How Criminalizing Communities of Color Has Driven the Anti-Immigrant Narrative
In this article, Walter Ewing considers the relationship between fighting crime and the view of immigrants — and particularly immigrants of color — are criminals who deserve removal from the United States. President Trump is far from the first President to use crime-based removals to remove hundreds of thousands of immigrants of color. As Ewing explains:
“Even under the relatively liberal Obama administration, deportations of undocumented immigrants and legal immigrants with minor criminal records took place at a feverish pace. While then-President Obama wanted a comprehensive legislative revamping of the U.S. immigration system, he was unable to get a bill through Congress and reportedly felt obligated to enforce the letter of the existing draconian laws in the meantime.
It is against this backdrop—the rise of mass incarceration, the targeting of both African Americans and predominantly Latino immigrants, and the imposition of an unequal system of justice on the foreign-born—that the Trump administration came to power. And while Trump’s brand of nativism may be extreme, it nevertheless has a long pedigree in U.S. history.”
If you have doubts about the racialized nature of immigration enforcement, check out the “ICE Most Wanted” on the ice.gov website.
KJ