The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Memphis are not just an attack on our Latino friends and neighbors. They are an attack on all of us.
They are a betrayal of the phrase carved on the front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building – “equal justice under law” – and they are a repudiation of the United States- approved Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights – “all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”
The ICE Memphis blitzkrieg sends the message that the noble ideal of legal egalitarianism is now officially buried under an avalanche of white nationalism, classism, and racism based on the twisting of immigration facts and hysteria about America becoming minority majority and turning it into cruel federal policy.
There can no longer be any excuse for any of us to pretend that we do not see what is happening. There should no longer be any pretense that the raids have anything to do with our own concerns. If it were, are we not co-conspirators who value the ethic and need the work of so many Latino immigrants in our community?
The Big Lie
Alt-right talking points and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ warping of federal law results in racially profiling Latinos – and African Americans and Muslims, for that matter – for political advantage to the point that unlawful entry and unlawful presence are thought to be major crimes in this country with significant punishment.
Within that context, the Trump Administration’s new assault on American cities can only be successful if it overstates the problem, misstate the seriousness of the law, and restate it so emphatically that it is seen as the truth by many.
It is yet more evidence that we live in the era of the Big Lie: Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually, the public will believe it.”
It’s a concept made famous in Mein Kampf and was at the heart of the wartime psychological profile of the Fuhrer by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to Central Intelligence Agency) which said: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
Sound familiar?
Obliterating The Facts
The Big Lie about undocumented immigrants is that it is a national security issue, with rhetoric about hordes of brown people pouring across the Rio Grande to enter the U.S. for lives of crime. But, as the Memphis raids prove, this is raw political propaganda and it is not about the national interest.
If there was any proof that this was in the national interest or that it is aimed at reducing crime, the Trump Administration would be releasing profiles of the people arrested, sent to grim detention centers, and deported without legal protections that we thought were automatic.
Meanwhile, the Big Lie will likely cost billions of dollars to build a wall – only facing the brown people; the Canadians get a pass – while more than 40% of undocumented immigrants arrive by air.
That’s not to mention that almost half of the undocumented immigrants arrived here legally and have overstayed their visas.
The Crime: Believing in the American Dream
But the facts are inconvenient realities so they are unmentioned, if not obliterated, in the rush to political advantage. There is talk about street gangs while Latinos tell of a Memphis man at least 60 years old being arrested. There is talk about immigrants as parasites although law-abiding people are being arrested who are working hard, paying their income taxes and Social Security payments, and doing nothing more than believing in the American Dream.
In this overheated political environment, it’s no wonder that many people believe that immigrants without documentation are breaking a hugely serious law. The truth is that it’s the same as a ticket for reckless driving in Tennessee. It’s a misdemeanor (with a maximum of six months in prison and $250 fine) that carries fines and no more than six months in prison.
A large percentage of foreign nationals enter the U.S. legally on valid visas and end up overstaying. That’s not even a misdemeanor. It is a civil violation, and although the punishment is often deportation, the question is whether enforcement as expensive and expansion as ICE is really the best use of public money.
Yes, we’ve heard the president, as part of the Big Lie and Fox News’ hysterics, exaggerate the impact of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. The data clearly suggest the opposite. If immigrants were a major cause of crime, it seems counterintuitive that between 1990 and 2013, while the number grew threefold, violent crime rates fell 46%.
Wasting Billions
All of this makes it impossible to believe the government’s position that the ICE raids are an attack on serious public safety threats. If that were true, they would not be arresting people guilty of traffic violations or people doing nothing more than trying to give their children better lives.
All in all, the raids spring from the Trump view of cities as cesspools of urban problems populated by people who do nothing to make America great again. More to the point, it violates a basic tenet of American jurisprudence by requiring Latinos to prove their innocence as they are profiled in government roundups.
A path to citizenship would result in millions of new Americans invested in the founding principles of this country. Instead, these raids drive people more underground, fearful of the consequences of openly earning a living, enrolling children in school, or buying groceries.
At a time when the GOP chokes over a few million dollars for transgender soldiers, they have no reticence about wasting several billion dollars to create an environment of fear and panic for people interested in finding a way to become Americans.
Cause and Effect
General John Kelly, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and today to become new chief of staff at the dysfunctional Trump White House, saluted the “heroic efforts” of ICE agents in conducting their raids. And yet, how heroic do you have to be, dressed in paramilitary gear, to arrest farm workers, landscape workers, domestic workers, and construction workers?
Because of it, it seems a perfect time for our law enforcement officials (especially since ICE agents are wearing “POLICE” on their uniforms) and criminal justice leaders to call it what it is – racist behaviors made public policy, producing headlines like the one last week La Prensa Latina: “Pánico en la comunidad hispana de Memphis por redadas de ICE.”
Translated: “ICE Raids Cause Panic Among Hispanics in Memphis.”
It’s a sad commentary; most of all, because this is the precise result that our federal government is seeking.
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A most helpful, revealing, and properly prophetic offering!!
