Ice Raids and Authoritarianism in Los Angeles
On Saturday night, Trump ordered 2000 National Guard troops into California in response to protests against ICE raids, over the objections of Governor Newsom - a “purposefully inflammatory” move, as Newsom called it, that will only exacerbate our descent into authoritarianism and the violence of the Trump deportation machine. This is the first time since the 1960s that the president has sent National Guard troops into a state that has not requested them - last time it was to protect students integrating schools. This time it is to suppress protests against masked ICE agents storming schools, workplaces, and immigration offices to seize and deport as many people as they can get their hands on.
Immigration has always been a fraught part of the American narrative. We love to call ourselves a nation of immigrants, even though at every point throughout our history immigrants have been demonized, discriminated against, and been on the front lines of both state and extrajudicial violence. We call ourselves a nation of immigrants even though the first wave of so-called immigrants were largely violent colonizers intent on wiping out the indigenous people who already lived here, and they brought with them Africans that they had kidnapped and enslaved.
But even though the truth is, as always, much more complex and more violent than can be summed up by the American mythmaking project, that immigration is a pillar of our population is undeniable. Most of the people who live in this country are descended from people who lived somewhere else. And many of those people did choose to immigrate to this country. They did so because of the story Americans have told about ourselves since the beginning - that this was a place where you could reinvent yourself, where success was available to anyone who worked hard, that there was untold empty space just waiting to be conquered, that here we believe that everyone is created equal and that everyone has a fighting chance. And no matter how false that was or would later turn out to be, people across the world believe it and have made their way here to try and find it.
We’ve told this story of American exceptionalism for so long, that the United States is the one true democracy and that we are a nation based solely on those who choose to be here and commit themselves to our democratic project, and now we are punishing those who believed us. We told the world that there was work here, that you could make a life here if you weren’t afraid of labor, and we are punishing those who believed in this too.
The prevailing narrative about the 2024 election is that Trump rode a wave of global anti-incumbent sentiment predicated on the economy and immigration. And even now, his popularity on immigration has not suffered nearly as much as his economic approval. Mere hours after Trump ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles, a new poll showed that a majority of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policy, if not its methods, that people believe that Trump is largely deporting violent criminals and that it's making us safer. But as the the Trump deportation machine turns its focus on workplace raids and legal immigrants reporting for mandated check-ins, as pillars of our communities like beloved mothers and waitresses, union leaders, and school children get churned up in the system, I hope that the fractures and the lies that underpin our immigration system become more visible.
Here’s some facts: undocumented immigrants have paid almost $100 billion in taxes; immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. born citizens; immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, contribute billions to the GDP; and you can read more here.
Here are some things that are true: immigrants, documented or otherwise, are people, human beings deserving of human rights; immigrants, documented or otherwise, love and are loved by their families and friends and neighbors, just like citizens; immigrants, documented or otherwise, celebrate holidays and birthdays and graduations, just like citizens; immigrants, documented or otherwise, go grocery shopping and fold laundry and clean the bathroom and eat dinner and coo over cute dogs and water plants and lose their socks and buy too much chapstick and take unfocused photos and delete junk emails and stay up too late and mow their lawns and breakdown their cardboard boxes, just like citizens.
In the weeks and months just after the election, there seemed to be an impulse from those on the left to concede to the Trump regime on immigration. Several Democrats voted for the Laken Riley Act, a fear mongering, cynical bill that does nothing to solve actual immigration problems but does embolden the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants for violent crime. There’s been a lot of hesitancy around speaking out against Trump’s extrajudicial kidnapping of people and sending them to a foreign torture prison.
And here’s the thing: we do need immigration reform. Not least because there are millions of people here working and contributing and building lives who have no protections against a violent deportation machine. Also because people fleeing violence and discrimination and who are seeking asylum in the United States face a severely over-taxed system unable to deal with those claims with any immediacy. And with Congress mired in fear mongering and uncompromising partisanship, there is no one to appropriate funds to cities dealing with an influx of people who need support and resources and instead end up in outdoor camps in the middle of winter.
But more than anything we need to combat the violence in our culture that turns us against immigrants like they are some kind of other, like they are a monolith we can blame for society’s ills rather than people who are facing those ills with us. We have to find a way to dismantle the racism, misogyny, and bigotry that allows people like Donald Trump to take advantage, to rise to power and wealth on the promise of addressing our anxiety and fear and hardship, but who actually use violence and lies to further divide us.
And when we see protests across the country, when we see people standing against ICE raids and marching for members of our communities and pushing back against authoritarianism, we need to remember, and remind each other that these protests are born out of love - love for neighbors and family and friends whose immigration status is immaterial to those who are fighting for them. The National Guard may very well inflame tensions in LA, and protests across the country might become scarier and more visceral. But those of us who stand against tyranny and fear have a duty to tell the truth, to remind people what we are fighting for - not just our democracy, but our humanity as well, and to keep trying every day to make this country live up to its promise - that we are all created equal, that we all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that together we can build a better world.