As the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency continues its coordinated, racist crackdown on undocumented workers across the country, a report in the June 23 issue of The Nation magazine investigates the plight of some unlikely targets of detentions and deportations: U.S. citizens and documented residents.
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If you do not speak English, if you are not white and if you appear to be from a Central American country, you are more likely to be arrested for minor civil infractions and be sent to one of the many ICE detention centers.
Mario Quiroz, media specialist for Casa de Maryland, tells The Nation, “People who have Spanish names, are five-four, have black hair, get profiled.” Casa de Maryland offers assistance to low-income Latinos.
ICE has no jurisdiction over U.S. citizens or documented residents, yet they place the burden of proof on detainees to prove their legal status.
For some detainees, proving citizenship can be difficult—especially their friends and family cannot locate them. The Nation’s report documents example after example of U.S. citizens and legal residents being illegally arrested and imprisoned by ICE, their whereabouts unknown to loved ones or legal counsels.
The largest investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE was created in 2002 following the events of Sept. 11, 2001. According to the agency’s website, it is charged with “protecting the United States and upholding public safety by targeting the people, money and materials that support terrorist and criminal activities.”
ICE’s recent efforts at “protecting the United States” and “upholding public safety” include raiding and arresting workers at a printer supply manufacturer in Los Angeles, Mexican restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area and, in its largest operation yet, a slaughterhouse in Iowa. How those terror tactics against hard-working people protect anyone from “terrorists” and “criminals” remains unexplained.
Immigration policies are driven by the needs of the bosses, always looking to get the most work for the least pay. These policies foment racism amongst workers, which weakens their unity and ability to organize. At the same time, fear of state repression has been an effective tool to keep undocumented workers from fighting for their rights. Extending that fear to citizens and documented workers can only benefit the corporate interests who profit from their labor.
Additionally, the 2006 immigrant rights movement saw millions of immigrants and their supporters pour into the streets to demand their rights. That upsurge put immigrants—documented and undocumented alike—at the forefront of the working-class struggle. Crushing the threat posed by that new political force became a priority for the ruling class. From the point of view of the state, unwarranted concern with minutiae such as someone’s legal status would have hampered the repressive raids that followed.
The targeting of citizens and documented immigrants along with the undocumented only underscores that racism—not the law—underlies ICE’s terror tactics. To the extent that the law helps perpetuate the super-exploitation of workers, it will be upheld; to the extent that it interferes with it, it will be broken. Only through militant resistance have workers won protections against the savagery of the capitalist state.
