by Susan van Gelder

Winter in Southwest Detroit means ICE, and not only the slippery untreated streets. A mix of reports, information, commentary and dialogue follow:

The raids against immigrants continue, as early as five AM.

DETROITERS KNOW WHAT’S UP: STUDENTS STAYED HOME!

On Feb. 3, most high school and middle school students in Southwest Detroit stayed home for “A Day Without Immigrants.” Here are attendance numbers and total enrollees.

• Academy of the Americas at Logan: pre-K-3, 7% of 500; Grades 4-12, 14% of 800
• Munger K-8: 25% of 900-plus
• Western International High School: 32% of nearly 2,000
• Cristo Rey Charter High School also participated.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District has made Virtual School available, even though the usual deadline for switching enrollments has passed.

Sadly, the majority of Detroit Schools barely observed a day without immigrants. It was poorly publicized unless one was in the right social media at the right time. It will not be the last such effort.

A FACEBOOK DIALOGUE

E.H. comments: The Michigan restaurant industry doesn’t have to pay living wages to U.S. citizens because it bought off legislators. Now comes ICE raiding all the places the lowest wage earners work. Farmworkers are leaving the U.S. so they don’t get arrested for working at slave wages. Who needs to sit in detention? Nobody.

Detroit’s big “Comeback” consists of bars and restaurants for people with money. They get subsidized housing so they can live near the bars and restaurants. Migrants build the subsidized housing for developers. Migrants cook. Migrants serve the food. Migrants landscape, clean the streets. Replacing them with citizens will mean paying living wages, social security and FICA, workman’s compensation, overtime pay. It’s going down.

Reflections on resentment. Driving through Corktown, I stop to let “New Detroiters” walk toward expensive restaurants. Packed parking lots. White people exploring the food scene. Bustling Bagley St. on one side of the freeway. Heading South West, ICE is parked in La Glora Bakery parking lot. Menacing presence on empty streets that until recently were also bustling. Tension is evident everywhere on this side of the bridge. Profiling is in full effect. We are on the Northern border. Canada is right here. Race rules this moment. White faces are safe; no worries of anyone asking for ID. Bagley is the most segregated street in Detroit.

F.S., FB comment: It’s very fucked-up in the Michigan Ave, Livernois, Central Ave. Area. I spoke with some business owners !! Their numbers are falling. No Customers, no business !! Vernor St. looked deserted, terribly empty. This racial profiling should be a crime. B/P, ICE. I really wish you would all just crawl back into the rat nest that you came out of!!

A.S., FB comment: ICE more active here now too. Targeting drivers who are brown, pulling them over, asking for immigration status. Also walking the malls and harassing teenagers, asking them for their immigration papers, threatening to jail them—and then saying: “Go home and tell your parents.”

G.M. FB comment: I was there today. Went to Aranda’s to get my car fixed. It was closed. Being Black and Indian, a movie with pictures of my history shrouded my soul like the awful fog which was blinding, with blowing snow and sleet in some spots in my 70 mi. Drive to D. Was this a sign? As a former English as a Second Language counselor and teacher in South West Detroit, my heart hurt for my students, their children, and the people there who are Hispanic, Arab, and from countries all over the world. We went thru some stuff then, knowing this had happened before and didn’t want that history to repeat itself. But today, on one hand, it was like the rapture: businesses were closed, streets were empty. On the other hand, hundreds were marching and vehicles filled the streets for miles in protest. As I drove down Vernor, echoes of my people down Hastings as the freeway mowed down the Black Business District of Motown. Detroit police were everywhere but many of their faces were painted with sorrow and despair for the people. I had to show support. Thanks to the people, including children, of South West Detroit for standing in solidarity and taking action.

 E.H. comments: NAFTA in Detroit. Part 1: My late ex-husband Jesse Villegas and I took a trip to Mexico City in June, 1993. Me, a Chicana from Detroit, and Jesse, a Chicano from Houston (Fifth Ward), unaware of the situation in Mexico. Upon arriving at our hotel overlooking the Zocalo, we looked out at a tent city of protesters as far as the eye could see. We threw our luggage down and headed across to join them. NAFTA was imminent. Thousands of Mexicans were in the streets to oppose NAFTA. We asked what was going on and were led to a tent in the center of the Plaza.

Mexico to Detroit. Part 2: Mexican migration to Detroit intensified post-NAFTA (1994). Clinton knew and Mexico knew, it would be a death knell for Mexico, her people, the land, the water. All of it would be destroyed by the free trade agreements. Children would be put to work in the U.S. as well as in Mexico. Farmers would lose their land. Walmart and friends would do well from 1994 to 2000. Mexicans begin to travel north seeking a way to survive. The auto parts suppliers in Detroit hired them for minimum wage because they had lost business to Mexico. But instead, they brought Mexicans to have Mexican working conditions right here in Detroit. Right here on the Canadian border. Now the children of those migrants are being hunted down by ICE.

No one ever wants to leave their homeland. When they can get to someplace they start all over again and start families, their children are U.S. citizens. The same pigs that took their livelihood away from them in their homeland now want to take away their birthright citizenship. They are U.S. citizens, Chican@s, Mexicans, our Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran neighbors who have risked their lives crossing treacherous borders and piling up debt to dangerous “guides” because their countries have been looted by U.S. policies. They deserve hospitality and refuge. Not hatred.

Prof. M.R., commenting: You are absolutely right, E.H. I write about the mass removals that repatriated Mexican men while banishing their U.S. citizen wives and children as well. It is horrifying to see the parallels of the current mass deportations with what happened during the economic recession at the end of World War I and during the Great Depression. The removal of entire mixed status families is indeed aimed at reducing a fast-growing population of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Resistance and legal challenges in court must begin now to stop this injustice from happening again. I am working with a team of lawyers as an expert witness on a lawsuit against this administration as we speak.