ICE Raids Benefit Bosses by Creating Fear in Workers

ICE raid in Los Angeles. Photo: Allen J. Schaben/LAT via Getty Images

In 2000, an immigration official admitted that the authorities rarely detained undocumented workers “unless the employer turns a worker in, and employers usually do that only to break a union or prevent a strike or that kind of stuff.”

David L. Wilson, Truthout

August 23, 2019

On August 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carried out coordinated raids at seven agricultural processing plants in Mississippi, detaining 680 immigrant workers. Officials told The Washington Post that the operation was “the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.”

The massive operation generated terror in immigrant communities already traumatized by a massacre targeting people of Mexican origin in El Paso, Texas, days earlier, and much of the U.S.-born population was outraged by images of detained workers’ sobbing children.

As has happened after workplace raids in the past, news accounts noted that the employers remained free while their workers were led off to migrant jails in handcuffs.[…]

Read the full article:

https://truthout.org/articles/ice-raids-benefit-bosses-by-creating-fear-in-workers/

Understanding Trump’s Deportation Raids

[The Trump administration says mass deportation raids will start on June 23. This article from shortly after the 2016 elections seems relevant now. It explained that as a government with only minority support, Trump’s administration would need raids as a way to distract attention from its failures to fulfill the president’s populist promises.

In fact, the White House has carried out a number of mass raids in cities and has restarted the huge workplace raids from the George W. Bush era, although the 2016 article overstated the White House’s ability to carry these raids out. Partly this has been due to the administration’s own incompetence, but a more important factor has been popular resistance—which may have a major impact on this new round of raids. (The article also has a factual error: John Kelly was the third general to head up immigration services, not the second.)—TPOI editor.]

Trump’s Deportation Machine

By David L. Wilson, Jacobin

December 19, 2016

Like so much about the incoming administration, president-elect Donald Trump’s intentions for undocumented immigrants remain unclear. But he seems likely to go forward with a substantial program of “getting them out of our country.”[…]

Read the full article:

https://jacobinmag.com/2016/12/trump-undocumented-immigration-ice-sessions

Photo: nflravens / Flickr

If San Pedro Sula Is Murder Capital of the World, Who Made It That Way?

One of San Pedro Sula's poorest barrios.  Photo: David Bacon

[Many people here continue to say they sympathize with Central American asylum seekers but that horrific conditions in their countries aren’t a U.S. problem. Here veteran journalist David Bacon focuses on just one city, San Pedro Sula, and the way U.S. policies have in fact made it "a vast, American-owned sweatshop."—TPOI editor]

By David Bacon, The American Prospect

June 13, 2019

A 30-second search on the internet produces at least two dozen stories from U.S. newspapers and other media about San Pedro Sula in Honduras. "Honduran City is World Murder Capital," announces Fox News. Business Insider calls it "the most violent city on earth."  In an attempt to explain the motivation for migrant caravans traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border, NPR labels it "one of the most violent cities in the world."

This wave of media attention has been going on for at least half a decade, as tens of thousands of Hondurans arrive at the border seeking refuge. President Trump's rhetoric portraying the caravans as a threat has focused even more attention on this Honduran city.[…]

Read the full article:

https://prospect.org/article/if-san-pedro-sula-murder-capital-world-who-made-it-way

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2019/06/if-san-pedro-sula-is-murder-capital-of.html

James D. Cockcroft, 1935-2019

Cockcroft addresses Mexican electric workers in 2009. Photo: Heriberto Rodríguez

[Our friend James Cockcroft, author of numerous books on Latin America and other subjects, passed away on April 16. Below are links to an obituary from his website and a tribute from his brother George Cockcroft, the novelist who writes as Luke Rhinehart.—TPOI editor]

James Donald Cockcroft, 83, of Montréal, QC, passed away on 16 April, 2019, after a hard fought battle with bladder cancer.

James was born on October 26, 1935 to Donald Griswald Cockcroft and Elizabeth Lillian Powers in Albany, NY. After attending Albany Military Academy, he attended Cornell University, graduating in 1957 in Philosophy and English, then receiving his M.A. at Stanford University, 1964 (English) and his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1966 (Sociology, History, Political Science, with a Latin America /U.S./ Europe/ Development focus).[…]

Read the full obituary:

https://www.jamescockcroft.com/node/327

Well, my brother Jim edged me out to the finish line today, dying of stage 4 bladder cancer. Jim and I were about as close as two brothers can ever be, both in childhood and in later life even after we both had established families.

We were close in childhood because our father died when we were both under nine years old, leaving us with only each other to play sports and spend our time with, having no other male figures to relate to.[…]

Read the full post:

https://www.facebook.com/luke.rhinehart.18/posts/693663761066932

Families For Freedom: What Will the Strategy Be?

