Portside

The Trump administration’s first moves on immigration enforcement represent an unprecedented hard-line position, envisioning thousands of new agents, enlisting local police as immigration enforcers, making virtually anyone a priority for deportation, bypassing immigration courts, and, of course, ordering the construction of the infamous wall along the Mexican border. And then there is the president’s own rhetoric equating immigrants with criminals.

During the Great Depression, a period of vast unemployment and underemployment, at least over a million—Joe Dunn thinks in terms of maybe almost 2 million—individuals, Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent, were swept up and expelled out of this country.

I was among more than 400 people who attended a Protect RP organizational meeting Monday night, an extraordinary display of how hungry people are to Do Something.

Donald Trump's draconian immigration enforcement efforts face a basic challenge: the United States operates within an economic system that profits off immigrant labor. Immigrant labor is more vital to many industries than it's ever been before. Today, about 57% of the country's entire agricultural workforce is undocumented. But the list of other industries dependent on immigrant labor is long.

The U.S. Supreme Court has voted 4-4 in one of the most consequential immigration cases in recent history, United States v. Texas. The High Court's failure to fall one way or another in the case leaves in place a lower court decision that blocks the Obama administration's deferred action immigration initiatives known as DAPA and the expansion of DACA from being implemented. An Atlanta coalition of local community organizations have launched an ICE Free Zones campaign.

Reader Comments: Deportations and Anti-Latino Racism; Flint Poisonings - Ordered by Gob. Snyder; Attack on Public Sector Unions; Bernie; Oregon; Support BDS; Susan Sarandon Supports Bernie; Help Support UAW Local 2865, which democratically voted to endorse the BDS campaign; Robert Rhodes; Speaking Out Against the Madness - Ruth Horowitz; Concussions? - Drink Chocolate Milk; Lots of announcements - Lafayette (IN); New York; Washington, DC; activist scholarships...

The tide is turning, but we need stronger executive action to end our country’s unjust deportation policy.