The New York Times will never stop pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants. In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, contributing writer and Latino activist Marcela Valdes devoted 6,000 words on the evil of Arizona's crackdown on "undocumented" (illegal) immigrants, and how to resist U.S. immigration law: “Is It Possible To Resist Deportations In The Age of Trump?” The text box: “Living under draconian state laws, Arizona activists honed an effective strategy for keeping undocumented immigrants in the country. Can the same tools still work today?”
Apparently, America is the only country not allowed to have a border, and a media outlet feels free to broadcasting tips on resisting law enforcement (which is not exactly how the paper treated conservative gay marriage opponents in Kentucky, after the Supreme Court made it the law of the land).
Valdes followed the saga of Guadalupe García Aguilar, the first person deported under “President Donald Trump’s new executive orders on immigration.”
....Until that moment, she and her family had not wanted to believe that the executive orders Trump signed on Jan. 25 had made her expulsion a priority. She had been living in the United States for 22 years, since she was 14 years old; she was the mother of two American citizens; she had missed being eligible for DACA by just a few months. Suddenly, none of that counted anymore.
Why would Aguilar think it ever did? Valdes eventually noted that García Aguilar “had a felony for using a fabricated Social Security number.”
Valdes showed no qualms about the dangerous tactics by advocates for illegal immigrants.
That night a handful of protesters tried to block several vans as they sped from the building’s side exit. More protesters came running from an ICE decoy bus that had initially distracted those attending the vigil out front. Manuel Saldaña, an Army veteran who did two tours in Afghanistan, planted himself on the ground next to one van’s front tire, wrapping his arms and legs around the wheel. The driver looked incredulous; if he moved the van forward now, he would break one of Saldaña’s....
But to no avail. There were seven arrests, and Aguilar was taken to Nogales, Mexico.
During the Obama years, most immigrant rights organizations focused on big, idealistic legislation: the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration reform, neither of which ever made it through Congress. But Puente kept its focus on front-line battles against police-ICE collaboration. For Garcia, who was undocumented until a stepfather adopted him at 16, the most important thing is simply to contest all deportations, without exception. He estimates that Puente has had a hand in stopping about 300 deportations in Arizona since 2012.
Ever since Arizona passed Senate Bill 1070, one of the toughest anti-undocumented bills ever signed into law, the state has been known for pioneering the kind of draconian tactics that the Trump administration is now turning into federal policy. But if Arizona has been a testing ground for the nativist agenda, it has also been an incubator for resistance to it. Among the state’s many immigrant rights groups, Puente stands out as the most seasoned and most confrontational. In the weeks and months following Election Day 2016 -- as progressive groups suddenly found themselves on defense, struggling to figure out how to handle America’s new political landscape -- Garcia was inundated with calls for advice....
No “illegals” here, only “undocumented” people:
During the 1990s, after President Bill Clinton’s administration cracked down on illegal entries at the border near San Diego, migrants crossed the desert into Arizona instead, and the state’s undocumented population swelled. In response, the State Legislature passed laws intended to make the daily lives of the undocumented untenable, a legal strategy known as “attrition through enforcement.”....
....
For readers of Mexican-American history, this sudden hardening of attitudes toward the undocumented was unsurprising....
Then came the tips to facilitate law-breaking.
In comités, people learned several ways of avoiding deportation. If a police officer pulled them over while driving, they could exercise their constitutional right to remain silent when they were asked whether they were American citizens. If an officer didn’t explicitly detain them, they could walk away from their cars to avoid further questions. If officers appeared at their homes, they could demand to see a warrant before opening the door....
She even went after Obama from the left:
Obama deported nearly three million undocumented immigrants, more than any president in American history. For Puente, one of the stranger outcomes of Trump’s election is that, for the first time, they stand a chance of dismantling some police-ICE collaborations. Fighting individual deportation cases has become harder, but policy battles have gained traction in Phoenix, where Democrats still hold significant power. “Now it’s convenient for Democrats to shame a deportation,” Garcia told me.
There were some interesting insights into Democratic hypocrisy as seen from the left:
Under Obama, he speculated, many Democrats were reluctant to oppose any of the president’s policies. Under Trump, they saw political advantage in talking about deportations, sanctuary cities and immigrant rights -- especially now that the undocumented had found new allies...
More strange new respect for religion when it may help liberal activists (how often does the Old Testament get quoted in the New York Times?) in a gathering at a Phoenix Church. Valdes more or less portrayed ICE as fighting against God:
“...which had offered to house Arreola if she chose sanctuary. Pastor James Pennington had been active in the fight for gay rights....Inside the church, members of Puente and former members of ADAC formed a circle with several non-Hispanics who had only recently allied themselves with the undocumented. Standing together they recited Psalm 30 in Spanish:
Te ensalzaré, oh Señor, porque me has elevado, y no has permitido que mis enemigos se rían de mi.
I’ll praise you, Lord, because you’ve lifted me up. You haven’t let my enemies laugh at me.
Yet their enemies remained hard at work....