Families For Freedom Newsletter

May 24, 2019

On the immigrant rights frontline, in this current landscape, it is seriously difficult to win and to hold down that win, solely with a legal strategy. For when we do gain a win, the system finds ways to take it back or neuter it. There needs to be a parallel political strategy, which cannot just be of the electoral type, and it must be intentionally informed by those who are, and will be, directly affected by any result of the strategy, to bring true value to it. As obvious as that may seem, we more often than not, have found ourselves “attacking walled cities” according to Sun Tzu’s (Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher) analysis on strategies.

Metaphorically, our “walled cities” are the Courts, which are being fortified at an accelerated and alarming rate with some hardened and odious men and materials, none more so than at the Supreme Court. The somewhat muted response that followed the Supreme Court’s recent decision on Nielsen v. Preap gives sound to the belief that Justice Alito’s superfluous analysis laid a minefield that would prevent or pervert any other attempt to get that close to their wall again.[…]

To read more, subscribe here.

FFF and CAAAV marching during National Day of Action (2018-6-30)

La Colusión del Presidente Trump con la Migración Forzosa/Trump’s Collusion With Forced Migration

La Colusión del Presidente Trump con la Migración Forzosa

Por Elvira Arellano

18 de mayo, 2019

El padre Alejandro Solalinde estuvo en Chicago el fin de semana pasado para dar una plática sobre su nuevo libro, un libro que recomiendo que todos mis lectores lean. El largo y duradero compromiso de Solalinde con los migrantes, acompañado por su fe inspiradora, lo han convertido en una voz integra en la confusión y ruido del punto muerto entre los migrantes centroamericanos y la inhumanidad de la administración de Trump.

Acordamos que es necesario hallar una nueva manera de dirigirnos al asunto de la migración centroamericana, e inclusive nuevas maneras de proteger a las miles de familias obligadas a huir de Honduras por la combinación de la violencia del gobierno y de los narcotraficantes, y la política económica de hambre.[…]

Trump’s Collusion with Forced Migration

By Elvira Arellano

May 18, 2019

Alejandro Solalinde was in Chicago this week speaking about his new book—which I highly recommend to all my readers. Solalinde’s long and enduring commitment to migrants, accompanied by his inspiring faith, have made him the voice of integrity amidst all the noise and confusion of the current stand-off at the border between Central American migrants and the inhumanity of the Trump administration.

We agreed that we must find a new way to address the issue of Central American migration and new ways to protect the thousands of families forced to leave Honduras by the combination of government and cartel violence and starvation economics.[…]

Lea el artículo completo/read the full article:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/la-colusión-del-presidente-trump-con-migración-forzosa-coleman

Taxing Students and Promoting “Merit-Based” Immigration: The Connection

Does Trump want skilled immigrants... (Photo: Platt/Getty)

On May 17 President Trump used a Rose Garden speech to promote changes to the immigration law that would reduce the number of family-reunification green cards (which Trump calls “chain migration” visas) available to foreigners while increasing the number of employment-based green cards (“merit-based visas,” according to Trump). In other words, the United States would bring in many more highly educated immigrants than currently.


Many or most would undoubtedly work in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

On the same day the New York Times happened to run an article by Erica L. Green explaining how the GOP’s massive 2017 tax package “drastically raised the tax rate on so-called unearned income for children with assets and young adults in school”—that is, basically for “[s]tudents with large financial aid packages.” The article refers to the new tax burden on poorer college and graduate students as an “unintended consequence,” but in fact the same reporter pointed to this likely consequence back in November 2017, before the tax bill became law.

It may be a coincidence that Green’s article came out on the same day as Trump’s “merit-based immigration” speech, but the reality is that the two GOP policies are closely linked, as Politics of Immigration co-author David Wilson explained in November 2017. The tax burden discourages U.S.-born youths from enrolling in higher education while intensifying employment-based immigration “would bring in a still greater proportion of [foreign-born] college graduates,” he wrote then.

"In other words, people who match the profile of the students driven out of careers in science and technology by the House tax bill. Are the Republicans seeing these immigrants as replacements for US-born STEM workers?

....to replace US STEM workers? (Photo: Piacquadio/Getty) 

"Of course this seems to contradict the politicians’ often expressed concern for 'middle-class Americans,' but it makes a lot of sense from the point of view of corporate America. After all, producing a homegrown physicist or software engineer requires a considerable investment of resources; immigrant STEM workers come with an education that was largely provided by their countries of origin, often at public expense."

Read the full article here:

https://truthout.org/articles/republicans-are-commodifying-immigrants-at-the-expense-of-us-students/