The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. Exactly 178 years ago today. That treaty transferred 525,000 square miles from Mexico to the United States for $15 million. Every inch of California, Nevada, and Utah. Most of Arizona and Colorado. All of New Mexico. 55% of Mexico’s pre-war territory, seized after the US invaded following a border dispute the Polk administration deliberately provoked by sending troops into contested land. The border this tweet is actually about, the US-Mexico border, was drawn by that treaty. It didn’t exist before 1848. The communities on both sides of it did. Many families currently targeted by immigration enforcement in the Southwest have roots in settlements that predate the border by generations. The border crossed them. They didn’t cross the border. Whole towns woke up one morning in 1848 as Mexican citizens and went to sleep as Americans because two governments traded paper in a city one of them had just conquered. Eilish said “no one is illegal on stolen land” last night while accepting Song of the Year at the Grammys. She was wearing an ICE Out pin. Her full statement: “We need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting. Our voices matter. Fuck ICE.” This was one week after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American ICU nurse at a VA hospital, while he was recording a protest in Minneapolis. Three weeks after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American mother, in her car. The phrase “no one is illegal on stolen land” isn’t a philosophy seminar. It’s an observation about the specific border being enforced: the one the US acquired by military conquest in a war it started, signed into law 178 years ago today, and now uses to define who belongs here and who doesn’t. You can support strict immigration enforcement. But calling this observation “braindead” requires not knowing how the border got there.