Deportation Is Not a Hardship That Shall Pass — It Is an Interminable Agony

Thirty years ago, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) deported my father. He came to the U.S. from the ghettos of Trinidad to the ghettos of Boston and did what he did to survive. For him, that meant selling weed. INS and its successor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), also deported two of my uncles. Previous presidential administrations called them “felons.” I call them family.

The absence of a loved one creates an unwanted space, specifically a void. This emptiness, though, is as temporal as it is spatial. The span of three decades may seem like a decent amount of time to process the violence of deportation. The inordinate seconds, minutes, and hours spent reckoning with the voids associated with removal reveal the callousness of time. How then can time heal the same wounds it inflicts? Can time heal the wounds it creates denying the child of a deportee access to visit their loved one by claiming they are on a “restricted fly list”? Can time heal the same wounds it inflicts by placing “SSSS” (Secondary Security Screening Selection) on the boarding passes of the child and an 18-month-old grandchild of a deportee to make the grandchild’s first visit to meet their grandparent the most harrowing experience of their young life? Can time heal the same wounds it inflicts when depriving a parent or loved one of three decades of milestones and integral moments in their child’s life? The truth is that deportation is not a moment or a hardship that shall pass. It is an interminable agony. There is no such thing as post-deportation. Time does not heal all wounds after removal — it only protracts pain.

As heartened as I am by the organizing here in the Twin Cities, I cannot help but notice that rhetorical resistance to ICE from local and national leaders often overlooks those marked as “criminal” migrants, “bad hombres,” the “worst of the worst,” or whatever other labels they use to esteem some migrants at the expense of others.

So now, as “Operation Metro Surge” draws down, we must ask the uncomfortable question: What next? The operation will end at some point, but deportations will not. “ICE Out” is a catchy slogan, but I’m not interested in ICE setting up shop in Maine or anywhere else on the planet. The truth is, “ICE Out” is a misnomer because ICE has always been in and will continue to be in Minnesota — and every state — until there is an end to the criminalization of movement and migration, as well as the cessation of border imperialism.

I am unsettled by the universalization of the violence of ICE, as if there is some commensurability here. News headlines focusing on the economic impact of ICE operations on local businesses echo the public comments of Minnesota leaders. While there is a consciousness-raising case for pointing out the broad range of ICE’s impact, we also need to be clear about who is most likely to feel its weight. Minnesota has always had a way of ignoring the disproportionate impact of criminalization under the guise of “Minnesota nice.”

There is no such thing as post-deportation. Time does not heal all wounds after removal — it only protracts pain.

Ignoring the disproportionate impact of criminalization more broadly is part of a larger national trend. The semantic consequence of the equation of Blackness with crime within the U.S. means that “white criminal” remains paradoxical unless it includes the modifier “collar” in between the two words, while, as Michelle Alexander writes, “Black criminal” is nearly redundant. It also means, as Dylan Rodriguez reminds us, that “mass incarceration” is “worse than meaningless, when it’s not the ‘masses’ who are being criminalized and locked up.” Anyone holding relations with currently or formerly incarcerated people knows the impossibility of us all being “criminals” because there is a gratuitous and incommensurable violence targeting Black, Indigenous, and other racialized groups. Many people may be arrested, but not all of them will have their cuffs tightened an extra click to ensure wrists remain scarred and nerves damaged. Many people may be locked up, but some will be more likely to be placed in segregation, experience forced sterilization, be brutalized by armed mobs, denied medical care, and then left to suffer in silence.

Just as the actual consequences of criminalization and incarceration should not be treated as an equal opportunity form of structural violence, anger over ICE “destroying our city” should not subsume the reality of actual families being destroyed by deportation. There is a desperate need to distinguish between those being directly impacted by ICE’s presence in their city and those directly impacted by the function of ICE — namely, the goal of removing people who have been “othered,” labeled as “unwanted” or “criminal.” Saidiya Hartman warns of the dangers of using empathy as a tool of identification to put yourself in the shoes of others, including those constructed as “criminals,” while obliterating the actual suffering of the original wearers of the shoes. The emotional violence of deportation is not something to try on. Those of us who comprise a deported diaspora (global dispersion of forcibly removed people around the world from the places they call home) do not have the luxury of speaking from a place of abstraction. We know it because we feel it.

As someone living in Minneapolis who has been part of numerous movements leading up to the uprisings before the 2020 murder of George Floyd, I am both inspired and intrigued by the fierce resistance to ICE within various communities across the Twin Cities. The same systems that remain intent on atomizing communities by sowing fear and distrust through narratives of “crime” and “violence” are now the reason why communities are growing stronger and more unified than ever. We must use this moment to demand more uncomfortable questions: Were your “neighbors” your neighbors when you purchased an Amazon Ring camera? Were your “neighbors” your neighbors when you made racist remarks on your Next Door app about potential suspects in your community? Will the same people, including countless Timberwolves fans proudly holding “ICE Out” signs at a recent game, also call for the abolition of police? Are those behind the walls in Shakopee, Stillwater, Hennepin County, or other carceral facilities in Minnesota also your “neighbors”?

Given the role of U.S. imperialism in destabilizing communities and countries around the globe, we must think more expansively about the concept of “neighbor.”

Will this movement contend with the fact that these deportations are happening on stolen land, or that we migrants are here because U.S. imperialism stretched into the places we called home? Western imperialism wreaks havoc across the Global South through structural adjustment loans, “free trade” agreements, privatization of public goods, evisceration of local and traditional economies, anti-labor policies, currency devaluation, covert CIA operations, military coups of democratically elected governments, support for authoritarian regimes, and asymmetrical warfare — yet many in this country still act surprised when migrants, including Indigenous peoples, show up at the doorstep of their northern “neighbor.” Given the role of U.S. imperialism in destabilizing communities and countries around the globe, we must think more expansively about the concept of “neighbor.” We must seek comradeship, not just neighborliness, with peoples throughout the Global South in a shared struggle against imperialism, fascism, and global capitalism.

I am suspicious of widespread calls to abolish ICE because I’ve experienced firsthand the feeling of abandonment when you are not a “perfect victim” or “innocent.” As we make the call to release people from immigration jails and “free them all,” we must remember that there is no asterisk at the end of “all.” All means all. There’s also no footnote indicating that only “good migrants,” “nonviolent offenders,” and “the redeemable” can expect to be released. In other words, there is no qualification for liberation. “All” must mean all.

The selective memory sweeping over people across the country leads many to believe that what we are witnessing somehow deviates from the standard operating procedures of ICE, and policing writ large. When the agents who shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis and killed Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti tell us that they are simply doing their job, we must believe them. Local and federal law enforcement make a living/killing from life-taking systems. Few professions include physical harm as part of the job description. Raiding homes, traumatizing children, destroying families, and murdering people is not new and will not stop.

So, to riff off of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, rather than merely abolishing ICE, let’s abolish a society that normalizes ICE’s existence. Achieving this goal requires a transformation of the world as we know it.