A Recap

On the protests, our migration policy, and political pawns.

A week of protests, loose rubber bullets, and the National Guard. How it all started — according to reporting, on May 20th, Stephen Miller (the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and a LA native) brought together 50 of the top members of ICE together, to berate them and demand they up their arrest count. “‘Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” an official told the Washington Examiner. And later Miller told Fox News that the White House was looking for ICE to arrest 3,000 people a day, a major increase in enforcement.

ICE increased raids on workplaces in Los Angeles —agents were raiding the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot, as well as making arrests in the Fashion District at two locations of Ambiance Apparel. On June 10, the Los Angeles Times reported that ICE agents were raiding farms and packing house distribution centers in Ventura, Kern, and Tulare counties. Protests started and, the Trump admin took an extremely aggressive response, deploying the National Guard to California for the first time since 1992. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also mobilized 700 active duty Marines as part of the government’s response to the protests. Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass instituted a curfew and in New York Eric Adams warned protestors that “we will not allow you to destroy our city.”

Protests continued throughout the week, including the “No Kings” day that commenced around the country on Saturday, but there has also been an eerie quiet in Los Angeles in recent days. People staying home, a chilling effect. According to the American Immigration Council. “Nationally, about a fourth of workers are foreign-born in agriculture and construction, according to the American Immigration Council. More than half of drywall hangers, plasterers and stucco masons are foreign-born. And in science-technology-engineering-and-math, so-called STEM fields, nearly a quarter of workers are foreign-born.”

There’s no doubt these people drive our country. But our demands for a better system, shouldn’t hinge on the premise of immigrants being “hard working” or a desire to keep our restaurants open. Immigrants deserve to be spared from this role of political pawn they have long played. If we have an impossible asylum process, continued demand for cheap labor, and abounding economic crises south of our border, we cannot be surprised at undocumented immigration. But, it serves a political purpose to pretend to be. Immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue. In the midst of his tariff chaos and the brink of a new war, is it any wonder he is doubling down on this? We should demand a better system because it's possible. There are solutions, our politicians just aren’t interested in them. To quote our interview with scholar Mae Ngai, “The limited solutions we have are due to political choices and interests. To me, it doesn't take a tremendous amount of imagination to see how you could handle this.”

We are linking a few other pieces below that help give context on our failing system, and possible solutions:

A few other readings recs …

Elizabeth Bruenig’s peice on “what years of witnessing executions taught [her] about sin, mercy, and the possibility of redemption”: “As the time of execution approached, a reporter had asked Smith what his message to the public would be. ‘You know, brother, I’d say, ‘Leave room for mercy,’  he’d replied. ‘That just doesn’t exist in Alabama. Mercy really doesn’t exist in this country when it comes to difficult situations like mine.’”

A profile on Screen Slate — a story about what's great about being uncompromising: “The site’s interview for No Fear No Die, written by regular contributor Steve Macfarlane, ran at nearly 4,000 words; a mainstream publication would never grant that much space to a story like that. Screen Slate is doing the work—passionately, shaggily, without reservation or anxiety about audience and advertising. In fact, there is no on-site advertising, no paywall, and there never will be.”

A profile on Pete Hegseth in the New York Magazine: “Chaos comes to us from the Greek for a ‘gaping void,’ a space prior to order and intent. Whether one feels safe with Pete Hegseth alone in his office surrounded by pictures of his wife in a pink dress depends on whether one fears the void more than one fears a Trump White House forcefully executing its plans. ‘Pete is playing secretary,’ a source says. ‘He’s not being secretary.’ In crisis — an unplanned evacuation, Israel bombing Iran, China moving on Taiwan — there will be no one with experience to lead. ‘For any sustained operations, we’re screwed. There’s nobody in the SecDef’s office at this point that has any … they’re not heavyweights. They don’t have the sophistication. They don’t have the experience.’ One source described a longtime Pentagon employee discussing the lack of readiness in the office, ‘close to tears,’ saying ‘the department is so fucked.’