Jami Nakamura Lin Nicole Cardoza Jami Nakamura Lin Nicole Cardoza

Protect undocumented Americans.

Happy Monday!

We are 29 days from the election, and it's critical to remember how many voices deserve to be heard at the polls. Today, Jami calls us to action to protect undocumented immigrants here in America (and around the world), and provide sanctuary no matter where we live.

As always, you can support the newsletter by giving one-time on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza), or subscribe monthly on Patreon. Thank you for your support.

Nicole 

TAKE ACTION

  • Protect your community and know your rights. Check out United We Dream’s (@unitedwedream) Deportation Defense toolkits for undocumented immigrants and allies.

  • If you witness an ICE raid or spot them in your community, call the MigraWatch Hotline at 1-844-363-1423. This will spread the word and keep others safe.

  • RAICES’s (@raicestexas) Take Action list provides many ways you can support—from tweets to petitions to donations to starting conversations with your family.

  • Donate to your local immigrant mutual aid network or to organizations like UndocuBlack

GET EDUCATED

By Jami Nakamura Lin (she/her)

As we reach the last weeks of the presidential race, the Trump administration, hoping to persuade voters with a strong “law and order” message, is preparing immigration raids in sanctuary cities, according to the Washington Post. On September 24th, Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) officials announced that they arrested over 500 people within a few days (LA Times). Across the country, undocumented immigrants and activists in the targeted cities, including Philadelphia, are getting their communities ready (Philadelphia Inquirer). In the 2018 fiscal year (the most recent year combined data is available), ICE and Border Patrol deported over 337,287 undocumented immigrants from the interior United States (Pew Research Center). This number is separate from people apprehended while attempting to cross the border; these were people who had built lives here. 

 

For those of us who are documented citizens, we can’t understand the pervasive fear, stress, and anxiety that goes along with being undocumented. In a New York Times podcast, an undocumented mother from Nicaragua explains to the host: “Sometimes I cry… you’re like, oh, my God, what I did bad? Just staying in a country where I want to feel safe? I don’t know. I don’t know. Right now, I’m in my car talking to you, and I know, when I get through that door, I have to turn off that light and stay in my room. Why?” (NYTimes The Daily)

 

The woman goes on to describe the way she and her family live when there are rumors of immigration crackdowns: never opening the door, only using a small light, parking in a neighbor’s space instead of their own. Even if the threat never materializes, fear is a powerful tool, one that this administration wields like a hammer to keep undocumented Americans underground, unable to access basic needs like health care during the pandemic (NYTimes). While living in a sanctuary city can be safer for undocumented Americans, due to local protections, it can never be—or feel— truly safe. 

 

The term sanctuary city, in fact, has no specific legal or government-defined meaning.  “Lots of people use the unofficial term “sanctuary city” to refer to local jurisdictions (not just cities but counties and sometimes states) that don’t fully cooperate with federal efforts to find and deport unauthorized immigrants,” explains Dara Lind, in a useful primer on the history and context of sanctuary cities at Vox. “If that sounds vague, that’s because it is, and it gets at the tension between federal policy and local law enforcement generally used to carry out those laws.” 

 

Most of us have a limited view of undocumented Americans—often because of the narrow, biased single narrative that our government and media push: Mexico, border crossings, DACA.  In the new book The Undocumented Americans, author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (the first undocumented student to graduate from provides a nuanced, deeper context, pushing back on the limited narratives we usually see. “This book is for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration, the talking heads, the kids in graduation caps and gowns, and read about the people underground,” she writes in her introduction. “Not heroes. Randoms. People. Characters.” 

 

As she says, undocumented Americans are not a monolithic block. An estimated 619,000 Black undocumented immigrants are residing in the United States (Pew Research Center). They are more likely than non-Black undocumented immigrants to be deported. “Although Black immigrants comprise just 5.4% of the unauthorized population in the United States, they made up a striking 10.6% of all immigrants in removal proceedings between 2003 and 2015,” reports the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. For more information, read interviews with undocumented Black Americans at ThinkProgress and the Atlantic. 

 

If you or your family are (or have ever been) undocumented and want to share your experiences, feel free to share your experience at submissions@antiracismdaily.org; we will not share identifying details.

 

We can help provide sanctuary no matter where we live. United We Dream (the largest immigrant youth-led organization) states: “In a sanctuary… members of that community are united and prepared to protect immigrants from deportation forces… are united against police brutality...  [Sanctuary spaces] are places in which the dignity and integrity of every individual as a human being is respected and preserved” (UWD Here to Stay Toolkit). We need to work to ensure that our actions are guided by such principles. 

 

Part of that is becoming more intentional in thinking about how we privilege citizenship, and what barriers our communities, often unintentionally, present for undocumented people. Some of that means expanding our definitions: in one case, Black students discovered that they weren’t eligible for the few college scholarships open to undocumented students because they weren’t Latinx (The Atlantic). Often, it means asking ourselves how welcoming our spaces are for undocumented people. I used to work for a public library—an institution that prides itself as being for everyone— but at libraries like mine, you need identification, a discriminatory policy that prevents many undocumented people from receiving our services (Time). Undocumented Americans pay billions of dollars in local, state, and federal taxes per year (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy), but they are not able to receive many of the benefits they’re paying for.  


Lastly: remember that the dehumanization of undocumented Americans didn’t start—and won’t end—with Trump. ICE, deportations, and border camps existed under the Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations as well (NYTimes). Our immigration policies have been discriminatory since their implementation. We can fight for better policies, but we need to always remember that communities and people can provide sanctuary in ways that laws cannot.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • In the 2018 fiscal year, 337,287 undocumented immigrants were deported from the United States (Pew Research Center).

  • Black undocumented immigrants are more likely than other undocumented immigrants to be deported (Black Alliance for Just Immigration).

  • Undocumented Americans pay billions of dollars in local, state, and federal taxes per year (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy).

  • The dehumanization of undocumented Americans didn’t start—and won’t end—with Trump. We need to support them no matter who is president.

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