Rachel Ida Buff is a writer, organizer, and historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She is working on a book entitled The Gangster Buffs of Charleston, West Virginia: Jewish Safety in a Twentieth Century Appalachian City.
The jailing of Salah Sarsour, a longtime Palestine organizer in Milwaukee, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after baseless accusations by pro-Israel forces is part of the long history of repression of dissent in the United States.
Immigration raids and detention aren’t just political theater — they supply corporations with cheap, captive labor and help roll back protections for all workers. Behind the language of border security lies coerced labor that echoes the convict lease era.
Today’s legislative efforts against the Palestine solidarity movement bear a striking resemblance to McCarthyism in both tactics and ideology.
With its new immigration policy, the Biden administration isn’t even breaking from Trump-era anti-immigrant policies, much less charting a new, humane course for immigrants and refugees.
Without a change in US policy toward Guatemala and all of Central America, the thousands of asylum seekers fleeing violence and poverty will continue to come — no matter what Joe Biden or Kamala Harris say.