Good Immigrant, Bad Immigrant

Pasadena, the Houston Chronicle, and Trump

I do not know if I will ever drive near the house I grew up in, and not hear the echoes of a mother sobbing as she describes how masked ICE agents threatened to tear gas her four small children. Pasadena is the largest city in Harris County that is not Houston. It is known for the taquerias, refineries, and hard-working Latinos. This is in stark contrast to the 1980s, when Pasadena served as headquarters for the Texas chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. It might no longer be the Klan, but on October 27th, ICE agents reminded Pasadena residents of the terror xenophobia can lead to.

Margarita, a long-time Pasadena resident who has never even gotten a traffic ticket, and her family are the latest in the string of everyday people terrorized by Trump’s supposed crackdown on ‘violent immigrant criminals.’ In her account after the incident, she told reporters that, at around 6:00 a.m., her husband and 2 of his coworkers sped home after noticing they were being followed by an unmarked vehicle. I can only imagine the terror she felt at the moment she realized the great fear that so many Latine partners and parents hold of the brutality of deportation had fixed its gaze on your family.

I know precisely the kind of van her husband was in that day. There are usually only two seats in those white vans. The rest is for equipment for flooring, tile, or roofing. Some of my earliest memories are of whining as I sat in a bucket while a family member drove me to lay tile. Supposedly, I was supposed to be learning the value of hard work by taking out tile spacers for hours. I was not a good worker, and my family will attest to this. Enough hot 12-hour days during your summer vacation will have you start taking school SERIOUSLY. I can still feel the echoes of the anxiety produced when undocumented people in my work vans caught a peek of a cop car. But, I cannot imagine the abject terror Margarita’s husband felt in being chased to his home, where his children were sleeping.

After masked and heavily armed officers surrounded the house, they barked at the men to come out. They did not present a warrant in the entire interaction. ICE now claims that they were trying to pull over the car because one of the three men in the vehicle had a warrant tied to re-entering the country a third time. ICE, with the support of the Pasadena Police Department, quickly broke the security cameras on the outside of the house. The stakeout lasted until almost noon, when ICE, cutting off the power to the house, and threatening to tear-gas the four small children inside the house, was enough to get the men to leave the house. These men are now sitting in federal custody in deplorable conditions and will likely be deported. If you have extra income, please consider donating to the families' GoFundMe. I will, and I hope you join me.

This clear display of brutality and government overreach was decried quickly by local news, activists, and most local elected officials. Still, there is a problem with how this brutality is being covered. In the Houston Chronicle’s article about the situation, they say:

“Immediately, Margarita’s husband sped home. In a panic, he left the van, with the keys and his phone inside, in the driveway. The three men shut the door behind them, thinking that would be the end of it. Instead, what followed was a tense standoff of the kind we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in Chicago, L.A. and New York. The kind we would expect — and even support — for forcing a violent drug kingpin out of hiding.”

Overall, I think the Chronicle article does a good job of discussing this incident, but the last line detracts from the movement's pursuit of truly liberatory immigrant justice. While this piece is decrying violence against immigrants in Pasadena, it is reinforcing the false dichotomy between good and bad immigrants and creating a line in the sand for who is worthy versus who is not worthy of empathy. We see this same dichotomy developed in the speech that is really the genesis of this most recent moment of violent repression of immigrants and migrants.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” - Donald Trump

I think the Chronicle would stand against this statement, but creating this dichotomy in their reporting is the exact rhetorical tool that got us into this situation. When Trump and ICE promote their immigration enforcement, they hone in on and prop up their deportation of drug kingpins, rapists, and murderers. They know this riles up their base, and confuses the general population that their immigration enforcement is targeting “criminals.” When reporters and advocates use this same dichotomy, we are not attacking the framing itself that some people are deserving of deportation. By not attacking the idea of deportation itself, we are creating space to argue about who should and shouldn’t be deported. White nationalists and Republicans can and will use this opening and prey on the xenophobia people have to get a blank check for immigration enforcement.

When the Chronicle makes this argument, they are advocating for a softer form of immigration enforcement that only targets the ‘bad’ immigrants. However, this softer form of enforcement is still dehumanizing to immigrants. The Chronicle and other people using this rhetoric must decide if they believe deportation and detention are inhumane or not. Either it is a disgusting act for the government to kidnap people and send them thousands of miles from their families and support system, or it’s not. This fantasy narrative of immigration enforcement that only deports those who we deem undesirable is also not a possibility. If we give agencies like ICE any power at all, they will wield it to terrorize immigrant and migrant communities with impunity. Democrats marketed the 1994 Crime Bill as a way to target violent criminals and “super-predators,” but the result we got was a further expansion of mass incarceration and the Prison-Industrial Complex. Creating dichotomies between whose humanity is worth protecting will always lead to an increased attack on all people in America. I am older than ICE. If we care about all immigrants, then the only answer we have is to call for ICE to be abolished. This does not have to be our future if we do not want it to be.

Once again, I hope you will consider supporting Margarita’s fundraiser. For my people in Pasadena, let us keep showing up for each other and demand that the Pasadena Police Department stop working with ICE. For everyone in Harris County, coalitions like Houston Leads are doing work to limit ICE’s power locally. Getting organized is the only way we can win. If you enjoyed the article, I hope you will consider dropping a like or subscribing (is free) , so you get all of my future writing.

Much Love.