ICE Raids Tearing Apart Social Fabric of Massachusetts
ICE raids are tearing apart the social fabric of our State. Each person deported has a family or other ties such as a job or community, and ICE is deliberately trying to force self-deportation, even of citizens, if they were born elsewhere.
Here is a recent story. ICE agents stayed for one week at the Holiday Inn in Marlborough earlier this year. Around this time they arrested a man outside his home who had worked for years in a local nursing home, including all during the Covid-19 pandemic. He was then deported to Brazil.
His father-in-law bought a house nine years ago, and also works in nursing homes. His mother-in-law works as a custodian for a local fitness center. Now this whole family, including their daughter and their granddaughter are returning to Brazil.
The racists in charge of ICE are celebrating another victory. Meanwhile in Massachusetts we lost two nursing home workers and a custodian and forced a family to sell their home. Already we know how hard it is to find care workers in our state.
These actions are a deliberate attack on the social fabric of our state, and yet our leaders are silent. Our congressional delegation won’t act forcefully because they say they are protecting individual cases, and don’t want to jeopardize their access to ICE. Our state leaders are strangely silent. And our State Legislatures don’t act like this is an emergency, but accept people snatched out of our community with impunity as if nothing is that bad.
Without judicial review, almost every deportation creates community harm. The purpose of such review is to weigh the costs and benefits to the community of deportation for the misdemeanor of being in the United States without a visa. Otherwise ICE sweeps up the very people who contribute to our community and this is their deliberate strategy.
We are under attack. Where are our leaders in this emergency?
