In recent weeks, thousands of people have taken the streets to protest mass deportations, violations of human rights, and violations of the civil rights of dozens of American citizens.
Citizens have been stopped in the streets by immigration agents and questioned about their immigration status, just because of their skin color, their accent or because they speak Spanish. They have then been released because the police found no evidence that they were undocumented immigrants.
The Navajo people have reported that ICE has entered their communities to ask for documents.
First and second generation citizens or newly naturalized citizens have also been confronted by immigration authorities. This happens almost exclusively to the Latinx community, where anyone can be detained and questioned about their immigration status and considered collateral damage of immigration policies.
This is a blatant attack against the Latin American community throughout the country. Latinx are being forced to prove their citizenship.
Nowadays in America, citizens of Hispanic appearance must carry all the documents that can serve as identification, just in case the authorities require it.
Nowadays in America, immigrants have been tattooed with a barcode on an electronic bracelet.
Fear has spread throughout the undocumented immigrant population in general and also among immigrants who are in the process of regularizing their immigration status, since they have been the primary target of deportations. The immigration police have all their data, they can monitor them electronically through devices that they wear on their ankles or wrist like a watch and they are even being tracked through their phone device.
This fear has spread throughout the Latino community in general, Latinx families know that they can be detained and interrogated.
That has created some issues in mixed status communities, in which some hispanics stay away from their own, because no one likes to be questioned by federal immigration police in front of their friends, family, or coworkers. They stay away because they think they are going to be questioned, because their friends don't speak English well, or because they haven't been in the country long enough, etc.
The Hispanic community social network has been damaged, many friendships break up, people distance themselves from their friends, even from their relatives and acquaintances.
This technique of divide and conquer has been prove be effective in our community.
I am currently working for the Athens Housing Advocacy Team. They contracted me to create a Latinx neighborhood union in Athens. One of the people who collaborated with me doing interviews suddenly stopped coming and didn't answer my messages for a while. After several days he responded to me, apologizing that he couldn't continue with us, since he is afraid of the police in general. Even though this person has permission to work legally in the United States, and has a bachelor's degree, he is still afraid.
At the same time, people in the community won’t open the door and they are not willing to talk about tenant rights or unions, because they are victims of a terror campaign.
The terror is not unfounded, this terror is real.
There was a flyer circulating on social media, promoting that people who are seen at the marches with Mexican flags, should have their faces photographed, their license plates taken, and they should be reported to the Border Patrol.
Undocumented immigrants are not taking to the streets and marching, they are afraid of immigration police, they are afraid of Donald Trump, they are afraid of white supremacists and armed militias.
However, their children, who are American citizens, are taking to the streets, in protest of racial profiling and the mistreatment they are suffering.
These young Latinx, know deep down that they are second-class citizens. They recognize that the United States, even though it is their country of birth, does not represent them because of their skin color and the culture they inherited from their parents. Schools refuse to teach Chicano studies, so young Hispanics are forced to adapt their identity to European culture. This is part of a low-impact ethnic “cleansing” implemented since colonial times.
These young people have seen their people being detained and questioned about their immigration status and that is why they say enough is enough.
Last week in Athens, hundreds of young people gathered at the arch of the university of GA and they marched to the city hall. Several of these young people drove around in their trucks, proudly displaying flags from Mexico and other Latin American countries.
They represent the ignored Athens, the one that comes out of the shadows from time to time.
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