by Andy Stefan
On the evening of June 19, over two-hundred residents of Washtenaw County filed into the First Congregational Church of Christ in Ypsilanti for a community meeting about recent federal raids on the local immigrant community. The event, organized by the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights (WICIR), was billed as a public discussion with representatives from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the division of the US Department of Homeland Security that has been conducting the raids. However, just minutes before the start of the forum, it was announced that the representatives from ICE had cancelled and would not be present.
The seats reserved for ICE agents Rebecca Adducci and Vincent Clausen remained empty during the community forum.
Anti Immigration Violence in Washtenaw County: Washtenaw County has become one of several US communities affected by a countrywide wave of government crackdowns on immigrants that began late last year. Since March, WICIR has reported 19 known cases of federal agents from ICE using tactics such as aggressive and in some instances, warrantless, home intrusion, detainment, and deportation against members of the Latino community, nationals from other countries, and even US citizens accused of being illegal immigrants in the greater Washtenaw area. At least one case, which took place on March 16 in Ypsilanti, involved the use of extreme violence by ICE when a Honduran resident was forcefully dragged from his home and injured in front of his wife and children. He presently awaits deportation.
WICIR coordinator, Laura Sanders, who paid visit to the man’s home shortly after the incident, said the entire house had been “ransacked” adding that there was blood on the floor and a hole punched in a door to the bathroom, where the victim’s wife and children were hiding during the raid.
While local ICE representatives deny charges that the agency has been using excessive force, their tactics are having undeniably adverse effects on the immigrant population of Washtenaw County, which has seen numerous individuals harmed psychologically, emotionally, and physically by raids, as well as entire families separated by detentions and deportations. The use of such harsh methods should leave residents of the area, and the US as a whole, asking fundamental questions about just how we want our government to be interacting with immigrants living in our country—documented or not.
A meeting deferred: The June 19th forum was designed to provide concerned citizens and victims of recent ICE abuse with an opportunity to do just that. Months of work went into planning and organizing the event, during which, WICIR members were supposed to present ICE representatives with questions submitted by Washtenaw County residents via e-mail, but when ICE called to cancel roughly 24 hours before the discussion, the group reacted and the plan was changed.
WICIR coordinator, Margaret Harner, said that Rebecca Adducci, a representative from ICE’s Detention and Removal division who was supposed to be part of the discussion, first called her on the evening prior to the forum to tell her that ICE offices across the country were instructed not to send representatives to any speaking engagements on June 19th . Adducci explained that the date coincided with the “Evening of a Thousand Conversations” campaign—a project aimed at encouraging citizens throughout the US to participate in dialogue on that night, about the Department of Homeland Security’s role in undermining the civil liberties and human rights of people in America, particularly immigrants. For Harner and the rest of WICIR, it was a very inconvenient time to break the news.
In a later phone conversation about rescheduling the meeting, Adducci told Harner that she and her colleague, Vincent Clausen (who was also supposed to be in attendance), would prefer to be provided with the discussion questions in advance and that they would be unwilling to attend a future forum until they first met with the leadership of the organization.
Harner said this might have been the actual reason for their absence stating, “ICE wants questions in advance and quite frankly, I think that’s why they didn’t come.” Still, one has to wonder why WICIR was not informed of these demands over a month ago when the event was first scheduled. Regardless, coordinators of the organization decided to move forward with the forum, minus ICE.
Sanders addressed attendees at the beginning of the meeting to let them know that their presence was the foremost priority, stating, “It would have been interesting to have ICE present but it is more important to have the community here for discussion of these issues.” Michael Beasley, WICIR member and moderator of the event, also commented on ICE’s decision saying, “They have removed themselves from an opportunity to speak to a public forum…it is worrying when a governmental agency decides it is not accountable to its citizens.” WICIR and those in attendance were left to demand explanations from an empty table, fitted with two placards for Adducci and Clausen, about why so many members of Washtenaw’s immigrant community–as in so many others across the country–are suffering at the hands of our government.
Immigration as a National Issue:In December of 2007, the US government initiated a nation-wide, the US government intiated a nation-wide campaign of pressure against immigrants that has led to the arrest, detention, and deportation of estimated-tens of thousands of people accused of living in the US without proper documentation. ICE agents in cities from San Diego to New York have been regularly seen patrolling communities in unmarked cars, staking out schools, and invading workplaces and immigrant homes without reasonable cause or suspicion while searching for those believed to be guilty of existing-while-undocumented. The pursuit of such costly and highly invasive federal policy ultimately stems from the assumptions that it is problematic to have undocumented immigrants living within our borders, and that the benefits of this campaign outweigh the ethical dilemmas associated with our government’s widespread use of violence and intimidation against them.
WICIR panelists, Ignacio Meneses and Rosendo Delgado, who are also active with the Detroit-based human rights organization Latinos Unidos, used their time at the June 19th forum to discuss the root causes of immigration into the US and the implications of increasing militarization for our country.
