Don’t Let the ‘Immigration’ Police State Become Normal

The news can seem overwhelming. A former seasonal police officer in Maine is left to “self deport” after getting detained by immigration officials. A New York volunteer firefighter is locked up. U.S. citizens in California, Florida and elsewhere are detained for as long as a day on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally. Students are shipped off for nothing more than writing a newspaper column or attending a protest. People are nabbed after showing up — as they were supposed to — for immigration hearings. Kids are deported. Parents of citizens are thrown out of the country. Families are ripped apart, causing trauma that will likely prove irreversible.

Some people are locked up for months in an uncertain virtual prison stay that feels more like a perverse state of purgatory. Some are threatened to be sent to nations where they have no connection. Some, such as those U.S. citizens, suddenly have to live with a fear that they could be snatched up at any time because of their looks or accents. For the first time in their lives they are compelled to “carry their papers.” Some fear if they protest or write about the wrong topic, they’ll face the masked men at their door or be denied a visa. Some wonder when they’ll see their children again or if their loved ones even know where they are. Some people are guilty of simply coming from the wrong place: like Palestine.

First Amendment Still Stands, Baby; Illustration by Harmony Witte

Don’t let these stories become normal. And don’t think they started in January. What happened at the start of this year was a hyper-massive and hyper-cruel expansion of what had been happening for decades (look up “Operation Wetback” or the Japanese incarceration for historical references).

Indeed, as shocking as the cases of U.S. citizens getting detained by … immigration police! … is, the even more shocking truth is it’s been happening for years. U.S. immigration officials arrested 674 “potential” U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 between 2015 and 2020, according to the American Immigration Council, citing numbers from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). That was before the recent surge in so-called immigration crackdowns since Jan. 20.

“They were deported even though U.S. citizens cannot be charged with violations of civil immigration law,” wrote the American Immigration Council.

This is also not the first time people have been caught up immigration hell because of their political views. One little-known but obscenely cruel example is that of the decades-old case of the “LA 8” – a group of seven Palestinians and one Kenyan who were for two decades threatened with deportation because of their support for Palestinian human and national rights.

It’s easy to tune out the news, to think this only happens to “other people.” But turning away will only let this soulless machine grow. Instead, we must pay attention, speak out and vote for the people and measures that will finally put limits on what is becoming a national monster.

— A.S.