During This Holiday We Should Give Grace and Respect To Targeted Immigrant Communities
Turkey and pie hit the tables on Thursday. Meanwhile, families are being pulled apart in stores, clubs, parking lots, cars, courthouses, bus stops, job sites, you name it. As we go on carving our turkey immigrant communities, mostly of Hispanic and Latino descent, brace for the moment that stops their American Dream. It is unsettling and it feels familiar in the worst way.
Reports say the latest phase of Trump’s immigration crackdown has swept up people with and without criminal records, people who have been here for decades, and people who are citizens but still get treated like they are not. ICE detentions are skyrocketing. Arrests are hitting record highs. Most of those being detained have no criminal background, no violent history, and no real warning.
Unlike Obama, whose removal priorities at least attempted to focus on public safety threats, Trump’s framework treats every undocumented immigrant as equally deportable and threat level is irrelevant. A missed court date, a decades old visa issue, a speeding ticket, or simply being present without status all get treated the same.
Some folks try to balance the morality of it by saying Obama deported more people. The numbers are not wrong, yet Trump still has three years left until he terms out trailing not far behind Obama numbers.
So as we are here with casseroles and football, pretending this is a normal holiday, the question nags: is this what segregation felt like for those not directly affected? Was it just another Thursday while another sector of the nation lived under a different reality?
The comparison is not perfect, but the sensation is familiar. During the height of segregation and the Jim Crow era, Black people endured legalized humiliation, state intimidation, and the normalized threat of violence. Business-as-usual continued while our community lived in fear.
Now immigrants, including U.S. citizens who are mistaken for immigrants, are targets of another legalized policy.
Opinions in the Black community about immigration have always been layered. Pew Research has found that African Americans overwhelmingly see Latin American immigrants as hardworking and family centered. They generally support immigrants’ civil and human rights and oppose discrimination and mistreatment. At the same time, there are real concerns about economic survival. Twenty-two percent of Black people say they or a family member have lost a job to an immigrant worker. Thirty-four percent believe immigrants take jobs from American citizens.
But still, the Black community has consistently voted in ways that support immigrant communities. Sharing a history of resistance, the Chicano Movement drew heavily from the Black Power and Civil Rights movements in the 60s. The visions for dignity and self determination were nearly parallel. But unity gets messy in a system that constantly pits minority groups against one another economically, politically, and socially.
The 2024 election complicated the picture. While voting patterns across demographic groups still resembled 2016 and 2020, Trump’s gains among Black and Hispanic voters were enough to help him win the presidency.
Black voters shifted toward Trump, according to Pew Research, though they remained strongly Democratic. His support in the Black community nearly doubled, rising from 8 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2024. Even with that jump, Harris still won 83 percent of Black voters.
Hispanic voters were divided in 2024, a major shift from 2020 and 2016. Trump shattered the Latino voting record for a Republican, pulling 42 percent of the vote. Harris held the majority Latino vote at 56 percent, but Trump came within three points of her overall. His share of the Latino vote was a major improvement from his first presidential campaign in 2016, where he captured only 28 percent, and 32 percent in 2020.
During this holiday season, while we stop to eat, shop, the machinery of ICE and Homeland Security keeps moving. Children are waking up without parents. The cruelty, parents being taken away from children and their families, that you see your news feed is not theoretical. It is happening in real time, nationwide, in our neighborhoods, and under the same sky where the rest of us will feast on our turkeys.
As for Thanksgiving, the country will pretend everything is normal. But a lot of people will sit down to dinner knowing it could be their last meal in a country they have given their whole lives to.
Until then, good night, good luck, and Happy Thanksgiving.
