In December, our monthly Racial Justice Conversation focused on the current, abominable mistreatment of immigrants and refugees in the United States. Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), offered a powerful overview of the history of U.S. immigration policy and what is going on now —including the attacks on immigrants and refugees by ICE and other governmental agencies.  This post is my reflections on several key points of her talk and our discussion. Her detailed notes can be found at  here: https://thadams.com/immigration-policy-and-practices-talk-notes-anna-gallagher-racial-justice-conversations-dec-3-2025/

Much of our immigration policy today is driven by fear and false accusations aimed at long-time neighbors. Fear grows where there is little connection and many assumptions. When we live mostly among people who look and act like us, it becomes easier to see those with different backgrounds as “other.” That fear of difference lies at the heart of today’s white nationalist policies and fuels our harmful approach to immigrants and refugees.

Anna’s talk reminded me how many immigrants I have come to know since moving to the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC. Through family networks, I have come to know and count as friends several families from El Salvador and Guatemala. I know their stories of coming to the United States, working in service jobs as painters, apartment maintenance personnel, housekeepers, nannies, and lawn care workers. I have watched as several have built their own companies, married, raised families, and support their children completing college and graduate school.

 Against this backdrop, the front page of the Washington Post on December 31 reported ICE’s plans to recruit 10,000 new agents over the next year and spend $100 million.
The headline read: “ICE plans $100 million ‘wartime recruitment’ push targeting gun shows, military fans for hires.” The article details a campaign framed in war-like language to attract recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” to “defend the homeland” from “foreign invaders.” The number of ICE agents would grow from 20,000 to 30,000 in one year.

Where will this new “war” be fought? In neighborhoods where immigrants and refugees live. And who will be targeted? People we know as neighbors, relatives, and coworkers—people who harvest crops, maintain homes and apartments, and build the housing we all depend on.

Anna shared her experience working within a national network of legal service providers for immigrants and refugees. The current enforcement campaign does not distinguish between those with and without legal status. People with legal rights are afraid to go to the grocery store. Immigration processing systems are paralyzed, with individuals detained for months awaiting hearings. Where legal aid once focused on pathways to green cards and citizenship, attorneys are now forced into constant defense work in a system that is effectively broken.

My other big take away from this discussion was just how long the immigration system has been broken. The last comprehensive immigration reform legislation was passed in 1986.  Nearly forty years of gridlock and reactive policy actions have swung between openness and restriction, based on needs for workers, racial and foreign policy fears and advocacy from civil rights organizations. A look at the history of immigration legislation shows the racism that drove whites only policies and bias to western European countries, attacks on people of Asian background, and temporary protections like the 2012 DACA legislation allowing protection to children of people who immigrated here.

I came to see this once again as a form of structural racism: individuals blamed and punished for the failures of national policy, and legitimate concerns about border security used to scapegoat and terrorize entire communities—our neighbors.

One hopeful sign amid these attacks is the growth of grassroots organizing to protect those being targeted. Here in Greenbelt, residents have formed the Greenbelt Resistance Network, showing up at court hearings related to the wrongful deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and protesting ICE activity in the area. (I’ll share more about similar efforts in Durham, North Carolina, in a future post.)

It is hard not to see a desire to preserve white control of America in the aggressive targeting of immigrants and refugees today. The loving response is to resist this harm, to challenge the expansion and tactics of ICE, and to rebuild a broad coalition committed to real and just immigration reform.

Please join us Wednesday, January 7 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern on Zoom as we continue the conversation about what is ours to do—to learn, to act, and to protect those under attack.
Email tom@thadams.com for the Zoom link.