration. Some of the ICE lions are lurking around churches so they can pounce on the unsuspecting victims once prayers are over. Some human animals in these neighborhood are in hiding, living in hell, and in fear everyday as the ICE lions can stalk and pounce at one of us at any time night and day. The ICE lions are the kings of the jungle just when we Americans believed and thought we were civilized, above animals, and live by rule of law.
One video clip from the South Side of Chicago validates that we are animals after all. Two ICE lions had been stalking this rather large wildebeest human along the neighborhood street. The lions leaped out of their SUV and pounced on the lone unsuspecting human wildebeest. Cars were driving by. The wildebeest yelled for help in Spanish. There was a struggle and the wildebeest human fought for its life. The ICE lions grabbed him and dragged him toward their SUV. He was yelling for help and resisting. The ICE lions threw him to the ground and pinned him down trying to grab his hands and cuff him. He fought and resisted. A crowd of human animals gathered and were screaming epithets. “Let him, go!!!!” Cars were honking. The struggle continued as the hollering and screaming human male and female animals gathered around. The screaming, hollering, yelling got so loud, and the struggle was taking so long that the two ICE lions were spooked and run to their SUVs and sped off. The human wildebeest was bruised but was saved and would go home to his family to live another day.
The ICE human lions will never stalk or even attempt to attack the elephant rich who live in suburbs and red states cities. The ICE human lions look for the weakest and most vulnerable in poor black and Latino neighborhoods and cities. Once they slum to the ground and cuff these American human animal citizens, they can feast on the 143-billion-dollar ICE budget that ensures each ICE lion can earn thousands of dollars per day abducting American human animal suspected undocumented victims even though they have lived here for decades and have committed no crimes at all.