“One should be attentive here to how even those elements which appear as pure Rightist racism are effectively a displaced version of workers’ protests: of course there is racism in demanding the end of immigration of foreign workers which pose a threat to our employment; however, one should bear in mind the simple fact that the influx of immigrant workers from the post-Communist countries is not the consequence of some multiculturalist tolerance – it effectively IS part of the strategy of the capital to held in check the workers’ demands – this is why, in the US, Bush did more for the legalization of the status of Mexican illegal emigrants than the Democrats caught in the trade union pressures. So, ironically, the Rightist racist populism is the today the best argument that the “class struggle,” far from being “obsolete,” goes on – the lesson the Left should learn from it is that one should not commit the error symmetrical to that of the populist racist mystification/displacement of the hatred onto foreigners, and to “throw the baby out with the dirty water,” i.e., to merely oppose populist anti-immigrant racism on behalf of multiculturalist openness, obliterating its displaced class content – benevolent as it wants to be, the mere insistence on multiculturalist openness is the most perfidious form of anti-workers class struggle…
Typical is here the reaction of German mainstream politicians to the formation of the new Linkspartei for the 2005 elections, a coalition of the East German PDS and the Leftist dissidents of the SPD – Joschka Fischer himself reached one of the lowest points in his career when he called Oscar Lafontaine “a German Haider” (because Lafontaine protested the import of cheap East European labor to lower the wages of German workers). It is symptomatic in what an exaggerated and panicky way the political (and even cultural) establishment reacted when Lafontaine referred to “foreign workers,” or when the secretary of the SPD called the financial speculators “locusts” – as if we are witnessing a full neo-Nazi revival. This total political blindness, this loss of the very capacity to distinguish Left and Right, betrays a panic at politicization as such. The automatic dismissal of entertaining any thoughts outside the established post-political coordinates as “populist demagoguery” is the hitherto purest proof that we effectively live under a new Denkverbot.”
http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm
I have heard Progressives calling Conservatives Fascists. I have heard Conservatives calling Progressives Fascists. I believe both are way overthinking and over-emotionalizing the issues. I have heard my Progressive friends say the ICE raids are all about racism. I have heard my Conservative friends say the ICE raids are all about upholding the law, as these raids are only pertaining to illegal immigrants. And that unfortunately it takes money to enforce a law. I have also heard my Conservative friends say the Obama administration also conducted ICE raids. And that both the Trump and Obama administrations focused on illegal immigrants with criminal records or suspects of criminal activity. The subject of ICE raids is heated. (No pun intended.) I get it. Families are torn apart. It’s not pretty. But neither is upholding a law. Do we not spend time, money and effort to enforce all laws? Well, maybe Memphis doesn’t, that’s why we don’t have enough police dealing with the 182 gangs operating in Memphis – not to mention the giant rise in violent crime. The deal is, if we want a different outcome, change the law. Give the productive, working, law abiding illegal immigrants long-term work visas and a path to citizenship. But follow the laws. Follow the laws. Follow the laws. BTW, the quotes at the top of the article are from inscriptions on buildings and the United Nations. They are not about US laws. Also, even though I am a native San Franciscan, I do not uphold the concept of Sanctuary Cities, who inherently refuse to follow federal laws that are there to protect all Americans,
Cities and countries make decisions all the time about which laws to strongly support and which to deemphasize. We do it here, as does every city. To spend billions to enforce a misdemeanor and with 80% of the people now being deported with no criminal violation while in the U.S. and with most of them working and even paying taxes, this seems a grossly stupid law enforcement priority.
We also criticized raids under the Obama Administration. The current ICE raids are even more misdirected since this one size fits all draconian enforcement hurts families and our economy.
What we carve on buildings and sign in United Nations documents are our values, which we are now violating in a mindless way. As for sanctuary cities, the federal government should not look to local police departments to serve as adjunct ICE agents – the destruction of credibility at the neighborhood level leads to the nonreporting of crimes and make Latino Memphians afraid of the officers who took an oath to protect them.
@SmartCityMemphis, if you are saying it’s OK for people to come to the US illegally and jump the line, I have to disagree with you. There are plenty of people who have gone through the process to come to this country legally and are waiting patiently. I know a family who came to San Diego when we were living there. A couple and their two boys from Mexico. I was one of the boy’s Cub Scout leader and my husband was his Little League coach. We got to know the family fairly well. They had a sad story to tell. Getting here legally was not easy for them. A similar story with our next door neighbor from India. I remember the day he put up the American flag outside his home in celebration of him finally becoming a US citizen, and not an Indian with a work visa. In my opinion, illegal immigration is not fair to those trying to get here legally.
We can agree to disagree. After someone has been here for decades, are working, raising a family, etc., there should be a sense of proportionality and deportation seems self-defeating to the country to the extreme. As we said, about half are here from overstaying their visa. It’s inspirational to be a country that is the paragon for so many people. Undocumented immigrants and those trying to get here are two different issues and not considered together, we believe. In other words, someone here from Mexico is not keeping someone from Italy getting here.
