Who Are We Resisting?

On friends and neighbors

In a video clip, a little child wails in a stranger’s grip while other masked men grab the child’s mother and push her into an SUV. In Mississippi, a number of children as young as 10 years old are left all alone after school with no one to pick them up or go home to, after their parents are taken away by ICE agents. In Massachusetts, a beloved high school kid is snatched on his way to volleyball practice. In Nebraska, dozens of workers are arrested at a meat packing plant then quickly deported, despite holding valid permits to work in the US, some having lived in the US for decades and raised their children here. Hundreds more workers are similarly rounded up across numerous states—at construction sites, restaurants, farms—throwing businesses into chaos and leaving kids without parents.

I’ve published plenty here about how I am comfortable with complexity for the most part. If anything, I’m bothered by simplicity—as in simplistic perspectives and takes on things. I’ve shared my disdain for certainty and black-or-white thinking.

But some things are actually simple. For example, it’s wrong to arrest and deport people with no due process (it’s also illegal). It’s especially wrong when no crime has been committed, and when the targets are regular working people with families, people who work hard and pay taxes, people who have already been vetted and cleared and given work permits, who are trying to come here “the right way,” who show up as required to their mandatory court hearings only to be arrested at the courthouse. And it’s double-especially wrong when the agents hide their faces (also illegal) and use violence and terror, smash car windows, tear mothers away from wailing children, put little kids in handcuffs, etc.

For those of us who protest on behalf of the people being targeted, it’s easy to point at what we are protesting. The question of who is trickier. We can point to ICE agents, and certain politicians and officials, and Trump of course. But those obscure the more difficult truth that certain of our friends, family members, and neighbors jump to defend actions that seem so simply and clearly wrong.

We are a nation of laws

So some of them say. Or some version of that, the gist being that these people broke the law and therefore should suffer consequences. Or maybe it was the parents who broke the law. Or the employer. In any case, they should have followed the law and someone needs to pay. Or all of them. It’s their problem not ours.

Never mind that being in the country without legal status is not itself a crime.¹ Many defenders of mass deportation don’t seem to know that, or maybe they do know but don’t care. Maybe they think it should be a crime and are wishing it so. Maybe they’re just lying. In any case, even if being undocumented was a crime, it’s still up to us as a society to decide which laws to enforce and how.

But we can’t just pick and choose which laws to enforce

That’s another rationale I’ve heard, and of course it’s just silly talk. As a society we pick and choose all the time. In fact most of us break various laws on a regular basis, some we’re aware of (speeding, jaywalking) and plenty we don’t know about. More importantly, laws may run counter to morality. In 1940s Germany, there was a legal framework for the state to disappear and murder Jews, while it was illegal for people to protect them. This is an idea that Tom Homan seems all to eager to revive, promising to prosecute anyone who harbors illegal immigrants.

Finally, though I generally avoid ‘double-standard’ type arguments, it seems that quite a few of the can’t-just-pick-and-choose folks were quite happy to do so during the pandemic in defying public health mandates, and also to put a felon in the White House. In other words, it seems that we’re all quite comfortable with selective law enforcement, because we understand that laws have a purpose, which is to protect civil society and create conditions for it to thrive.

From that standpoint, what is the purpose of this immigration crackdown on regular working people and families? What is it supposed to protect us from?

Immigrants are a burden on the country

Immigrants take our jobs, answer some defenders of mass deportation. They put pressure on schools, housing, social services. They commit so many crimes. They illegally vote (for Democrats). Good riddance.

All of this is false. Easily verifiably false.

They are changing our culture

This at least is closer to naked bigotry or xenophobia, which exist on a plane that counter-arguments can’t access. A swath of America once said the same to justify their hostility towards Chinese, Irish, Polish, and other European immigrants, as well as Jews and Catholics. I simply disagree about what “our culture” is and what it’s supposed to be. I think American culture is basically about buying shit. Capitalism is our culture. A less cynical take is that American culture is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Either way, I think it means all are welcome.

It’s fake news

This is the argument of last resort, and I get strangely hopeful when I hear it because in clinging to the belief that DHS is not going after regular people, but only gang members and other serious criminals, a person indicates that we share the same morality. This person presumably believes, like me, that DHS should leave regular working people and families alone. The person is merely ignorant or refusing to face reality, and both these conditions are temporary. Potentially.

Resisting our friends and neighbors

It’s depressing to see people defend notions of law and order that inflict cruelty on those who are already struggling. To defend cruelty as justice for such minor offenses seems morally bankrupt, even if one accepts that these immigration offenses are criminal (which they demonstrably are not). We as a society decide how to enforce our laws, and there’s no justification to accept, let alone defend, such cruelty.

Cruelty aside, it’s also a self-inflicted wound, because to cripple industries like food processing, agriculture, construction, and hospitality will ultimately raise prices, lower quality, and introduce safety risks for all Americans. Furthermore, this focus on immigrants is already cutting deeply into other national security priorities, with money and manpower being redirected. Finally, it is our own tax dollars that pay for these massive ICE operations, mass detentions, lawsuits, etc. We are literally paying for this cruelty and making the country worse as it costs us more.

Lately I’ve been interested in how authoritarianism has played out in different cases, meaning how ordinary people either went along with or resisted it. When we talk about authoritarian regimes, we tend to attribute actions to the leader (Hitler did A) or the regime more generally (the Nazi’s did B). But the leaders themselves rarely pull the trigger. And a regime is made of individuals. So it’s each individual who decides in small but significant moments whether to go along or to resist.

If authoritarianism ultimately comes for you or me, it will be a family member, a friend, or a neighbor who will either protect us or pull the trigger.

1. Most individuals who are in the US without legal status came through a port of entry legally and then overstayed, which is a civil violation rather than a criminal one. Individuals who crossed into the US outside a legal port of entry did indeed commit a federal crime (though one that’s pretty much impossible to prove after the fact, and anyway it’s just a misdemeanor offense the first time). Forging papers to gain entry is a felony.