— by Lilly Fowler and Enrique Cerna from Crosscut.com —
Maru Mora Villalpando at the NW Detention Center, Nov. 2014, photo credit Manuel Valdes, Associated Press
As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] continues to crack down on undocumented immigrants around the country, the agency has sent a prominent immigrant-rights activist in Washington a notice that it is initiating deportation proceedings against her.
Maru Mora Villalpando, 47, known nationwide as an immigrant leader and a key organizer of protests at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, received a notice to appear in immigration court, a first step toward deportation.
“I believe that ICE sent me this letter and started deportation proceedings against me because they are not so much against my immigration status, but against my political work,” Villalpando said in her first interview since receiving notice from ICE. “This is political oppression. That’s what they’re doing. ICE is finalizing the transition from law enforcement into a political-oppression apparatus.”
Villalpando is one of several well-known activists recently targeted by ICE. Last week, for example, ICE detained Ravi Ragbir, executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City. His arrest sparked protests that led to the arrest of 18 people. That same day, ICE also picked up Eliseo Jurado, the husband of Ingrid Latorre, who is fighting deportation as she takes sanctuary in a Colorado church. Jean Montrevil, co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition, was also detained. Villalpando received her letter from ICE last month, just before the Christmas holiday.
(To read the full article, go to https://crosscut.com/2018/01/ice-targets-maru-mora-prominent-immigration-activist-for-deportation )
In the country illegally, organizes protests against immigration policy, draws attention of immigration officials who start deportation process. Who could have predicted that?
From my perspective as a historian, that the people involved are in the US illegally is not all that needs to be considered when making decisions about immigrants.
Laws and perspectives on immigrants, and who is and is not considered acceptable, have changed dramatically. For example, in the early 20th century immigrants from some European countries were considered undesirable, and not white. At one time immigrants from Ireland were called Black Irish. Who today would label all Americans of Irish background as not white? Other examples: All four of my grandparents, and my father, were labeled non white when they arrived as immigrants. Yet when I was born my birth certificate said “white”. If my father had arrived 9 years later than he did, he would have been considered an illegal. Until the 1970 census people from Mexico living in the US were classified by the census as white.
My point from these examples is, just because the laws today define someone as undesirable, or illegal, or even not white, doesn’t mean that that will be true a year, or five, or ten from now. Who is defined as illegal is not written in stone; it’s a moving target.
The history of immigration to our nation says to me it’s important to be flexible, to be respectful, and to consider the larger context — as well as the current law.