Organized Labor Has to Challenge the Criminalization of Immigration
In recent decades, most of the labor movement has taken strong stances in favor of immigrant rights. But unions could do more to stop the ongoing criminalization of immigration that Democrats are doing little to halt.
Immigrants and labor unions marched over the Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn to City Hall Park, where they met with public officials in support of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a twelve-day cross-country trip taken by one thousand immigrants on eighteen buses. (Ramin Talaie / Corbis via Getty Images)
Federal, state, and local governments imprison or detain around half a million immigrants per year, with the largest percentage from Latin America. In the past, organized labor has played a key role in shaping immigration law and policy. Today, the largest federation of unions, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) stands resolutely in favor of the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.
While the Biden-Harris administration ended some of the former administration’s cruel immigration policies, too many anti-immigrant policies remain: under the Joe Biden administration, the number of immigrants detained by ICE has increased from a daily average of 15,100 in January to 27,023 in March. Even though Biden made campaign promises to end for-profit detention, only two contracts have been terminated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers even as the COVID pandemic worsened the conditions of detained people who were left with few choices to protect themselves.
Given the realities of criminal branding, detention, and deportation, labor unions should continue to advocate for legalization while also challenging the hypercriminalization of immigration — a defining feature of the contemporary immigration enforcement system.
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