I find the above exchange frustrating for dodging the populists’ arguments against immigration, in the phrasing of my quote above committing the error symmetric to Trumpism by opposing immigration enforcement entirely on multicultural terms.
To be specific: I had a long talk about immigration last year with my mechanic whom I’ve known for years. He’s a working class father who has always been honest and has never come across as racist. He seems pretty live and let live to me. However, he was worried about the impact of having many poor English speakers in his children’s public school classroom. He was worried that teachers had to spend so much time trying to overcome language difficulties that the entire class was significantly slowed down. He was also worried about a friend in a union whose plant had closed in the face of competition from illegal immigrants working at much cheaper rates. So long as liberals deny the very existence of these kinds of costs and imply that concerns stemming from them are racist they will fuel Trump and populism. The way to beat Trump is for liberals to recognize that immigration does create problems and costs that fall on specific groups, but the benefits of immigration outweigh the costs and then come up with concrete ways for society to more broadly shoulder those costs. I guarantee you that if you provide extra ESL tutoring to schools and cap the number of immigrants (illegal and legal) to a number that can be smoothly integrated, then people like my mechanic are a lot less likely to support Trump.
If you don’t see that immigration does create real costs and perceived costs, then there’s no reason that a high rate of illegal immigration might constrict legal immigration. But in the real world, I promise you that illegal immigration reduces a country’s appetite for legal immigrants. Societies can integrate only so many people at a time without major disruptions.
And finally, yeah, I hear you that governments prioritize which laws they enforce, but if you are an illegal immigrant, you take the risk that you might be deported under really tough circumstances. I mean, I wouldn’t move to Norway or Switzerland illegally, build a life there, and then expect that I could stay indefinitely.
Thank you @Memphis. For whatever it’s worth, I am not conservative nor liberal. I’m more of a libertarian or a believer in classical liberalism.
Memphis: Immigration is a convenient whipping boy for all kinds of issues that can be blamed on it. If immigrants were working for such lower wages, why did the plant close, for example? Lots of anecdotes disconnected from economic trends that are anti-union, anti-minimum wage increase, and a shift in wealth from the middle class to the top 5%. We hear all the rhetoric about immigration from the Trump Administration – including research by hate groups – but correlation does not mean causation.
Preface so we don’t keep talking past each other: I hate the way Trump crudely exploits xenophobia. But I spent time going door to door for Hillary in Ohio and saw how denial and neglect of working class issues seriously hurt the Dems. I don’t want that to happen again in 2018 or 2020. I assume you don’t either.
The union plant (it made concrete) closed because a non-union plant staffed by illegal immigrants desperate to work for cheaper wages offered cheaper prices that undercut the union plant. The union plant with its higher fixed labor costs (and probably more stringent safety regulations and health care contributions) couldn’t match the illegal immigrant plant’s prices, so it closed, costing about twenty Americans their jobs.
Analogous processes also affect the lower-middle class in global trade. Manufacturers leave regulated, expensive labor markets for unregulated, cheaper labor markets in countries like China or Vietnam.
In both cases, increases in the supply of workers, particularly workers willing to work for less depresses the cost of labor. This causal mechanism is Econ 101: increases in supply lead to lower prices.
If you want some academic backing, here is a report by a team of economists at the US Commission on Civil Rights who found, “most panelists agreed that illegal immigration appears to have had at least some negative effects on the wages and employment of workers in the low-skill labor market.”
https://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr12im2010.pdf
And just to be clear the causal connection between globalism (including legal and illegal cross-border labor flows) and domestic inequality is not “disconnected from economic trends” but the core trend driving Thomas Picketty’s work on income inequality. His central finding is that first-world middle class incomes have stagnated for decades while growth has flowed to Western elites and the global poor.
That said, I think that in many cases immigration and trade provide net benefits to participating societies by promoting greater economic efficiency through wider specialization that lowers prices for consumers and fuels development for the global poor. But that doesn’t help a swing voter in Ohio who just lost his job. If you try telling him that the only problem is his racism, then guess what? You lose to a reality tv host who is obviously unfit for office but at least acknowledges the problem. And on that issue, you probably deserve to lose because acknowledging the problem is the first step to finding a solution. Denial of the problem is actually worse: denial is guaranteed to fail. Blue collar people know this.
So I challenge you to look beyond the hate and scapegoating to the real difficulties of the lower-middle class to develop an agenda that helps working class voters left behind.
We’ve probably written more about the challenges to lower middle class and middle class too for that matter than any other subject. Many people are like me. They are one generated removed from lower middle class (and that might be overstating our position on the economic track). I agree with much of what you say, but to get to the real issues, we have to reject scapegoating and political vilification of immigrants. The issues are real enough and defy simple solutions (I’m not saying that’s what you’re suggesting) by white nationalists who are content to demonize some of us for their own political and economic gain.