Donald Trump has now made it possible for agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection (ICE), to enter what were formerly considered sanctuaries from arrest. As NPR reports, the Biden administration had created protected areas “that primarily consisted of places where ‘children gather, disaster or emergency relief sites, and social services establishments.'” These also included churches, which have historically functioned as sanctuaries. Now, it’s being made clear that no place will be safe from potential raids.
All of this is in keeping with Trump’s objective of creating “shock and awe” in his first 100 days. Early this year, his immigration “czar” Tom Homan made it clear that immigration raids would begin immediately after Trump took office. Trump has now succeeded in creating a culture of fear, a constant sense of an impending military operation, the threat of surgical strikes that could happen anywhere, to anyone. In Chicago, the streets of Little Village, a majority Latino/a neighbourhood, have been empty and businesses are shuttering for at least a week as residents fear being accosted by ICE agents.
In an interview with NBC, Jennifer Aguilar, the executive director of the Little Village Chamber of Commerce said, with resignation, “The best that we could do is give this information that’s very important about know your rights, but there’s not much really more that can be done at least from our end.”
But why are we still here, in this state of helplessness? Trump used similar tactics of fear and intimidation from the first day of his first term in 2017. Since then, we’ve had four years of the Biden administration, and yet we’re right back at the exact same spot. How is it that no one gave any thought to preventing this state of affairs so that we were never caught unawares, with populations across the country living in fear?
Allow me my stuck record moment, again (see below for links for the many times I’ve warned that we need a better agenda for immigration reform than constant rescue attempts): all of this was preventable. If we had a robust immigration rights movement that actually cared about more than filling its coffers with money from donors, we would have more than what we see now and all that we’ve seen for a few decades: constant crisis management and surges of panic, with no proactive agenda for change. Which organisations have ever come up with counter proposals for immigration reform? Which politicians have they pressed for real change?
Over the last many decades, the left has only been able to make a case for immigration that is bound to the likeability of some immigrants (see: sad undocumented youth), their very piteousness, their sadness and their function as people who can be saved by righteous citizen warriors who will show up to block raids or attempts like the Muslim Ban of 2017. What if we had, instead, spent time and effort on crafting and drafting proposals for change that located the current immigration crisis in its historical roots. What if, instead of bolstering the cases of only a few kinds of undocumented people—those with families, or those who were photogenic and showed potential to be perfect American citizens—we had spent time on widespread public education efforts about the decimation of entire economies by US-led initiatives like NAFTA and the many wars we enabled, wars that drive people to leave and try to enter as refugees? What if we had not spent so much time simply writing op-eds mocking right-wing narratives about immigrants in order to gain clicks and eyeballs, but sought to bring about a more robust public discussion about immigration where the question would not be, “How do we get rid of these people?” but, rather, “How do we get them what we need?” What if we had made a “moral case for immigration,” as Nathan J. Robinson puts it?
Instead, here we are.
The tightening of restrictions and draconian preemptive measures continues with the Laken Riley Act, which will make it possible to deport any unauthorised immigrant merely charged with petty crimes like theft or shop-lifting. As Heba Gowayed writes, “Continuing to adopt more violent solutions do little more than turn us into an autocracy that imprisons people on accusations, one that is willing to eject them at whatever cost.” Liberals and leftists will use this opportunity to decry Trump’s cruelty to immigrants, but it’s worth remembering that the Act has support from Democrats. And Democrat presidents have been worse on immigration than Trump: the Biden administration oversaw a surge in deportations that surpassed the number under Trump and, in an effort to seem more belligerent on the matter than his then rival for the presidency, greatly limited asylum appeals on the border. Gowayed also reminds us that Homan won an award for his service as head of ICE under the Obama administration, and that “during Joe Biden’s tenure, [Customs and Border Patrol] officers on horseback were filmed violently corralling Haitian immigrants, in imagery that evoked slave patrols of the stark images of violent enforcement.”
Trump’s latest announcements are designed to bring that sense of embodied fear and dehumanisation into cities and towns everywhere, radiating inwards from border areas like a nuclear blast.
All of this will only backfire in ways that Trump and even those in opposition to him can’t predict. Heightened levels of terror will do little more than create psychological and societal problems amongst desperate people: we may well see a spike in suicides and self-harm among those who see no way out of an already intractable situation. That sense of lived hopelessness will have an effect on us all, no matter how insulated we think we are. Trump (and his Democrat supporters) imagine a world where we are separated into neat segments, untouched by each other: undocumented people here, without papers, good citizens there, in their comfortable lives, wanting and needing protection from the rest. But the truth about America today is that all of our lives bleed into each other: entire midwestern towns—not just bustling coastal cities—are blended societies where “illegals” and citizens cohabit, work, and move about, dating, marrying, commuting back and forth between shared workplaces and neighbourhoods. (John Fetterman, who supports the Riley Act, is married to a formerly undocumented woman.) We are, in many different ways, a blended society: even our families now display a spectacular range of cohabitations and networks of filial connection and care that collapse the distinctions between step and biological children, between primary parents and adoptive ones. As far as immigration status is concerned, modern households may well consist of both documented and undocumented people, of recent arrivals and those who are third or fourth generation immigrants.
In these many contexts, a society where any segment of the population has to live in perennial fear is one where, eventually, everyone learns to live in perennial fear. That sense of impending, cataclysmic doom that undocumented immigrants are experiencing will eventually seep into the musculature of what is considered “regular” society, filling it with a heightened sense of anxiety and dread that will be difficult to shake off. Trump and his allies—including so many Democrats—are coasting on the illusion that this “shock and awe” strategy will root out undesirable “aliens”; he sees his methods as akin to flushing out impurities from an infected body.
But this body is not infected: it is a living, breathing entity and what Trump and his allies—including, I repeat, many Democrats—are attempting to do will only cause it to shudder to a halt, to fall into a state of toxic shock. What we, all of us, not just the undocumented, are experiencing is psychic terror.
If you like this, please consider supporting my work.
For more of my work on immigration, see:
On Trump, Immigration, and the Failure of the Left
On Immigrants, Criminality, and Changing the Narrative
“Undocumented”: How an Identity Ended a Movement
Trauma and Capitalism or, Your Trauma Story Will Kill You
Romancing the Border: Or, Making (Self) Deportation Sexy
Undocumented vs. Illegal: A Distinction without a Difference
Critical Race Theory Won’t Save Us
DACA Was Always DOA: Let’s End It Now
Travel, Passports, and the Differences between Expats and Immigrants
There’s much more: use the search engine on this site to look for my work on immigration.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.