Decompiling Oppression #143
Sam McVeety
This week, I want to bring together some emerging threads around immigration. Beyond the enormous harm of widespread detentions and deportations, there is also a pronounced shift in public opinion that is cautiously heartening. Throughout, all of this exists within a specific historical context; the current immigration apparatus and policy is not something that the current administration invented all by itself.
Let's start with something hopeful: there is mounting evidence that the administration's current approach of large-scale ICE raids on undocumented communities are not just unpopular, but hugely so. (For example, deporting people who have been in the United States for more than 10 years is underwater by more than 30 points.) This can be somewhat obscured by how public opinion is measured on different issues: when immigration is discussed as a monolithic entity, the trends are less visible. This is all the more notable because these shifts are coming in response to actual police actions by the administration, and not just posturing on the campaign trail. When faced with this reality, (most) people recoil. Not only that; the backlash to these draconian measures is actually manifesting as immigration becoming more popular.
But: with the election barely six months in the past (and immigration as a front and center issue), how did we get here? These polls represent something in aggregate, and we also have individual anecdotes, where it's increasingly clear that there are plenty of people who apparently believed that the administration was only going to target "dangerous" individuals in their immigration actions. Could we have all foreseen that it wouldn't turn out that way? Absolutely: beginning with the fact that undocumented people have lower crime rates than other groups, we run into a simple math problem. If the administration promises to deport millions of people, but only a few hundred thousand could even plausibly fit their characterization, something was going to break. (All the same, it's important to note this reversal and figure out how to move past it; being right is not enough.)
There's more beneath the surface here, including the legacy of previous Presidents and their immigration policies. Although the Obama and Biden administrations have been successfully portrayed in many quarters as being "soft" on immigration, this simply wasn't true. Presidents Obama and Biden both deported millions of people, employing policies that also nominally prioritized "dangerous" individuals. To state it more plainly: Obama and Biden were essentially already carrying out the policy that Trump claimed he was going to do. This is a painful topic in immigrant justice communities, as these millions of deportations are largely absent from popular memory. So, when the current administration arrived in power, it had to contend with this reality (of its own creation), where the only possible way to appear tougher on immigration was to resort to even more draconian tactics.
It's also worth problematizing this idea of "dangerous" individuals. Yes, there are people, documented and undocumented, accused of horrific crimes. And, the entire reason we have a system of courts is to actually examine the evidence for each of these cases (made all the more suspect when the administration refuses to provide credible evidence in cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia's). This idea that we can cleanly sort people into dangerous and safe is a false binary that is primarily aimed at disrupting solidarity, much in the same way that other binaries (like the deserving and undeserving poor) are used.
We can also learn from what's happening right now. If the idea of mass deportations was more palatable than the reality to substantial numbers of people, this is an invitation to build stronger organizing networks, ones that prioritize connections across class and immigration status. Looking at specific cases where immigration is widely supported (like 10+ year residents) offers potential for meaningful policy change (while being wary of recreating dichotomies between "good" and "bad" immigrants).
Of course, polls don't stop deportations, but people do. If we can get past being right, there is a crucial opportunity for bringing people into organizing work in the current moment. Movements talk about opportunities for "mass absorption", when current events catalyze people towards actions they might not otherwise be ready to take. This can be one of those moments, if we can collectively claim it.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What spaces might you share with people across documentation status?
Communal: How can we create support networks that show up for people when they are most vulnerable?
Solidarity: Support the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition and their work to empower all immigrant families to thrive in the Spokane Metro area, through direct service, systems change, capacity building, and emergency financial assistance.
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