Political Fútbol
Well, it’s time for my annual rant about Hispanic Heritage Month, or rather Hispanic Heritage couple of weeks here and a couple of weeks there.
For the uninitiated, in 1968, it was decided to dedicate a week to those in this country of Latin extraction by setting aside to celebrate Latin heritage for a week near Mexican Independence Day, September 15th. A lovely gesture to be sure. The week was later extended to a month, but rather than designating September or October as Latin Heritage Month, they decided to give us 2 weeks in September and 2 weeks in October. Later, the Reagan administration would coin the term “Hispanic,” lumping together all people of Latin origin.
The hot topic recently has been immigration and deportation and the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. You can be for or against deportation or immigration. Either way, but it’s a touchy subject. Few people straddle the fence here. We act as if ICE was created by the Trump administration, but they have been around since 2002, combining the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Customs Enforcement to make it easier to investigate and locate possible terrorists who at that point, were lurking around every corner.
INS investigated, arrested and deported immigrants who had committed crimes like robbery, assault and murder, largely ignoring people who were here working in construction, farming and hospitality. Back in the day, the US government used deportation to get rid of gangsters, sending Mafia bosses back to Sicily or wherever they immigrated from. Customs, meanwhile, did their best to intercept illegal imports like exotic animals, drugs, stolen art and Cuban cigars. And guns. Lots of guns.
Combining the two agencies gave the agency more muscle to fight crime. With human trafficking more prevalent, ICE was now able to arrest the coyotes, maybe do a little drug interdiction by teaming up with the DEA, ATF and the border patrol. Still, their main focus was crime. It was the Obama administration that changed the game, targeting employers rather than employees. Their three-tier system targeted national security threats first, followed by violent criminals and the lowest, those who simply crossed the border illegally. There were 2.7 million deportations under Obama, but the Dreamers program was created and a focus on keeping families together was instituted.
Trump 2016’s response was to build a wall, set limits on immigration and put a pause on issuing green cards. With the advent of COVID, Trump shut all immigration down and tried to reform the Dreamers program, institute a lottery system and generally cut back on immigration. During his first go round, he deported about 1.5 million but effectively closed down the border.
When Biden took over, he threw the gates open. Anyone crossing the border were given notice to return for a hearing and never tracked. Millions simply disappeared into country. After southern governors began shipping immigrants north, city and state administrations began giving them money, free housing and health care which only exacerbated the problem. The US was indeed the land of milk and honey. Like the 1980 Mariel Boat Lift from Cuba where Castro emptied his prisons and mental institutions, criminals and human traffickers were coming mixed in amongst people desperate to escape their poverty. All they needed was to say the magic word. Asylum. By some estimates, 10 million people entered the US with fewer than 1 million deportations, most of those coming late in the game as the electorate decided they wanted immigration reform.
Trump 2.0 has given ICE instructions to deport hardened criminals first and to target employers like they did during the Obama administration, and they have been doing just that. There are those who believe that no one should be deported. Some low-level undocumented immigrants are caught in the net and deported as well, but even if ICE could deport 1 million people a year, it would scarcely put a dent in those who crossed the border illegally over the past 4 years.
So here we are, the bad guys again. That Mexican in your neighborhood might be a coyote or an MS 13 or tren de auga gang member. Or we might be a dreamer or that person who’s been here illegally for 20 years and a hard worker. She/he might be a person being trafficked or a drug mule, might be escaping poverty or gang violence or just someone who sees an opportunity for a better life. It just depends on which side of the fence you’re standing on.
The one thing that we are, for sure, is a political football and have been for decades. Both political parties have decided that we are of value as an issue during elections. Maybe we’re taking away good paying jobs for hard working Americans. Elsewhere, we are suspected criminals or viewed as sucking off the public tit. We might even be pissing on your lettuce or grapes. Who knows? The party that calls themselves the party of compassion found value in what we did and for our hard work ethic until it was going to cost them an election. Then, suddenly, they had a problem. Everybody is perfectly happy to have us around, not for the work we do, but for the value we provide as a topic of discussion between adversaries.
When I was a kid, there was a family who already had eight kids who took in three Cuban girls escaping from Castro’s communism. They did it out of compassion. I don’t know any family who is willing to do that today. We’ll let the government hand out gift cards, offer free housing (not in our neighborhoods, of course,) and complain about the lack of compassion on the right. Individuals talk about what people should be doing but never seem to find a way to do it themselves.
In one sense, immigrants did it to themselves, coming here knowing that there were those people who would resent them. There is division even amongst immigrants. Those who came here legally resent those who skipped the line, resent those who got something for nothing while they worked for everything they have. Those who came here because they saw an opportunity to change their lives resent those who are already here who do not wish to share the dream.
One friend lamented that “they (the government) are targeting us” to which I responded “when have they not been targeting us?” We have always been suspected for one thing or another and as a young man my father told me that I would have to work harder than others because people would always make assumptions about me because of my heritage. We (Latinos) never asked to be political pawns. Close your border, open your border, tighten or loosen the laws. We’ll still come here one way or the other. Personally, I think you should sign the guestbook when you emigrate to a country, but I can see how desperation would cause a person to try and take the shortest route to prosperity.
Long story longer, don’t blame immigrants for political policies created to garner votes rather than have some common sense to them. Right now, the border is effectively closed. In two or three years, who knows?
-September 2025
Copyright 2025 by Jose Antonio Ponce