I join Mayor Karen Bass and Episcopal Sacred Resistance – Los Angeles in condemning Friday’s ICE raids at workplaces in downtown Los Angeles and elsewhere in southern California.
Affecting members of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the raids appeared to target not criminals but those earning a living and supporting their families. Along with similar raids in San Diego and elsewhere, they suggest our country is in for a dangerous escalation of the Trump regime’s cruel, nonsensical war on immigrant workers.
Most undocumented immigrant workers are paid by U.S. employers like the rest of us, take care of their families and neighborhoods like the rest of us, and, in many cases, pay their taxes like most of us. President George W. Bush tried to put them on the road to legal status only to be blocked by politicians on both the right and left. The anti-immigrant right thwarted President Obama’s efforts to treat these workers justly.
Because of rising concerns about the number of Central American asylum seekers entering the country under President Biden, even top Democrats stopped insisting on a road to legal residency and citizenship for immigrant workers. In his rhetoric, Trump callously refuses to make a distinction between criminals and otherwise law-abiding immigrant workers.
But even if the president won’t tell the truth, we each have a responsibility to face up to it. These workers pick our fruit and vegetables and clean our hotel rooms and houses. They work in offices, restaurants, factories, and car washes. They don’t take work from citizens. They are part of a hemispheric labor market which our politicians refuse to recognize and regulate because these workers have no vote, no political representation, and virtually no advocates in the halls of power. It unfortunately goes without saying that most are people of color. They do our hardest jobs, but we can no longer be bothered to do ours as citizens and enable them to live in the light as they deserve.
Because Trump and his minions pressured ICE to increase the number of deportations, our neighbors and friends were wrenched from their workplaces and families. They deserve justice and mercy but got handcuffs and detention cells. They are here because their employers need and want them. It is both humane and logical to enable them to stay. Instead, our government’s policy amounts to an authoritarian chaos of depravity and stupidity.
Let us pray:
God of compassion and justice, give the people of the United States a better understanding of the plight of the immigrant worker. Inspire us to demand that our leaders undertake the long-overdue work of regularizing their status. Taking advantage of their labor while giving them no means of security or political representation is our greatest civic sin. Lord, have mercy upon us. In the name of Jesus Christ, who came to free the prisoner and care for those whom power had forgotten. Amen.