As immigration scholars, we have long studied policies and politics that shape the way people cross borders, build communities and seek opportunities. He interviewed families, analyzed survey data, worked with immigration organizations, informed local governments, and documented the complex ways immigration law shapes everyday life.
But these days, our inboxes have fewer cool data queries and more desperate questions about travel, safety and rights.
International students are asking us if they should leave this summer to visit their families or to conduct research. After all, student visa graduate students and researchers have seen legal status revoked without explanations or legitimate processes based on political activities, social media posts, and even old parking tickets. The State Department calls this policy “catch and revocation,” but let’s name the tools for political intimidation and ideological surveillance, as to what it is.
And it’s not just students and academics. Undocumented residents, legal permanent residents, and members of their mixed status families find themselves torn apart by fear and uncertainty.
There are about one million undocumented immigrants living in Los Angeles County, and more than 200,000 in neighboring Orange County. They’re not newcomers. In Los Angeles, more than 70% of the US has existed in the US for at least 10 years, according to the latest estimates at the USC Equity Institute. And these Californians who may have crossed the border without their approval are over the number by their close relatives, who are American citizens and legal permanent residents.
These immigrants are not part of society. They are our society. They are our neighbors, colleagues, community leaders, and family. They raise children in our school districts, run the small businesses they need, and help rebuild our area after the fires destroy our community.
Now they are being detained or deported. Or they simply slip into the shadows, fearing driving, fearing going to work, fearing to drop off their kids at school. It’s happening in Highland Park. In Lynwood. In Fullerton, where one of our daughters worry every morning, she worries about what will happen to her friends and her family.
She seems to know that others need to recognize. The lives and fate of these mixed-status families are bound by ours by the broader reality of everyday interaction and danger.
This moment is a moral crisis and a democratic crisis. Immigration enforcement is at the forefront of testing how far the government can go by punishing, monitoring and silencing people. The federal government integrates numerous big data sources from individual agencies, including the US Postal Service, Social Security, the IRS, and the Refugee Resettlement Agency, targeting adults and children of various legal positions. Immigration and customs enforcement agencies are quietly building infrastructure for mass detention by resuscitating agreements with local police and state agencies across the country to help them discover and eliminate immigrants.
Legal permanent residents and citizens are also being wiped out. Last week, ICE deported three U.S. citizens, one of whom suffered from the rare stage 4 cancer, along with their mother. In another case, 20 armed ice agents attack the homes of their mother in Oklahoma City and her three daughters (all US citizens), standing outside in the rain of underwear, as the ice confiscates electronics and life savings.
The mechanisms used against immigrants – unprecedented levels of civil data sharing across federal agencies, building detention forces, revoking secret visas, and illegal detention of citizens – are the same things that can be used to suppress, limit freedom and punish those who challenge government power. When we watch a widely seen video of an unidentified masked operative who grabs Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University as she walks down Massachusetts Avenue, we all inform: immigration enforcement is where authoritarian tactics are sharpened and tested.
That is why we are reinforced by momentum of movement built on solidarity, resistance and collective care. All across Southern California, we see people rise up in advocate for immigrant communities – not just in protest, but in practical, collective ways to make a difference in the daily lives of immigrants. The school district has adopted a sanctuary policy. The principal refuses to put ice on campus. Mutual Aid Network provides legal assistance, emergency funding and community defense. Immigration rights groups are attracting large crowds for their “know your rights” workshops. And our neighbors are taking care of each other.
This is what makes it seem like democracy. People refuse to abandon each other.
From city councils to school boards and universities, our public institutions need to support. That means checking records and attendance daily to protect international students from illegal deportation. It means legal support, public education, conservation policies at local and state levels that increase immigration safety, and quick response protocols when ice is operating in a neighborhood or local area. It means dealing with people of all statuses what they are: key members of our community.
Research can play a role. When misinformation spreads quickly, carefully collected data can challenge those who associate immigrants with crime, track erosion of civil liberty, and measure the human impact of enforcement. When power is being exercised to punish, eliminate and erode freedom, research helps institutions to be accountable, defend humanitarian policies, and affirm the dignity of those most at stake.
But at this moment, I feel that the language and academic neutrality of the data is terribly inadequate. Our region has always been at the forefront of justice, resistance and possibilities. We can control fear and cruelty. Otherwise, you can continue to meet in this moment with courage and clarity. In Los Angeles and Orange counties, where immigration is woven so strongly into our presence, we understand. If immigrants are under attack, we are all. And when we fight for their freedom, we protect ourselves.
Jody Agius Vallejo and Manuel Pastor are professors of sociology at USC and lead the university’s equity research institute.
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