As an immigration specialists, we have long studied politicians and politics that shape the way people cross borders, build communities and sought opportunities. We have interviewed families, analyzed survey data, collaborated with immigrant organizations, informed local governments and documented complex ways whose immigration law shapes daily life.
But recently, our reception boxes have fewer questions for impartial data and more desperate questions about travel, security and rights.
International students ask us if they should leave the country this summer to visit their families or carry out research. After all, graduate students and researchers on student visas have seen their Legal status revoked without explanation or regular proceduresometimes based on their political activity, their publications on social networks or even Old Parking Buets. The State Department Call this policy “Catch and Revoke” – but name it for what it is: a tool for political intimidation and ideological surveillance.
And they are not only students and academics. Throughout southern California, undocumented residents, legal permanent residents and their family members of mixed statutes find their life torn apart by fear and uncertainty.
There are almost a million undocumented immigrants living in the County of Los Angeles and more than 200,000 in the County of Orange next. These are not newcomers: in Los Angeles, according to our most recent estimates at the USC Equity Research Institute, more than 70% have been in the United States for at least a decade. And these Californians who may have crossed the border without authorization or exceeded a visa are in inferiority by their immediate family members who are American citizens and permanent residents.
These immigrants are not on the sidelines of society. They are Our society. They are our neighbors, colleagues, community leaders and family members. They raise their children in our school districts, will run to small businesses and helped to rebuild our region after fires have ravaged our communities.
Now they are detained or expelled. Or they just slip into the shadows, are afraid of driving, are afraid of going to work, are afraid of placing their children at school. This occurs at Highland Park. In Lynwood. To Fullerton, where the daughter of one of us worries every morning, which will happen to her friends and their families.
She seems to know what others must recognize: the life and fate of these families of mixed statutes are linked to ours by daily interactions and by the broader reality of what is at stake.
For this moment, a moral – and democratic crisis. The application of immigration has become the front line to test how far our government can go to punish, monitor and silence people. The federal government merges a multitude of megadron sources with individual agencies, including American postal service,, Social security,, IRS and the Refugee resettlement officeTo target adults and children of various legal statutes. Immigration and customs application is also quietly building the infrastructure for mass detentions by Resuscitation agreements With local police and state agencies across the country to help find and eliminate immigrants.
Residents and legal permanent citizens are also swept. Last week, ice expelled three children – one of which has rare cancer of stadium 4 – with their mothers. In another case, 20 armed ice agents made a descent into the house of a mother and her three daughters in Oklahoma City – all American citizens – making them stand outside in the rain in their underwear while the ice has confiscated their electronics and their savings.
The mechanisms used against immigrants – unprecedented levels of private data sharing between federal agencies, the construction of a detention army, the revocations of secret visas and the illegal citizens' detention – are the same people who could be used to remove dissent, limit freedoms and punish any person who disputes the government of the government. Look at the wide view video Unidentified and masked agents entering the graduate student of TUFTS RUMEYSA OZTURK University while she goes down to a Massachusetts street puts us into account: the application of immigration is the place where authoritarian tactics are refined and tested.
This is why we are reinforced by the momentum of a movement built on solidarity, resistance and collective care. Everywhere in southern California, we see people getting up to defend the community of immigrants – not only for manifestations, but in a practical and collective way that makes a difference in the daily life of immigrants. School districts adopt sanctuary policies. Directors refuse to leave ice on campuses. Mutual aid networks offer legal support, emergency funds and community defense. Immigrant rights organizations attract a huge crowd for the “Know Your Rights” workshops. And the neighbors are worry about each other.
This is what democracy looks like: people refuse to surrender.
Our public institutions – from municipal councils to school councils to universities – must help. This means checking files and attendance daily to protect international students from unjustified expulsion. This means legal support, public education, local protection policies and the state that strengthen the security of immigrants and rapid response protocols when ice is active in a neighborhood or region. This means to deal with people of all status as what they are: vital members of our communities.
Research can play a role. When disinformation spreads quickly, carefully collected data allow us to challenge those who associate immigrants with crime, to follow the erosion of civil freedoms, to measure the human impact of the application. At a time when power is exercised to punish, exclude and erode freedoms, research can help us keep responsible institutions, defend human politics and affirm the dignity of those who are most threatened.
But at the moment, the language of data and learned neutrality seems terribly inadequate. Our region has always formed a front line – for justice, for resistance, for the possibility. We can allow fear and cruelty to reign, or we can continue to meet this moment with courage and clarity. In the counties of Los Angeles and Orange, where immigrants are so strongly woven in our existence, we understand: if the immigrants are attacked, we are all. And when we fight for their freedom, we defend ours.
Jody Agius Vallejo and the Pastor of Manuel are teachers of sociology at the USC, where they lead the University Research Institute.
