Large-scale immigration worksite raids: community disaster, community response

ABSTRACT

Immigration enforcement – or the surveillance, detention, and deportation of noncitizens – detrimentally impacts health, with spillover effects on the families of those targeted. However, less is known about how immigration enforcement impacts communities, regardless of the immigration statuses of members. Immigration worksite raids can involve hundreds of agents, helicopters, and buses descending unannounced upon rural towns with small Latino populations and removing dozens of members in a day. This egregious enforcement tactic presents the opportunity to better understand how communities organize to mitigate the harm of these events. We conducted semistructured interviews in Spanish and English in six communities that experienced the largest worksite raids in 2018. Participants were 77 adults who provided material, emotional, or professional support following raids. We used qualitative analysis methods to code all interviews and develop a timeline characterizing raid impact and response. The day of the raid is characterized by chaos, confusion, and fear, which resulted in hiding out in churches and schools and supporting the children of those who disappeared. The days and weeks that followed were characterized by hunger, resulting in multiple strategies aimed at keeping the community fed, along with efforts to re-integrate children into schools. Months after, communities began to organize rideshares and finally address health concerns. We end with recommendations to mitigate the community-wide damage of worksite raids while advocating against their use.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration enforcement
• raids
• Latino
• deportation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

Lopez, Gudino, and Novak contributed to the theory and sampling and conducted the interviews. Lopez and Novak coded the interviews and were responsible for most of the writing. Shull and Godinez reviewed the writing, contributed to the framing, and organized the sampling.

Ethics approval

This research was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the Universities of Michigan (HUM00146458) and Iowa (201811206).

Consent to participate

Participants engaged in an informed consent process in which they were informed of their rights as a research participant, including to discontinue the interview at any time. We received a waiver of documentation of consent to protect participant anonymity.

Consent for publication

The informed consent process explained that data would be kept indefinitely in a secure storage system at the University of Michigan. We are not publishing individual images nor individual data that allows a participant to be identified.

Availability of data and material

To maintain participant safety on sensitive topics, interview transcripts are not publicly available.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by grants from The University of Michigan Institute for Research on Women and Gender [IRWG]; the Documenting Criminalization and Confinement Research Initiative of the University of Michigan Carceral State Project; and pilot funding from the University of Iowa Prevention Research Center for Rural Health, Cooperative Agreement Number, DP005021-01.