The criminalization of Black and brown communities has distorted our nation’s narratives.  The most recent iteration – the arrest and detention of individuals by ICE in places of work and of worship – must be recognized as a pattern and practice.

In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act barring Blacks from sitting in white railway cars and barring whites from sitting in Black railway cars.  Homer Plessy, who was 7/8’s white and 1/8 Black, was 30 years old when he purchased a ticket on June 7, 1892, to ride in a whites-only car and took a seat.  The police arrested and incarcerated Plessy in New Orleans.

In 1998, Michelle Alexander investigated whether racial profiling led to disproportionate traffic stops of Black and brown drivers in California.  Earlier data from studies conducted in New Jersey and Maryland showed police routinely targeted people of color for searches and detentions without evidence of criminal activity.  In Maryland, although African-Americans made up 17% of drivers, they accounted for over 70% of stops and searches.  Drivers of color were seen as “suspicious,” stopped for minor traffic violations, and questioned about imagined criminal activity.

We know better than to think Homer Plessy deserved to be charged with a crime: he never belonged behind bars.  We know better than to believe the Maryland motorists deserved to be detained and searched because the color of their skin made them targets of law enforcement.

Don’t tell me that our present-day reality where ICE officers arrest, detain, and deport Black and brown people is something different.  Don’t tell me that immigrants of color working and worshiping are criminals, while people of color taking a seat on a train or driving a motor vehicle have been proven not to be.

White citizens of European nations who stay in the U.S. are not presently targeted by ICE.  We don’t see their faces in footage captured on mobile devices.  White Afrikaners from South Africa singularly have been granted refugee status in the United States under a program expedited by the current administration.  However, an Afghan refugee, Zia S., a former interpreter for the U.S. military, was arrested by ICE in East Hartford recently.  On the same day, Nancy Martinez was carried into Mexico, absent a hearing; ICE took Martinez into custody when she was driving her minor children to school in New Haven.  A father of five and a mother of two have been separated from their minor children.

ICE is not showing up to remove individuals with criminal histories.  That is a lie you have been told.  This is about immigrants who are members of Black and brown communities. 

It is time to turn the camera around and identify those who are, in fact, involved in illegal activity.  The ICE officers and their bosses are repeatedly acting in violation of the Constitution, as well as state and federal statutes.