The US immigration system is not broken: it works perfectly to criminalize and terrorize people. Its violence, far from being new, is a bipartisan project that has been funded and strengthened for decades. But in the face of raids and calculated cruelty, migrant communities are weaving networks of resistance and solidarity. The slogan is clear: don’t be silent, organize, and abolish a system of oppression.
People kidnapped in a Home Depot parking lot; mothers trying to explain that they have to pick up their children while an ICE agent arrests them; raids in elementary schools, at graduations, in supermarkets, in hotels, in restaurants, in sewing workshops, in the fields.
The images seem to be everywhere. It’s hard to be an immigrant and shake off that shadow in order to get through each day. Even so, Ruben H. says, “We don’t stop, we have to keep going.” And Ruben H., like 11 million other undocumented immigrants in the United States, keeps going.
“You leave your house to go to work and say, well, who knows if I’ll be back. You don’t know if you’ll run into those immigration guys on the way… and you just leave with God’s blessing, that he’ll let us work and come back safely.“ Since ”that guy“ became president, he says, everything has gotten worse: there’s little work, and besides, “it’s risky, you panic if you see a cop. I work in construction, so imagine going to Home Depot right now.”
A constant threat
The images have been seen around the world. However, as GH, executive director of ÓRALE (an NGO dedicated to fighting for migrant justice in Southern California), points out, it would be a mistake to think that state violence against migrants is something new in the United States:
“No matter who or which party is in the presidency, undocumented people have always been under threat.”
And although it is commonplace for US politicians to say that the immigration system is “broken” and for some, in what they intend to be read as a generous progressive twist, to talk about “reforming” it, the reality, as GH points out, is that the immigration system is not broken. On the contrary, “the immigration system is working perfectly,” as it fully achieves its objectives: to criminalize, exclude, control, violate, militarize, terrorize, and, with greater intensity than ever, use cruelty and violence as a form of communication. Hence the persistence of these images on television, social media, radio, newspapers, advertising, and in conversations between neighbors.
The history of the United States seems like a series of mirror images in which state violence is nothing more than a long projection of a seemingly endless loop. A list of examples, by no means exhaustive, would include forced repatriations during the Great Depression—an episode known as the “Mexican Repatriation,” in which around 1.8 million people, citizens and non-citizens alike, were deported— or Operation Wetback (mentioned by Trump as a model to follow) in the 1950s and 1960s, which deported more than a million people, thousands of whom were detained in violent military-style raids and, as in the previous case, many of whom were US citizens.
In the 1980s, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) offered amnesty to 2.7 million people residing in the country illegally, but it also intensified the criminalization of undocumented labor and raids on workplaces, in addition to tightening border control, all trends that have intensified to what we know today.
A history of repression has its resistance
The current escalation of violence—and funding—by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is consistent with this covert history and also reveals how bipartisan policies have shaped responses to the country’s immigration reality.
Since its creation in 2003 under the George W. Bush administration, the budget allocated to the operations of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and therefore ICE, has grown exponentially regardless of who is in the presidency. Since then, under every administration—Obama, Biden, Trump—the infrastructure of the immigration system has been strengthened, and there have been mass deportations, detention centers, family separations, and mistreatment. In other words, the project of oppression and persecution we see today is the product of both Republican and Democratic immigration policies and budget priorities that have ensured the existence, growth, and expansion of that system.
But if the history of the immigration system is one of oppression, the history of resistance and organized response by migrant and working communities has run parallel to it. That is why, insists MC, associate director of ÓRALE, it is important not to lose sight of the historical perspective, because the reality is that both individually and collectively, the migrant struggle has had to face fears that threaten their communities and their very lives.
MC emphasizes:
“Our communities have been through a lot. In the 1990s, for example, there was a lot of fear surrounding Proposition 187, but people rose up to prevent it from happening, organized themselves, and fought against those policies.”
That law, which MC recalls was repealed in 1997, sought to prevent undocumented people from accessing basic services such as education and healthcare. Ultimately, the rejection of this racist and xenophobic measure mobilized civil society to such an extent that Gustavo Arellano attributes it in no small measure to having transformed California into a “progressive beacon” within the US.
That is why, MC insists, we must remember this “history of community organization and empowerment that occurs when these policies appear at the national level. What we see time and time again is that many people stand up and fight for their own rights.” This last part is key: all people, regardless of their immigration status, “have rights and can raise their voices.”
It is precisely in this direction that the energy of ÓRALE and various sectors of American civil society has been channeled. We have seen images of violence, cruelty, and abuse on the front pages of newspapers, but GH emphasizes that this violence “is a spectacle designed to sow panic,” to make migrant communities scapegoats and, ultimately, to dismantle their organizations and deepen the social disintegration that they seek to achieve through the violence of deportations.
The response, amid the pain and anger, has been precisely to organize, defend themselves, take to the streets, and further strengthen the community networks that have been woven for years. These networks draw their strength from their willingness to resist and organize in situations of extreme adversity, such as the current one.
“If we can’t sleep, neither can they”
In California, civil and grassroots organizations such as ÓRALE are urging local councils to guarantee funds for the legal defense of people detained by immigration authorities; Crowdfunding campaigns are being organized to support people arrested during recent protests. Citizens are organizing to urge governments to sever ties between the police and immigration agencies. On a small and large scale, local groups and neighborhood networks are forming to monitor immigration authorities, with people coming forward to help and support when they appear. Lawyers with knowledge of the immigration system offer workshops to educate the community about their rights. A worker leaks the address of the hotel where immigration agents are staying, and a group of people, including a young woman with a trumpet, arrive at the door at 5 a.m.
“If we can’t sleep, neither can they,” says one protester. Food, diapers, and basic necessities are distributed; rides are offered; fundraisers are organized to cover unpaid wages; in a café, a group of friends organizes a letter-writing marathon to pressure local councilors to support pro-immigrant legislation; protective cordons are created to prevent the immigration authorities from passing through.
For GH, this organization is the gateway to imagining other systems, other worlds. It is a long-term project, but in the meantime, he insists, “it is about going beyond social media; it is important to be very vocal, but it is extremely urgent to work to meet the immediate needs of the community” and also for each person to take on the task of pressuring their elected officials, not only in the United States but also in other countries, because if one thing is clear, it is that the struggles for migrant justice are interconnected with anti-imperialism and the search for social justice across the globe.
The violence of deportations, raids, lack of due process, disappearances, racist rhetoric in the media, propaganda, and state violence sow terror in communities and seek to erode their social fabric. But amid the pain, violence, and suffering, anger also flourishes. That is why, says GH, “remaining silent will not save anyone”; it is necessary for anger to be heard and to reverberate far and wide, so that it shakes the foundations of a system that should not be reformed, but abolished.
“The only good thing about all this is that we have seen that there are many people who care about us, even if politicians don’t care so much,” says Rubén H. Meanwhile, the actions of the current administration seek to make people self-deport in the face of hostility and fear. Faced with this dilemma, says Rubén H., “it’s not like you can just pick up and go back to Mexico and that’s it. I’ve been living here for many years, my people are here, I’ve made my life here. What’s more, this is our country too, even if they don’t like it… And even if we don’t like it.”
Original text by Daniela Suárez published by Pie de Página on September 29th, 2025.
Photos by DeAndre Jackson.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.