Beyond La Frontera: What We Learned About Rural Immigration Raids This Summer
Nourelhoda Eidy, Ronnie Alvarez, and Madeline Simone–undergraduate researchers with the ICE in the Heartland project–published this reflection in Latino Rebels on Sept. 26, 2019.
As three students who spent our summers learning about the health impacts of immigration work raids, we find it is necessary to reflect on the implications of Trump’s interior enforcement tactics. Our research is enabled by accounts of people either directly affected by raids or those who helped with responding to the crisis. We recognize that immigration raids are largely politicized, which is evidenced by the increased number of large-scale worksite raids since Trump was elected in 2016. As a research group in the public health sector, we aim to draw connections between the human rights violations that are raids to the health and social implications they have on mixed-status communities.
To begin, two types of raids are either worksite or in the comfort of your own home. ICE enforcement can take many forms—as they frequently collaborate with local police, sometimes including SWAT-like units with no-knock warrants. One tactic is that local police will station checkpoints in neighborhoods with high concentrations of Latinx individuals and pull over cars. This tactic is highly driven by racial motives.
Read the full article here.
