Though Wisconsin hasn’t been faced with the major ICE raids as we’ve seen in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis, there is growing concern that ICE will arrive in Wisconsin. Governor Evers said this week that the state is preparing for this inevitability. To talk about ICE raids and the larger context of anti-immigrant sentiment in the US, host Allen Ruff is joined by Armando Ibarra.

Ibarra works with Voces de la Frontera, an organization with deep roots in Wisconsin. Founded in 1994, the organization responded to the displacement of people from NAFTA. Over the years Voces has helped more than 16,500 families create “family disruption plans” and has held “know your rights” sessions for more than 30,000 people across Wisconsin. Voces de la Frontera will be holding its annual assembly this weekend.

Ibarra also discusses the US as a land of immigrants in a land of anti-immigrants, from colonization, Westward expansion, and the Chinese Exclusion Act, to the present. Ibarra says that the US is no longer pretending not to be an empire, as we’ve seen with the Trump administration’s aggression in Latin America.

They also discuss the Supreme Court ruling that legitimizes racial profiling, the reframing of protest as “domestic terrorism,” the rise of state-sanctioned violence against immigrants, and the 287(g) programs that deputize local law enforcement to act as immigration agents.

Voces organizes a 24-7 emergency ICE hotline at 1-800-427-0213.

Armando Ibarra is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School for Workers. He’s the co-author of the award winning book, The Latino Question: Politics, Labouring Classes and the Next Left.

Featured image of the mural “Labor Solidarity has no Borders” (1992) by Mike Alewitz via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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