Meneses provided firsthand testimony about the poverty and joblessness generated in Latin America by US-driven, neoliberal economic policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its Central American counterpart, CAFTA. “One of the goals of neoliberal policy is to deregulate everything for corporations—no rules,” said Meneses. It is through this trend toward deregulation, outlined in the provisions of NAFTA, that heavily-subsidized US corn and other agribusiness producers have been able to enter Mexico’s market to compete with small Mexican farmers and force roughly 2 million Mexicans out of jobs in agriculture. Additionally, wages have actually been driven down along the US-Mexico border significantly since 1994 when the agreement went into effect, as reported by a Carnegie Endowment study. Delgado provided thoughtful analysis of ongoing anti-immigrant militarization in the US that, in his own words, has led to “widespread violations of civil and human rights.” He went on to suggest that while a few sectors of the US economy are benefiting immensely from this multi-billion dollar federal campaign against immigrants, for the public at large it is a squandering of tax dollars and public resources.
WICIR member and panel speaker Ignacio Meneses (3rd from right) addresses the frequently asked question, “Why are there so many immigrants in the US?”.
So what is the concern? Why is our government concentrating so much time and money on terrorizing individuals and their families? At present, it is estimated that between 11 and 12 million unauthorized migrants are living in the US. According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, the yearly influx of illegal entries has been consistently outpacing the number of legal trans-border movement since the 1990s–a trend that has likely been fueled by the willingness of US corporations to hire/exploit undocumented workers for lower labor costs, coupled with squalid living conditions and even more exploitative work arrangements in their home countries which, as mentioned above, are typically generated by policies such as NAFTA. Motivated by the universal desire for a living wage and simple market comparison, a great number of immigrants travel across borders illegally simply to survive. Still, many in the US are worried. Fears of increasing crime, job-loss, and tax evasion–which are regularly seen manifest in the form of newspaper headlines and disingenuous discussion on cable television shows–seem to be among the foremost concerns in our country’s tense relationship with its growing undocumented population. However, close inspection of the validity of these sentiments will generate far different conclusions than what many people in the US might expect.Contrary to popular myth, undocumented immigrants are not, by nature, criminals–nor has their presence been linked to significant increases in levels of violent crime. Being illegally present in the US is a civil, not a criminal, violation. Subsequent deportation and associated administrative processes are handled as civil proceedings. Therefore, being an “illegal” or undocumented immigrant does not necessarily make one a criminal. In regard to their role in committing violent criminal offenses once in the US, a report by the US Department of Justice shows that between 1994 and 2005 the undocumented immigrant population doubled, yet the violent crime rate declined by 34.2%. Moreover, many experts suspect undocumented immigrants are generally deterred from committing crimes because they do not wish to be identified by police for fear of deportation. The notion that illegal immigrants “take our jobs” may also be regarded as unfounded. A recent Pew Hispanic Foundation study concluded that, “no consistent pattern emerges to show that native-born workers suffered or benefited from increased numbers of foreign born workers.” At its core, the argument that immigrants take American jobs relies on what is known as the “lump of labor” fallacy—the idea that our country has a fixed number of jobs that will be taken up as by immigrants as their population increases. Analysts such as Aviva Chomsky, the coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts, suggest that migration, in its various forms, might actually generate more jobs in the US. According to Chomsky, “Population growth creates jobs because people consume as well as produce: they buy things, they go to movies, they send their children to school, they build houses, they fill their cars with gasoline, they go to the dentist, they buy food at stores and restaurants.” The idea that immigrants don’t pay taxes is simply untrue. Sales tax, real estate taxes, and gasoline taxes are all paid by citizens both authorized and not. It should be noted that many undocumented workers in the US are paid under the table, in cash by their employers, thus avoiding payment of federal and state income taxes. However, this kind of informal sector work can also be found in the form of positions in baby-sitting, table waiting, and lawn-care service, among others, which are most commonly filled by citizens with legal status.
A call to citizens: Despite all of this evidence suggesting that immigrants do not harm the US, but actually make significant contributions to our economy and American society as a whole, they are still not being treated with respect and appropriate consideration of their rights that international and even domestic law demand. As the well being of immigrants throughout the US continues to be threatened by the operations ICE and other divisions of law enforcement, we must ask; how can our government justify using tax dollars to invade homes, violently abuse individuals, and separate families—sometimes leaving young children parentless and terrified for extended periods of time? ICE claims to be protecting public safety, but in recent months they have done a great deal in the way of terrorizing immigrant communities across the country and those who have been following the situation are likely feeling decidedly less safe as a result. The tragedy of this campaign will continue to affect people across the country until the widespread tactics of violence and intimidation stop. Ultimately, it is our responsibility as citizens of the US to demand that the federal government act humanely toward all people—regardless of their legal status.
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The Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights is a group of churches, grassroots and university organizations formed in response to numerous documented cases of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids against members of Washtenaw’s immigrant community. For more information contact: wicir2008@gmail.com
Andrew Stefan is a student of political science at Eastern Michigan University as well as an active member of The Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Amnesty International EMU. He can be reached at astefan.55@gmail.com